BBC Choice - recorded continuity?

[quote="Andrew"]

ITV(1) Nighttime is done from London live during the week.

At weekends, from Leeds? I don't think so. Leeds with coming next information? Don't make me laugh.

It's from LWT. All announcements are pre-done, and the same one played each week, which is why announcers change from programme to programme. Some of the announcements do seem to be from Leeds announcers, and I really don't know why that is...

Can I ask this:

Why did Granada choose Leeds (YTV) to do all the jobs - continuity etc?

Because they had so-called expertise.

Namely they merged Tyne Tees' continuity into the Leeds centre, and IMHO made a right royal pigs ear of it.

However, Granada just saw the $$$ signs at all the savings they could make, as YTV had spent 5 million on the suite (which didn't work) and it was there ready to use.

It was the worst decision Granada could have made. I was sooooooooo hoping that Granada would shut down Leeds and move continuity to Manchester.

Alas, it was not to be

So what difference would it have made, if Granada had closed Leeds and Manchester's continuity areas, and done everything from Newcastle?

Only that it would not have started from a system which had already given up all pretence at making the regions distinct. Of course, if YTTTV had decided to base the broadcast centre in Newcastle and had made the same decisions then we'd be in the same boat.

It's not the location that matters. It's the management decisions that were made. Ultimately the only reason YTV even bothered to open the site in Leeds was that at the time in 1993, YTV planned to close TTTV completely, as reported in the local press at the time. The ITC had to intervene on several occasions to stop it.

There is a phrase for the Yorkshire Television politics of the mid-90s with regards it's treatment of it's 'merged partner'.

That phrase is 'asset stripping'.

I remember watching late-night channel 5 at a friend's house last year. - We were watching 'Sex Sells' with Danni Behr and Roland Whatshisname when all the pre-recorded announcements were played out one after the other. We must have heard at least 5 or 6 before it was faded out.

The last few were along the lines of 'we are sorry for the fault, we will try and fix it as soon as possible'! It's so blatent that C5 use minidiscs (or something similar) for their continuity!

Peter.

BBCs WORLD and PRIME are also prerecorded - WORLD for obvious reasons, but I really must congratulate the PRIME CA department for making such a good job of pre-recorded announcment.

After consistent viewing of the channel I've come to discover that the CA Department record certain popular phrases, such as 'Coming Up Next' and 'In half an hour'. Then they record the channel name in different instances, like 'Now on BBC Prime' and 'Here on BBC Prime', and then they recorded the individual programme names. They then merge them all together, so that we get something like

'In half an hour, here on BBC Prime, we join Albert Square and EastEnders.'

And it's done so professionally, you don't notice it's actually segmented until you hear the exact same segment in another CA over and over again:

'It's EastEnders in half an hour, here on BBC Prime, but first, infectious drama, from the Doctors'

And so on. I've picked up loads of different segments, the only aspect I can criticise is the fact Dan Austin announces for the channel every day. Perhaps if they had some variety?

Yeah during the mid 90's, the announcer was saying You are Watching Tyne Tees Television on Channel 3 North East, what a mouthful!

It depends...
ITV1 Nighttime differs from region to region. LNN provide a nighttime generic ITV1 feed to a lot of regions. All announcements on this would be prerecorded.

I dunno about the other feeds though.

Jeff.

The CA department?????



No they don't each phrase is recorded as a whole, doing it word by word would be far more complicated and far more time-consuming.