BBC Television Centre

Yes that's right the NTA came online but suffered with automation problems - Pro-bel Compass ver.1 and also MARC machines to load the tapes for playout. The MARC's soon got ditched for trail playout only and programme VT playout becoming a manual job for the Presentation Operators. Trails eventually got played from server from the NTA in late '99, but programme playout was still from VT. Cue dots to studios also went when the NTA did. The closure of the NTA was really drawn out with the DTA and NTA running in tandem for peak BBC1/BBC2 for a good year or so, with tapes still being loaded for analogue and server playout on digital streams only. A programme from server never went to air on analogue whilst the NTA was still in action right up to 2001ish. The NTA was also staffed over midnight for the millenium as everyone thought the DTA might go haywire with the Y2K bug!

Yep - cue dots ceased to be useful once digital compression introduced significant delays into the programme chain - and off-air cue-dots were no longer accurate enough.

Annoyingly they also took Red Lights remote control away at the same time. Pres used to give you flashing red lights at 2'00" - which could be really useful on busy programmes.

Yes, that was when the first stage of closure started. Until late 1999 the NTA was open 24/7 and the DTA only for about 12 hours a day. Then the roles were reversed and the digital area was on air 24/7, allowing them to transmit 16:9 programmes all day. Because the DTA didn't have red light control it was discontinued, as were cue-dots - the delays enountered with digital broadcasting rendering them unreliable.

The red light thing was a strange way of doing things, especially in the days when programmes might have been live into other broadcasters.

It was a bit earlier than that they started coming from server when the DTA started up which was in 98, but trails were still being made and put into the Marc machines for a long while afterwards as a backup (they were a bit suspicious of the servers). I'm not sure when they stopped using Laserdisc for the idents and stings, in the later years these came from a couple of local, stand-alone profiles

MARC machines were a pain, I worked with them at two different places and they were always a frustration for all involved. I wonder if they're still there, they were very large machines in a very small room. The NTA is now some sort of coding area apparently


(this is an incredibly 'in' conversation isn't it?)

Its really quite fascinating.

The MARCs are no longer in situ but were there for some time after pres moved out. It's still operational as a coding area. The NCRs (Network Control Rooms, there were three in total), Cons and TCRs (Technical Control Rooms, ie where the engineers sat) have all been stripped and knocked into one office. The other side of the corridor however, remains remarkably intact. The Pres Op's booths, Machine Rooms, Library all still there, all still with their sliding doors with /B/B/C/ logos on them!

The red light signalling from the automation was a great thing IMO. Pres had been signalling red lights to studios for donkeys years and AFAIK it was only discontinued because no-one could be bothered to make (or the BBC couldn't be bothered to buy) a bespoke vision mixer with the associated GPIs and buttons. In the manual galleries, the pres director would send red lights to studios from the 'run panel' (which, spookily enough, also remotely ran VTRs in the basement for trails and programmes and I think Telecines for features.) The NTA had a sepcially built Grass Valley vision mixers and all sources had separate audio and video cuts, a separate Emergency Cut bank and each source had an associated Standby, Run and Reset button. It made the desk appear to be incredibly complicated for what was in essense a presentation mixer with one ME bank. The red lights could be sent to anywhere in the BBC that had full comms with presentation (i.e. 'control lines'). The NTA had complex telephones associated with the sources on the vision mixer. If you had a live programme coming from Pebble Mill for example on Source 16, you could not only test they were receiving red lights by pressing Standby on chanel 16, but you could talk to them by simply pressing button 16 on the phone. None of this stuff was implemented in the DTA.

Here's a pic from TV Studio History of NC1 in the NTA:
http://www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/images/pres%20nc1.jpg

It's a real pity that proper engineered solutions like that - which made the whole operation more secure - were ditched in favour of "off the shelf" solutions that never quite do what you need, and increase the risk of error...

But hey, it's all outsourced... (And don't mention Siemens and phones...)

I didn't realise the studio red lights are no longer controlled centrally at TVC as it is something we take for granted at Bush House. Although you are always taught that a lack of red light does not mean that nobody is listening to you.

In the studios that have control of their own OS lines, once you dial in a router source you are offered 'listen' and sometimes 'facilities' too. If the source is another studio then facilites mode will mean the other studio has it's red light triggered as you open the OS fader.


Yes, I think we all have a IP telephony incident incident to bitch about. Last year someone manged to take out the whole of the Reith network in Bush by plugging one in incorrectly.