Channel 4 pre-1993 regional opt outs

Yeah like that ever happened with smaller regions.

In all my years of watching the channel, where they had to join or leave programmes (mostly things like snooker coverage) there was never a proper hand-off. The best we got was a fade to a slide where the duty announcer would state that was where they were leaving the programme.

That actually was a source of annoyance to me down the years. I remember one afternoon when both YTV and TT joined the live snooker late, 15 minutes apart. TT played out a copy of the intro to the programme and dropped in half-way through a frame. No handover. YTV then joined, did much the same thing and the commentator welcomed YTV viewers.

There was even one example in the early 90s where TT presumably paid to show an HTV-produced, 2-hour live sailing programme (which was a bit of a car-crash but that's a different story), and joined it half-way through. Even there, there was no effort by HTV to welcome TT viewers (TT being the only other station to take the programme, I think because they'd produced the same thing a year earlier when the event was in the NE).

I remember TVS joining OTT late (the late night adult version of Tiswas that flopped). That was well done, cross faded to the programme, and Chris Tarrant said; '....welcome TVS viewers, you're late, and don't do it again please...'

All that said, if the following week TT ended up crashing their station opening instead of the IBA programme, that would imply a balls-up with the agreed schedule.

Week 1, transmission controller finds himself in awkward situation with 30 seconds before the station opens and IBA programme still running. Knows he'll probably be fired if he fails to start the station at the agreed time, no-one in management available to make a decision (or management have told him to cut it) and makes the call.

IBA finds out and has a "chat" with the big-ups at TT.

Following week, same thing happens again but this time they know about it. At this point there's probably agreement with IBA to curtail the intro music, so they play it at the right time and cut to it once the IBA programme ends.

Not really fair to accuse TT staffers of unprofessionalism when faced with the "oh sh*t" moment and had to make the judgement call.

Someone on the job who can't count probably There's a video on YouTube where Central's "Viewpoint" programme ends early catching the Leeds playout centre off-guard, with hilarious consequences...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCe7csO0H3c

That seems to be a pretty good guess at what happened - although I’m sure those editions of EA were the standard ten minutes in length, as Tyne Tees left the programme at about 9.18, just as John Lovell or one of his colleagues was saying “Before we go, we’d like to remind you of...”. The transition out of the programme looked like a manual fade, with the picture fading to black moments before the sound faded out. Then after a second or two, the IBA Tyne Tees caption faded up and the music began as it normally would. The following week EA ended then there was an abrupt cut to IBA slide with the music in progress.

Tyne Tees obviously knew what time they would need to start their opening sequence in order to fit in The Good Word and the news bulletin, and hit the first proper programme on time, so why they would be caught off their guard is a mystery. Any day except Tuesday, of course, the startup time could be as flexible as they required, but they would know in advance that they couldn’t startup before 9.20 on a Tuesday, and you would expect this to be factored into the scheduling. I think the first programme began just after 9.25 which suggests it was coming from another company who didn’t have to fit in bible readings and news beforehand. I will try to hunt out listings for those dates, which I think were 30th March and 6th April 1982.

It was Tony Currie who stated on here that the ITV companies were not obliged to screen Engineering Announcements. His input here would be interesting.

I recall the short experiment into breakfast TV that YTV and TTT ran in 1977. Their programme started at 8.30, and depending on its length, it may still have been on air when EA was been seen elsewhere on the network.

You often saw some interesting graphics on the screen prior to startup, such as colour bars and in Yorkshire, the YTV clock without hands or the chevron.

The YTV/TTT breakfast experiment ran an hour as I recall, so the 0910 edition of EA would have been dropped - but I think at this stage there was a second showing later in the morning - although this *may* only have applied during schools terms.

Those dates are spot on by the way, Tyne Tees billed start time on 30/3/82 and 6/4/82 was indeed 0920.

On the latter date, by the way, Grampian are billed with a 0915 start, so presumably didn't bother with the IBA programme at all that week.

Wonderful that you found those details so quickly! What were Tyne Tees showing those morning after The Good Word and NE News? Any indication of where their first programme originated from? On the second week, scheduled programming in all regions may have changed due to the Falklands War, though I don’t recall the first programme being affected. .

One confusing part of all this is that I'm sure by 1982 the ITV companies weren't compelled to show a formal intro sequence anyway were they? Some stations stopped the practice (and even the authority announcement) at the start of '82 so TT (and some others) were presumably still doing it for their own internal reasons (TT being one of the last to ditch the authority announcement in 1988).

So with that in mind would it not have just been preferable to let the programme run and cut to the authority announcement over slide with no music at the appropriate time? Or even fade that music up at one of the many transition moments available within that particular piece where the fact that some of it were missing was not all that obvious?

But again, if you're in panic mode, artistic concerns go out the window I guess -- getting *something* out is the priority.

Interesting stuff! I don’t think there was any lunchtime repeat showing prior to 1983, and then it was C4 that
did it ?

If the programme was optional, then fair enough, it does explain some of TTTV’s actions. I don’t ever recall Southern or TVS not showing it, but it was a locally produced programme 😝

Is it not possible that the moment he started that "before we go..." was actually an agreed opt-out point, and the TC simply overshot by a couple of seconds?

Maybe the idea was to fade to an IBA slide and cut the sound at that point and it went wrong?

I was a avid viewer of the programme, and never missed an edition once we got a VCR in 1980, so such an announcement would have stuck in my mind

I'm not suggesting that they would have made a specific mention for TT, indeed as I said your lot darn sarf did not deem us North Easterners worthy as I've said before

These things were out of vision / over a slide as I recall so just before the programme close would be a good point to cut out of it, if the timing was done right.

If the programme was optional (and the point about Grampian does suggest that timing may have been a regular issue) it does beg the question of why the IBA didn't just send the recording up the line an hour early and just let the individual contractors get on with just playing it out as they saw fit.

I mean, 5 or 10 minutes before start of programmes and they had to just fit it in? Bit draconian really.