Channel 4 pre-1993 regional opt outs

Kind of. It was a temporary measure while they got the YTV payout centre ready.

I seem to recall they were using the old C4 area for the TT feed, but it wasn't up to the task of running a complete second channel.

In early months they just sent up a pure dirty YTV feed but the idea was that they'd switch in Tyne Tees specific promos up the line, and leave the ones after breaks with a freeze until the next show started then switch back to the dirty feed, which TT would opt out of.

Problem was it really did not work well at all. YTV frequently just crashed back to the dirty feed without warning leaving TT with flashes of YTV presentation all over the place. They ended up having to apologise regularly on-air with a pre-prepared script.

I recall at one point Bill Steel, when he was on duty would end up just doing very long IVC pieces after breaks and they'd be opting out of the TT promos YTV had cued up for them (which we occasionally got glimpses of as well) , as it was better that than the alternative.

Then the new centre, when it opened was if anything even worse than what went before, with complete programme sections being played in the wrong order and all kinds of cock-ups for the first six months.

You want unprofessional, there's your exemplar. And all totally avoidable - all they had to do is pay the TT pres staff to remain in their posts for a few more months until things were ready. John Calvert should have had his pension removed for the mess he made of the company.

Early 1993 on Tyne Tees was a real mess. They appeared, for the most part, to be opting in and out of a dirty feed of YTV, complete with ads etc. Sometimes you would see snippets of the YTV ident when joining programmes, and very often see the “YTV presentation” slide at the end of imports before Tyne Tees cross-faded to their own caption. If they left the sound open you’d often hear a YTV announcer start to speak before TTT faded it down and did their own announcement.

That said, the feed didn’t always seem to be totally dirty as some shows were joined and left cleanly.

It was obvious at times that nobody in Leeds bothered to tell Newcastle what they were planning to do. YTV showed a three-minute catch up before the first 1993 episode of The Young Doctors (as they skipped a year’s worth of episodes to catch up to TTT). Tyne Tees plugged this gap with a couple of PIFs but then, bizarrely put up the Young Doctors crash slide and mixed into this catchup just as it was ending. We then saw YTV’s ident and announcement into the episode. TTT seemed to be working “blind” at times!

Apparently these type of cockups began happening so often that Tyne Tees were made to apologise on air. I’ve no idea what explanation was given.

Things got better, but far from perfect, when transmission moved to Leeds in September 1993, and anything from Newcastle including continuity and ads was fed out via Leeds.

This probably goes without saying but I presume there was at some point communication from Channel 4 to the ITV companies that they were showing this that and the other and where the ad breaks were going in this, that and the other so they could sell the space and package the adverts up for broadcast.

I believe I have seen on YouTube use of cue dots on Channel 4 as visual cues in the same way they were used on ITV but much like ITV as the 1990s came along the cue dots began to vanish but I presume there was still some form of, "talkback" (probably not the right term) to communicate with the regions for advert purposes once they'd stopped cue doting.

In fact talking of cue dots for Channel 4 I have only ever seen them on presentation and not on the programmes themselves (although that being said this doesn't seem to be consistent as there are examples on YouTube of junctions into adverts that have no cue dots and some that do)

I think the cue dots on C4 was only ever a backup as pulses were sent down the line for automated triggering of ads etc.

Programme specific ones did turn up from time to time - The Tube, and associated productions like the Queen Wembley gig had them.

Talking of cue-dots on C4, I’m pretty sure they used to generally appear about 60 seconds before the “opt point”, be that over a programme or trails/presentation, and disappear exactly 5 seconds before it - presumably so the ads could be rolled from “5 in the gate” and start exactly on time.

EDIT: I suppose some programmes would have had cue-dots burnt in, especially if they were repeats from ITV. They did seem to appear more often than not though, especially in the early years.

As for their exact purpose, other than a visual cue for regions, this “faulty” ad break from 1983 suggests that the fact the cue dot didn’t disappear when it should have done caught YTV off-guard (or perhaps the ad break came a few seconds earlier than expected, due to a timing error?). Were the ads really fired automatically at the regional stations from a pulse sent from Charlotte Street?

Yes, they'd have had to have given them the schedules in advance and communicate any changes. But of course that was just the same as the ad sales and teams were getting from the equivalents at the ITV companies,just they were in a different building


As mentioned a few times there was a system that was sent in the VBI that gave the regions a teletext style run down of the upcoming breaks as well as sending pulses that could fire off the breaks.

The cue dot would have been part of that, a back up in case both other methods failed and a visual notification for those involved in the breaks. The beauty of a cue dot being that of you have the video you have the dot.

I'm not sure when this system came in and whether things were a bit more manual when C4 first started

Yes it took a few seconds for the tape to get up to speed, it was better in the days of cassette formats but if the machine wasn't 'stood up' (in standby with the tape ready on the heads) it would do that then pre roll so actually took 6 or 7 seconds to reach the in point


Remember that the pulses (if they were doing those back in 1983) would have been triggered by the same thing as the cue dot so if one was late, or in this case failed, then they both did the same.

Looks like the first they knew the part had ended was when the slide came up. The delay in starting it was presumably a combination of reaction time and putting the kit into local to run it manually. The pre roll should have already happened of course hence the it being cued on the clock


As I've mentioned before the system used in the early days of BBC World was the same/very similar. With World of course there was a lot of overruns due to the amount of news it carried, so even though it was meant to be automatic the ad insertion places had to be on their toes. The 'ready tape' command was sent at -2 mins, then 'roll tape' at -5 seconds, and 'take' at the start of the break.

Problem was that VT machines are usually set to 'stand down' after a certain amount of time to save the heads, ours were after 5 mins. So if World were due a break they'd ready everyone 2 minutes before hand, but then if the news overran by 3 minutes our tape would go off standby and when the break came it would take 7 seconds to get to the cue point which was a bit messy

Spot on. From memory IDENT was available from the start of C4.

G

If C4 were overrunning the IDENT teletext display just stopped at the appropriate point and continued again as ‘things’ caught up timing-wise, otherwise the pulse sequence (for those companies using it) would go wrong as you might imagine. Where I worked in the early days of C4 we were using ACR machines to play in the commercials so no head to tape contact to worry about in standby.

Edited to add. It was a long time ago but I have a vague memory that the relevant ‘content strip’ of the material on IDENT would change colour (to red maybe?) to visually advise that something was different to what was expected. I also vaguely remember that IDENT would allow you to download the C4 transmission schedule in paper form - would make sense if you think about it, since if you lost IDENT for any reason as a local Transmission controller you’d be flying blind. I think it was just a case is selecting a different teletext page of the IDENT signal.

So long ago.

The first thing I’d do arriving back in 1983 is look in the VBI during those IBA gap filler captions between 09:10 and 09:25. Any absence of Oracle data pulses would have been a clue to where they originated from

Could the ITV regions have received a voice telling them how long til the next ad break, as well as the cue dots?

Possibly, after all that's what the BBC regions had/have, along with a cue dot and 'Presfax'. I don't think ITV had a similar network of tallback/comms circuits - they had the red phone network, however that worked.