Some sister companies of broadcasters: (some odd businesses included) - Page 5

HC

Hatton Cross 7 December 2017 7:50am

Still technically exists as a non-trading company owned by a gaming business called Genting.

Haa!
So if things had turned out differently, the large venue on the NEC complex near Birmingham could have been called 'The TV-am Arena'

IS

Inspector Sands 7 December 2017 8:38am

thegeek posted:

Inspector Sands posted:

TVam in its last year was one of the members of the consortium that won the licence for what became Virgin 1215. Not sure how that worked out when the company was wound down but IIRC Sir David Frost was on the board of the company for a while because of it

The chairman's statement on the 1992 accounts (available at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01533947/filing-history?page=8 ) has a bit about it. (I'd transcribe or screenshot it but can't easily do it on my phone)

Power and volume down....

Quote:

[Bruce Gyngell was listed as a director of Virgin Radio.

As was 'A Vickers' who presumably was Tony Vickers, TVam's director of sales

I do remember that before the launch of Virgin 1215 TVam did have a regular competition on the weather forecasts where the prize was a radio.... with MW of course

Last edited by Inspector Sands on 7 December 2017 8:50am

WH

Whataday Founding member 7 December 2017 12:12pm

Imagine an alternate universe where Channel 5 launched in 1995 with TV-am providing the breakfast service just as GMTV was struggling to its feet.

HC

Hatton Cross 7 December 2017 3:49pm

Markymark posted:

thegeek posted:

bluecortina posted:

I am fairly certain that ‘Westward’ were the ‘West’ in ‘Pro-West’, manufactures of tv equipment that went on to become Pro-bel. Used to work on one of their vision mixers, not a bad bit of kit for the era.

Clyde Broadcast, manufactuer of radio studio equipment, was a spin-off of Radio Clyde - and they're still based in the same building.

Ah yes, and didn't Canford Audio spring out of the engineering dept of Radio Hallam, or Metro, or both ?

Well, if we are talking about companies that sprung out of ILR - add to the list the playout system BCX - the software for that was originally coded by Brian Barr the former head of engineering at the Saxon Radio Group.

CL

Closedown 7 December 2017 7:16pm

Used BCX at work back in the nineties for all the non-music elements - eg ads, IDs, pre-rec news etc.

YTV had York Records as a spin-off for a few years - The Settlers' Lightning Tree (theme to Follyfoot) being their big hit. Gracie Fields signed for them in late 1970, which may explain her prominence on Stars on Sunday at this time!

Another Yorkshire offshoot was Sunny Productions, responsible for the movie version of 'Best Pair of Legs in the Business', which pops up now and then on Talking Pictures TV - originally one of YTV's earliest one-off plays.

RO

robertclark125 7 December 2017 7:52pm

What about Thames Television's offshoot, Euston Films?

HC

Hatton Cross 7 December 2017 7:53pm

Closedown posted:

Used BCX at work back in the nineties for all the non-music elements - eg ads, IDs, pre-rec news etc.

I've used RCS, Dialet, and BCX in my time, and BCX was by a mile, the easiest to pick up and operate quickly.

It did have one nasty little bug though (at least on our release).
If you accidentally hit a blank 'box' which previously had audio in it, and tried to load it into one of the cart players, it crashed the system and you had to do a full reboot via the server pc, located in the racks room.
Great if you had plenty of time to do a reset - not great if you were in an ad break and you fell off air

Barrcode to be fair, spent hours going though the backend code at their expence, and trawling though the output/audio play logs of the system but couldn't find why it did what it did.

IS

Inspector Sands 8 December 2017 3:32pm

robertclark125 posted:

What about Thames Television's offshoot, Euston Films?

Surely that was essentially just another programme making department?

:-(

A former member 8 December 2017 4:47pm

Has anyone mentioned lwt book publishing operations?

BL

bluecortina 9 December 2017 9:30am

623058 posted:

Has anyone mentioned lwt book publishing operations?

Yes.

RO

robertclark125 9 December 2017 9:33am

Someone earlier mentioned cinemas. Possibly a bit too late for the timespan era of this thread, but Carlton Screen Advertising?

TR

TROGGLES 9 December 2017 11:53am

Seem to remember Pearl & Dean was owned by STV at some point.

Some sister companies of broadcasters

(some odd businesses included) (December 2017)