DOGS

I think I'm right in saying that the TV-am on screen clock was analogue. One morning it broke, so they found an entirely different looking clock to substitute.

It was an "analogue" clock, but I'm pretty sure it was still electronically generated.

Italy's RAI was using them in the 70s, as an anti priacy measure, nothing to do with 'marketing' or branding.

Hmmm. If it was electronic then it was very sloppily keyed.

Indeed, for a long time BBC Breakfast Time had an "analogue" style clock, but I am sure it was electronically generated.

Some of them weren't even rollers. In particular most US game shows of the 1970s used a concave-shaped wall (like the BBC Noddy system I believe), around 6 or 7 feet high onto which they would place caption cards, credits etc and pivot a fixed camera placed in front of it, to scroll up and down. They'd crawl the end credits in this way, so the speed was inconsistent as it was done by hand. This allowed them to zoom in on certain parts as well which created a slightly odd effect as the credits were both scrolled and zoomed at the same time This was done so they could create changing credits very quickly without having to separately letraset each time (we are talking about programmes that were produced in blocks of anywhere between five and ten shows in a single day and the credits were filmed as-live at the end of each programme).

Example here about 1:30 in (although you might want to see the whole thing as it contains some interesting stuff for any production/pres nerd) - a mixture of the above and a traditional roller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_woZkZGHo

I heard a radio feature about the start of breakfast TV recently and was thing that I hadn't heard about before was that TVam weren't going to have an on screen clock, in fact it hadn't even occurred to them until they saw day 1 of Breakfast Time and thought they'd better do that too.


It does seem odd now that both channels went for analogue clocks when a numeric one seems to make more sense. Amazing still that TVam still had theirs till the end. I wonder how much more difficult it would have been to do in 1983?

When the Channel 4 Daily started and it not only had a digital clock but one that showed quarter minutes too it was such a novelty

Breakfast Time's was definitely electronically generated from the start (it was a nice piece of design for that era) - but a large solid graphic.

TVam's wasn't as sophisticated, but as it was a simple monochrome key with just hour markers and hands, it was less obtrusive in some ways. It looks electronic, but a very simple monochrome key, but it could have been keyed from a mechanical clock (or on the day the regular clock failed it could have been an electronic clock replaced by a mechanical clock keyed instead)

Quarters of the minutes.

The 00,15,30,45 quarter minute sections were displayed by a small white line, which travelled left to right under the main digital clock, before returning to the left hand side again at 00 seconds.
It was very clever, so clever it took me several minutes to work out what that small white line actually represented.

How could it be monochrome? The TV-am analogue clock started off yellow!

See just after 11mins in here:


Or do you not mean "monochrome" as in "black and white"?

There's another video on Youtube which has the timecode burnt into it of the first 3hr 15min broadcast from TV-am and if you watch it long enough the minute hand moves every 15 seconds. I'd have argued that a mechanical clock would move gradually and smoothly, not "jump" as you can see on that clock.

How ever it was done, the French used the same (or did a credible knock off of the TV-am on screen clock) for Antenne 2's (now France 2) morning show Tele Matin.
Exhibit A..

Doh, yes that's what I meant... corrected!