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Favourite TV Closedowns and Handovers

(May 2018)

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ST
Ste Founding member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBDxX4hvqqU

Cartoon Network handing over to TNT with a promo for 24hr Cartoon Network which we never got being on Cable & Wireless


I'm sure I read somewhere that Cartoon Network / TNT were uplinked from different locations which mean't this switchover was quite complicated, is that correct?
SP
Steve in Pudsey
A classic of the genre, the legend that is Mr Alastair Yates closes down BBC1 Midlands in 1979



And a more recent example, Dave Tracz closes down BBC One Yorkshire in 2014 with what I think is the only example of an English Region doing a closedown with Christmas idents. (And not that many recent examples of a regional closedown being done so well!)

IS
Inspector Sands
Ste posted:

I'm sure I read somewhere that Cartoon Network / TNT were uplinked from different locations which mean't this switchover was quite complicated, is that correct?

That doesn't sound right to me. I think you're getting it mixed up with Eurosport and Quantum shopping. IIRC they came from two different uplink sites so there was a bit of a burst of static when they went from one to the other. I remember hearing that they had to have a conference call twice a day between the two channels, the uplinks and Astra.

An example of how it looked here:
JV
James Vertigan Founding member


Wow... with listing all the local BBC radio stations it’s almost like they were trying to copy the ITV closedowns!
MA
Markymark


Wow... with listing all the local BBC radio stations it’s almost like they were trying to copy the ITV closedowns!


Well, they were really. The BBC English regional evening pres in the late 70s was an attempt to emulate ITV's more (in most regions) accessible pres
MK
Mr Kite
That BBC Yorkshire one actually sounds professional. BBC North West continuity tends to be wooden and awful these days. It really is increasingly a lost art.
VM
VMPhil
That BBC Yorkshire one actually sounds professional. BBC North West continuity tends to be wooden and awful these days. It really is increasingly a lost art.

I'm not convinced that's a modern thing with regional continuity - the BBC2 South continuity posted recently from the 90s sounds just as wooden
IS
Inspector Sands
That BBC Yorkshire one actually sounds professional. BBC North West continuity tends to be wooden and awful these days. It really is increasingly a lost art.

Remember that most of the time when there's a regional opt out it's just somebody in the newsroom with a half decent voice or a reporter who's been dragged into an edit site that afternoon and asked to read a couple of lines a producer has just spent 30 seconds writing
SP
Steve in Pudsey
The BBC South one is by one Harry Gration (during his wilderness years) though!

IS
Inspector Sands
That is an exception, read the news for years but he still doesn't quite sound right doing continuity


This is a nice closedown from HTV Wales. Worth watching just for the lovely national anthem film - two anthems of course and the transition from one the the other is very clever
BH
BillyH Founding member
One of the saddest closedowns ever, from Granada in 1986.

VM
VMPhil
The discussion about regional BBC continuity led me to this, the final regular BBC1 North West regional closedown from 1980. It shows a level of relationship with the viewer that I think would be unheard of today. Do watch to the very end.



Interesting video description too:

During this era of BBC1, each region of the UK would transmit a junction between each programme, either out of vision or in vision, giving details of later programmes and the one about to be transmitted. Also, BBC1 used to close down each night and just prior to closedown the regions would transmit a late night news bulletin, play The Queen, and then remind everyone to switch their TVs off.

The junctions and closedown by the English regions ended on Friday 12 September 1980 - London did all the junctions and closed down the channel at night from then on for the English regions, however Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales continued their own junctions and closedown - and here we have the final North West region transmission from BBC Studio P, Broadcasting House, Manchester, where the junctions and closedown came from.

Studio P was a self op. studio located on the 4th floor of BH, amongst radio studios from the 1920s, when the upper floors of the building changed from being a bank to becoming BH Manchester for the BBC's north west region's radio programmes.

Studio P had one camera, a desk in front of the presenter with various sources coming in (TK, VT, slide scanner, etc) and was about a third the size of a normal-sized living room. The presenter self-operated the cutting to the various sources and you'll see John Mundy's arms move at some point to do this. The slides also show the desk.

The clip is all pretty well self-explanatory, and the slide sequence will give a good idea of the operating conditions. The camera used to be an EMI 2001 but this was moved to Studio N eventually and a cobbled together Philips LDK15 handheld camera used, with a film lens. The quality was never very good with this camera and to make matters worse there was an autocue in front of it too. That's why the camera output in this clip looks so soft and the black level sat up. I did try post-processing the clip but couldn't really get anything out of it to make it sharper....

Finally.... one of the cameramen rota'd to work in Studio N for the day had to check the camera in the afternoon for the correct shot, to make sure it hadn't been knocked, and so it became common to hear 'I'm going to P!'.
paul_hadley and Stuart gave kudos

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