The BBC is opening the doors at the home of its Research & Development department at Kingswood Warren in Surrey this weekend as part of the Heritage Open Days organised by the Civic Trust.
Whilst the idea is for the public to enjoy the architecture and buildings, I'm told that they plan to dig out an old mechanical BBC globe box as part of a small exhibition on the BBC. (It'll be the one with the stripy BBC 1 lettering.)
Just to reiterate, this *isn't* a tour of the R&D facilities, it's about the history of the mansion and the grounds.
Which regions had their own globe? -- Obviously BBC-1 Wales did, but who else?
Apparently every BBC regional centre at its own globe as regional continuity (including the English regions) was common in primetime during the early 80s. A friend of mine informed me that BBC ONE North's globe would quite frequently grind to a halt while on air!
Apparently every BBC regional centre at its own globe as regional continuity (including the English regions) was common in primetime during the early 80s.
And in fact there was even regional
in vision
continuity! <gasps of "on BBC?", shock, horror>
Quote:
A friend of mine informed me that BBC ONE North's globe would quite frequently grind to a halt while on air!
How embarassing. But do not forget that prior to the introduction of the corporate globe monolith of regional identity, each region used to have its own regional logo: in the case of BBC-1 North this was a rotating N.
Can anybody provide details of other regions's rotating logos? And do any of these, much more interesting, contraptions still exist?
And why were BBC-1 Midlands allowed to use their very own stylized font for the regional id wording on the globe?
BBC North had a big N, BBC Northern Ireland had a stylised 'NI'. BBC Scotland had lines above and below the 'Scotland' lettering. I think they were all at liberty to do as they pleased with their fonts.
Some of the regional operations had a box known as the Coffin. Black oblong box (hence the name!) with a camera in one end and the spinning globe or the in-vision clock at the other.
I may be dreaming it, but i'm sure I remember seeing one model which had a neat mirror arrangement so the clock and the globe were in the same box and you could make the camera see one or the other.
And now, useless BBC Symbol fact number 64,326:
When the COW (electronic) globe was created, the chip that provided the "ceefax 888" lettering underneath the BBC1 on the Network symbol was used instead, on the regional versions, to provide the region name. It looked very nice, but meant the regions had to think of other ways to display the 888 sign.
In Wales the '888' was a separate graphic which was manually keyed over the COW ident by the director. In those days the continuity desks were quadrant fader types and you could just about burn out the screen by cutting as many vision sources to air as you liked. When the desks were replaced with programmable vision/audio mixers (like studio vision desks but carrying audio too) there was an additional vision bus which could be mixed in to accommodate the '888' and 'Stereo' graphics. This was quite an expensive mod to the original design.
Ironically, at the time the first of the new desks went into service in 1991 the COW ident was dropped in favour of the globe played off laser-disc. The custom Connelly control box for this had separate buttons for '888' and 'Stereo' for both the idents and clocks (it controlled BBC One and BBC Two idents), so the video-over bus was never used in anger!
And in fact there was even regional in vision continuity! <gasps of "on BBC?", shock, horror>
Absolutely right. MHP Private Parts has example of an IVC closedown on BBC1 South, from 1979. This was recovered from Philips VCR tapes along with a link into Play School from Southampton, some Southern IVC and more such goodies!
And in fact there was even regional in vision continuity! <gasps of "on BBC?", shock, horror>
Absolutely right. MHP Private Parts has example of an IVC closedown on BBC1 South, from 1979. This was recovered from Philips VCR tapes along with a link into Play School from Southampton, some Southern IVC and more such goodies!
You've got tapes of Play School? And you think of this as a "goody"?
may be dreaming it, but i'm sure I remember seeing one model which had a neat mirror arrangement so the clock and the globe were in the same box and you could make the camera see one or the other.
No you're not dreaming it; this arrangement was commonplace in many regions and was achieved using a Peppard's Ghost device, more commonly known as Pepper's Ghost. The choice of the name "coffin" was rather unfortunate mind!
Here's another BBC1 globe, this time from 1982. Note this one isn't lit internally and may not have been used on air.
The picture comes from "Wogan's Guide To The BBC", shown as part of the Beeb's 60th Anniversary celebrations in 1982. Terry removes the globe from its spindle, plays around with it, then replaces it. If you want to see the clip here it is:
