ITV 1979 strike, effect on emmerdale storylines

Well, one of my ex IBA colleagues told me he had to turn up for work at Crawley Court at 08:30 some mornings, in order to boot up an Aston character generator in that studio, and feed it to line. His union, the ABS, had agreed for him to do that. Certainly watching the output of Hannington, Oxford, and CP, the music and captions, were all synchronised, including on one afternoon when I caught some test signals, so I think video and audio were being sourced and routed centrally during later stages of the strike ?

The apology captions whether from the Tx or somewhere else, were all electronic, at the txs they were derived from the same PIE kit that generated the ETP-1 test card (later immortalised by C4 !)

ETP-1 was progressively introduced to main stations from 1978, but at the time of the ITV strike it certainly wasn't available in all the regions. (Ref: IBA Leaflet, Sept 79) It may therefore have been the case that the Aston was networked to those main stations who didn't have the ability to generate their own. I seem to remember that the apology that appeared in the STV region came from slides, but my recollections may be faulty. The music was certainly being sourced from St Hilary, and I'm equally surprised that the pictures originated at Crawley Court and that the ABS allowed this to happen. But I guess it must have.

I suspect the key to our differing accounts stem from the fact that around that time the IBA were rationalising their 15 or so 'Colour Control Rooms', that were situated at each primary regional IBA tx site, down to the four ROCs (Regional Operation Centres) at Croydon, Emley, St Hilary, and Black Hill. Control rooms at sites such as Lichfield, Winter Hill, Chillerton Down, and Burnhope were decommissioned, as were the slide scanning and audio playout facilities. This was the driving force behind the ETP-1 and electronic caption equipment being deployed at each primary regional UHF tx, under remote control from its assigned ROC.

I can't remember the roll out of the four ROCs, but it was 79 to 80 I think ?

The captions as seen down here in the south of England, on Hannington, Oxford, and CP were always electronic.
Later captions of a more 'dynamic' nature appeared such as Yorkshire Ripper police notices, and in the last days of the strike, information about how the union negotiations were progressing. They were certainly 'networked' at this end of the country, but the music could well have still been played out from St Hillary. I'll try and contact my ex IBA-ex colleague and see what he recalls.

Tony Currie mentions about Blackhill taking control when there was 30 seconds of black on screen. My local transmitter, where I live here in Fife, is Craigkelly. I can actually drive 1 mile up the road, onto the Lochgelly road, and I can see it! I presume Craigkelly would have their own caption in such circumstances, or would the output to Craigkelly still come from Blackhill?

It depends whether Craigkelly at the time was rebroadcast fed from Black Hill, or had its own line feed.
I don't know what the situation was in 1979, Tony will certainly know.

Today Criagkelly has its own commercials and news opt outs, so it would need to have its own emergency caption arrangement, though most likely it would flip over to Black Hill off air feed if it lost its own direct feed from STV.

funny having a transmitter with the same name as a corry actor

I remember putting the TV on during the strike and seeing the apology caption but hearing a pedegree chum advert, then silence, any ideas what was going on there (I lived in the anglia region)

I swear I remember Bruce Hockin (HTV West) giving a two minute news bulletin over an apology caption at some point!!

The new bulletin incident may have been an apology caption generated by the pres dept rather than the basic ones that the transmitter sites can produce.

The arrangement in 1979 was that STV fed its output to Black Hill on a PO microwave link. Craigkelly and Darvel picked up their feeds "off air" from Black Hill - neither of these main stations had facilities to generate their own signals. The only exception to that was some time in the mid 80s when engineering work at Black Hill meant the transmitter was due to be off the air for an entire morning, so temporary links were set up to feed the studio output to darvel and Craigkelly. IIRC that only ever happened once.

Feed arrangements are quite different now to allow for regional news and commercial opt outs.

Isn't this the strike where the first person back on air was someone who sat in the Thames announcer's chair to 'try it out' and accidently got put to air briefly?

Yeah, I read that on another forum, but can't remember the guy's name. Incidentally, I was born in 1979, so I rememebr zilch about the strike.

Well rather than open a new thread, I thought I would post it here.

It is 30 years today since the strike ended, and we were welcomed home to ITV.