ITV Network

I have an internal Tyne Tees routine sheet from 1987, which clearly marks the production stations and playout stations, and (usually) the feed came direct from the originating company. The techicians had to 'switch' (or monitor a switch) at some point during the programme junctions, usually on the 'top of a minute'. Hence the feed usually showed coloured bars displaying, eg. 'Granada VTR' or 'Thames-3'.

A notable exception was that the 12.00-12.30 children's programmes always played out from (or via) one station, probably because the junction between them was only about ten seconds, which would have made switching nigh impossible. CITV was, of course, fed to all from Central, but the regional stations fed their shows into Central. Tyne Tees' show 'You're Mother Wouldn't Like It' was shown on the routine sheet as 'Net to all Via Cen', along with the VT reference.

I'm not sure when this 'proper' network feed came into being (ie. all the prime-time/networked shows coming via London), but it certainly appears to be after 1987.

Picking up on what Chris said about the YTV ident and frontcap, from 1987 YTV usually showed their revolving chevron instead of a slide when introducing a show, and mixed/cross-faded into the relevant frontcaps (which they continued to show until 1989, unlike most other regions). The exception was that a YTV-produced show would be introduced over a slide, probably because the mix from chevron ident to chevron frontcap would have looked messy on screen.

Thanks Si-Co for the information, right so the originating company would broadcast the feed, so to get it networked it went through the GPO? and does the GPO still exist today, presumably the whole infrastructure is still intact?

I'm pretty sure it would have changed by now but the basic principles would still be the same.

I think it would be a common conclusion to jump to to assume that there's only a handful of playout sources available for the network because at the end of the day, there were only a handful of companies contributing the majority of the network output: ATV/Central, Granada and Thames for the most part.

Central was one of the biggest contributors to the network in the 1980s and 1990s, both programme-wise and technical-wise. In its day it was a broadcast suite, network feed (for CiTV mainly but there were other productions), local broadcaster, zillions of productions, network backup facility and originator of new ideas for TV presentation. The worst thing that ever happened to Central was Carlton buying them out in 1994 and running it into the ground.

I'm pretty sure that it was well after 1990 when things started consolidating and coming all from the same place; though if you read this article it took until 1998 to consolidate the full CiTV service from Birmingham alone:
http://freespace.virgin.net/greg.taylor1/watched_it/citv.html

Well, I've certainly learnt a lot from all this!

Thanks everyone.

GPO - General Post Office - now BT

In those days the GPO; more specifically Post Office Telecommunications had the monopoly on telecommunications so ITV and the BBC distribution was done by them.

The various TV stations and studios are all linked by BT circuits, they are used by ITV for some things, but I suspect the networking circuits will be dedicated and permanant lines

It definately lasted into the 90's. Presumably it changed during the time when the playout areas were starting to be consolidated.

It's worth mentioning that there was a thing called 'Nominated contractor' this was normally whichever London station was on air. The Nominated contractor led the rest of the network - everyone else followed them for networked programmes and timings, they'd also decide about schedule changes and co-ordinate newsflashes. Each station control room was connected to the NC and other stations by a dedicated phone system called the 'Red Phone' network

Just to correct you Chris, it was YTV who showed Prisoner first, beginning in (I believe) 1984 but certainly no later than 1985. Tyne Tees began the show in 1988.



The usual practice was in fact for the same episode to be shown at lunchtime and early-evening, ie. the lunchtime epsiode was repeated later in the day. H&A appeared to be broadcast 'regionally', as jason mentions above. During the mid-90s many of the same shows were being shown in the afternoons (eg. Chain Letters, H&A, Emmerdale and Corrie repeats) but the regions tended to schedule them as they saw fit. Some regions got Corrie at 12.55, others at 13.25, others at 14.50 etc. Ditto for H&A and Chain Letters. I would guess there were elements of 'hooking up' to other regions (and recording an early transmission to play back later in the afternoon), rather than every station having copies of the tapes.

Is it true that one particular region usually became 'responsible' in some way for a purchased programme (eg. Central were the first region to show Sons and Daughters and some other Aussie imports). I know Central 'edited' the episodes to add 'bumpers/slides' at the ad-break points and (later) to remove sponsorship captions in the end-credits. This same format was sent to the other regions. Did the other regions 'buy' the show from Central or via Central in some way?

Also with S&D, Tyne Tees and Anglia 'latched on' to Thames' episodes of the show, rather than playing it out themselves. Again, how would Thames acquire the 'Central-format' episodes, and where would TTTV and Anglia fit in with paying the bill?

Hope I've made my questions clear!

Again, I think this is where the "Central presentation" slides came into it. If a regional companiy had had resposibility for acquiring and versioning a programme and resold it to some or all of the network, it would show a "Central Presentation" slide at the end rather than a "Central Production" slide. ISTR a lot of Granada Presentation slides in the early 90s during the daytime, but Central did a fair few as well. I was always very confused between Presentation and Production slides and probably it was lost of a lot of the general viewing population too...

I must say, this has to be one of the best threads on TVF for an age - just what the forum should be about.

Central were being fed with "dirty" TTTV station output rather than a feed from the VTR playing the programme, so TTTV pres faded to black to get network off the output so that Central could cut to it cleanly before playing out the programme.

Sounds unlikely as I'd have thought Central would have wanted a clean feed with VT clock, but it's all I can think of

I doubt I'm the only one who would love to see a scan of that, if at all possible

After the big ITV strike of the late 70s it took a few days for a full regional service to resume. Presumably all the circuits and feeds or whatever had to be re-established before network programming could begin? On the first day after the strike there was a national service from Thames, including national adverts, albeit with a few brief interludes (Granada had Malcolm Brown linking into News at Ten over the Granada clock)..

I'm not sure that was the case, as there was one instance in 1988 where TTTV jumped the gun a bit and showed a programme complete with TTTV frontcap, thereby leaving CITV earlier than they should have done. Network continued with CITV and cut into the programme once the frontcap had ended.

Also it wasn't always a fade-to-black, that was just the most common transition the TTTV TXC would use (and it was usually only very short, only a couple of frames of black). Occasionally Newcastle would be feeling a bit flash and use the curtain wipe that they'd normally use before the national news....