You sit there bored out of your skull most of the time.
You've got 'station output' on the top left monitor, and 'preview' on top right. The PD shows you the promos for the next link on the preview, so you can work out your wording for your next 'star appearance'.
You've also got Channel 4 (no sound) on bottom right and an odd feed called 'ring main' on bottom left, which, if the PD's in the mood, you can talk him into giving you a feed off the main recording studio on. That used to be best when Bobby Davro was recording.
Oh yes, and if you're at TVS, you can chat to the Channel TV CA!
(Edited by Nick Harvey at 12:51 am on Dec. 17, 2001)
You've lost me there slightly Nick -- I wasn't really all that au fait with the job titles / descriptions. What's an MCR engineer? Forgive my ignorance
As for sitting there bored -- I don't remember much of that! A lot of the time they were playing around preparing graphics etc, and occasionally disappearing into the next room to prepare a few trailers (which were done on a tiny editing desk complete with a couple of Ferguson portable TV's!!!!), and as I say people were always coming in, supposedly to talk about regional stuff coming up later but ending up indulging in some very mucky humour (far too much for my 15-year-old ears lolol)
TVS had a slightly odd system to the rest of the network, in that the bloke who'd normally be called a presentation controller was also responsible for directing the local news bulletins, hence he was called a 'presentation director'.
When the PD was busy telling VTR people and the like, which news cut to run when, he couldn't keep an eye on the final output to the transmitter, so there was also a master control room (MCR) engineer keeping watch on the final station feed.
Don't think that happened at other stations, it was just a TVS oddity.
Tyne Tees used to do most of their bulletins from continuity -- the others were just done from the main news magazine studio (they now have a second, smaller facility in Studio 3). Just sounds like TVS did it slightly more slickly than TTTV did (whose news broadcasts amounted to little more than a very long continuity announcement!)
I think it's one of those traditional names that stuck. I seem to recall a red *button* being used at Tyne Tees to similar effect -- if one of the many (at that time) other regions that were broadcasting the programme needed to talk to the rest of the stations the button would be used. I just don't know how exactly it was used -- maybe it buzzed or something and the sound would be routed through, I dunno.
Exactly, the 'system' was always called the 'red phone', hence the quotes I put round it.
Different stations would have had different bits of kit hung off the end of it. It was just a BT omnibus circuit, round all the control rooms, where everybody could talk and everybody could listen at the same time. I suspect the TTTV button just connected the circuit into the local talkback loop, so all concerned could join in.
From my memory, it was mainly used for telling stations that News at Ten would overrun by 3 minutes, all junctions from 22:30 to 05:30 would be 3 minutes later than stated in the network schedule, and that the Morning News would UNDERrun by 3 minutes, to get the TVam junction back on time.
The funniest bit of the system was the role-call at the beginning; it often took longer than the message. The 'nominated contractor' (normally Thames or LWT) would check everyone was listening for the message by 'calling the register' like at school.
'Border?' 'Here', 'Central?' 'Here', etc, etc.
