ITV regions

HI there,

Anyone have any info about which ITV regions went for which tape formats around the 1990's so MII/BetaSP D2/D3 and what did they use for what. Was MII purely news or Studio progs as well. I know Thames and Anglia were MII ..

For location shooting of News I expect everyone was Betacam SP (though they may have shot onto Betacam tape to save money) apart from Anglia and Thames who went for the Panasonic MII system (which was an equivalent to SP) Most regions will then have gone either to DVCam or DVC Pro - though some (LNN?) went Beta SX.

News will have been shot and edited on Beta SP or MII (possibly edited to 1" in some cases - but less likely)

Studios are more likely to have recorded and played in from 1" (and then possibly D2) rather than Beta SP or MII (apart from in News) - as the studios were composite and Beta SP/MII were component formats and recording composite on component gear wasn't great.

However shooting on Beta SP and MII was widespread for non-News programmes (ISTR that Thames shot The Bill to MII and Anglia shot The Chief similarly) but the Beta SP/MII rushes will have been edited to 1" (or D2/D3) rather than Beta SP/MII for non-News production - as most programme masters will have been 1" or D2/D3.

For advert playout many regions will have used 2" analogue cart systems (Ampex ACR 25s?) - and these are likely to have been replaced by D2 (which had an ACR 225 variant) in most regions (I don't know if any regions went to D3 - think the Beeb were the only major D3 adopters in the UK - along with NHK in Japan and NBC in the US) The only alternative would have been to pre-compile breaks to 2" or 1" tape I guess.

Anglia may have used MII for adverts as well - not sure whether Beta SP was used as (unlike MII) it didn't quite meet every IBA spec ISTR.

For long form programmes 1" C-format is likely to have been the mainstay in the 80s (some may have run B-format - not sure) - with D2 probably being the main format replacing it in the pre-DigiBeta Beta days.


One of the driving forces for moving away from 1" was that cassette based systems could be automated with cart machines (which was also possible with the ACR 2" advert playout system) but 1" couldn't.

When did Channel get proper VT facilities? I think for quite some time they officially had no VT, or out of the earshot of the IBA had U-Matic

I seem to recall that Channel had an official dispensation to use U-matic (was that low or High band?) because the substantial cost of broadcast kit would have killed the company off. Difficult to point to a definitive source of my comment after all these years.

Just to supplement Noggin's posting.

A number of stations used RCA's TCR 100 cartridge machines for commercial playout. Certainly YTV had at least one which I'm fairly sure they eventually changed to Bosch's B format 'beast' - what a sight that was, they also had at least one B format standalone deck to work in conjunction with it. The engineers didn't like it, curiously I think YTV were investing in C format at the same time - so what on earth was that all about!

I think LNN may have chosen SX since I think ITN had made the same decision and LNN tended to follow them - don't have a definitive for that 'fact' either I'm afraid. Rubbish I know. Certainly LNN started off with Beta SP but as their installtion was 'digital' they had the D75 versions - the one's with DAC/ADC's on their ins and outs.

I last saw Anglia's MARC machine being used to play into their regional news programme, Not sure what year that would have been, certainly post 1986, could it have been in the 90's even - it was installed in the studio that was originally a bowling alley.

My memory was the IBA allowed the use of the U-Matic kit that they were using for news, in order to timeshift Crossroads, after TSW moved the Tx time for the series.

Think ITN went DVC Pro not BetaSX?

BBC initially went DVCPro (when News 24 launched) but then swiftly switched allegiance to DVCam when it launched. (BBC went Beta SX in some overseas bureaux like Washington D.C. and New York, and Glasgow)



Think they were still using MARC well into the 90s - c.1997 at least?

That's right

Here are two links that support Noggin and Markymarks points.


http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/2679939/london-news-network-goes-sony-betacam-sx

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TOMOmmrvwCcC&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=sony%2Bbeta+sx%2Bitn&source=bl&ots=WvxEL6r1xu&sig=R6RgLGEqFGdDFDM3D8DTxKfQjzs&hl=en#v=onepage&q=sony%20beta%20sx%20itn&f=false

I'm surprised that LNN didn't follow ITN's lead, these decisions aren't taken overnight and I wonder if it was part of a ploy to deliberately make themselves incompatible with ITN to make any (subsequent) takeover difficult and therefore less likely to happen. LNN was a very political animal.

Let us not forget the Sony Betacart in all of this. Sony support said to us that it was the worst bit of kit they ever made - it was so utterly reliable (if you maintained it) that it never went wrong and there was not much in the way of post-sales income!

Apart from Betacam tapes (Which were always the 'cash cow' for Sony for over 20 years anyway)

LNN adopting SX was done in conjunction with having a Sony Newsbase server based production system installed, that replaced (eventually) the Betacart in their News studio. None of it lasted very long, only a few years before London news moved over to ITN.

Here's a short article about LNN adopting Newbase:

http://www.4rfv.co.uk/industrynews.asp?id=1547

I wonder what happened to that Betacart? I'm racking my brains but can't remember - spares maybe? GMTV used to use a second hand one but I think that had been de-commisioned before LNN's?

Something in the back of my mind says it ended up at Meridian at New Hythe for spares ?