When it changed to 4 Schools in 1993 then S4C used their own presentation package which was rather good compared to what C4 had. One annoying thing was they obviously used a C4 feed for the programmes as often you would see the last few seconds (or even a fraction of a second) of the C4 countdown on S4C.
Which is interesting, because I'm led to believe that post Jan 1st 1993, (the date BT switched on C4's newly contracted digital national distribution system (34 Mb/s) ) S4C received a clean feed from HFR ?
When it changed to 4 Schools in 1993 then S4C used their own presentation package which was rather good compared to what C4 had. One annoying thing was they obviously used a C4 feed for the programmes as often you would see the last few seconds (or even a fraction of a second) of the C4 countdown on S4C.
Which is interesting, because I'm led to believe that post Jan 1st 1993, (the date BT switched on C4's newly contracted digital national distribution system (34 Mb/s) ) S4C received a clean feed from HFR ?
Obviously S4C weren't getting the schools programmes on a clean feed, probably because Channel 4 played out promotions for resource material before almost every programme, and it would have been difficult to play these out to S4C without sending them a dirty/presented feed of the whole morning.
121 days later
:-(
A former member
It seems we could have have 30th Anniversary.. of course Problems at ch4, and the crisis at TVAM did not help
There used to be a really good webpage floating around with the story of how the ITV schools logo/sequences were created, including descriptions of the rudimentary technology used. Does this still exist? Can't find it at all.
Had a look again at the clip ben riggers had, with The Journey being used as an interval track before schools programming began one morning. I've also noticed another key difference. Normally, in the 1992 period, when the rotomotion device was used in the interval from 09:25, the aston "SCHOOLS PROGRAMMES follow shortly" was already in the title space as the ITV logos glided onto stage. Watch on the clip Ben has, and the aston fades in AFTER the logos glide on.
Also notice that this version of The Journey is not from the 60 version, which has symbals crashing at the start. I'd reckon that morning the normal interval track couldn't play, and so C4 went to the back up, which was The Journey. Doesn't explain the aston fading on though.
Had a look again at the clip ben riggers had, with The Journey being used as an interval track before schools programming began one morning. I've also noticed another key difference. Normally, in the 1992 period, when the rotomotion device was used in the interval from 09:25, the aston "SCHOOLS PROGRAMMES follow shortly" was already in the title space as the ITV logos glided onto stage. Watch on the clip Ben has, and the aston fades in AFTER the logos glide on.
Also notice that this version of The Journey is not from the 60 version, which has symbals crashing at the start. I'd reckon that morning the normal interval track couldn't play, and so C4 went to the back up, which was The Journey. Doesn't explain the aston fading on though.
Sorry I didn't upload the clip you're referring to.
One thing of note, which ties in with the whole concept of it being ITV Schools, was that the end cap of programmes had "a xxx production for ITV" rather than channel 4. Except Granada, I think, which had "a Granada production for ITV Schools".
Also, there were some regional programme opts - certainly there were in Northern Ireland, even after January 1993 when UTV were no longer selling Channel 4 advertising.
ISTR on that Schools TV website there were some details of the regional opts on Channel 4 - which I think only lasted until 1994. They were only in Grampian and UTV regions I think (maybe STV too?) and were because of curriculum differences. In those days the ITV contractors transmitted local advertisements to their area's Channel 4 too. There are also one or two examples of them inserting regional cross-promotion back to ITV.
Schools tv was an excellent website and contained a wealth of information about the classic ITV Schools on Channel 4 era.
