I've not watched any of those clips for ages, but the melody of the theme tune popped into my head straight away. It's a catchy ditty, isn't it?
I can't remember which edition it was - probably '90 - where I was briefly in the audience at STV. They'd set up a small audience rostrum in the car park at Cowcaddens, and I have a feeling we may have seen The Krankies.
Once TV Ark is back up, I'm sure on the old site, one of the still images from Telethon had Frank Bough and Judith Chalmers in the London regional Telethon studio, and i'm sure it read "Thames Television" on a sign next to the Telethon logo.
Yeah as if we'll ever see that clip again!
Probably the 1992 Telethon then, the one I didn't see. It would be unusual though as normally everything had both station names on it. Possibly as they were on the way out they did it differently that year. Obviously some LWT involvement as Frank Bough was a presenter for them at the time.
During the three telethons, the main programme was hosted from LWT, but when the were visiting all the regions, London was covered by Thames, not LWT. I recall during the 1992 edition, Michael Aspel said "lets see what's happening in London, with Frank Bough and Judith Chalmers at Thames".
It had never occurred to me that the London regional hits were produced by Thames - it wasn't mentioned as being such and the presenters weren't always Thames star. But that makes sense in terms of dividing up the work. They were never from their studios though, IIRC one of them was from the Connaught Rooms in Holborn and another from Hay's Galleria (I remember watching one on holiday in York so only saw the YTV and Tyne Tees versions)
Quote:
This would, apart from Thames Weekend News on a Friday night in the early 80s, have been the only other occasion that Thames was broadcasting something outwith its normal hours.
That would work the other way too, the 1988 and 1990 Telethons were bank holiday Sunday/Monday, so a rare South Bank outing on Thames
Incidently the late night epilogue type programme that Thames made was shown on LWT at one stage, although that was recorded
The main Telethon programme was in both LWT’s Studio 1 and 2. Outside sources were timed into both studios simultaneously so that you could switch between either studio seamlessly. This was achieved with a lot of individual delay lines. I know one of the LWT OB units was out at the Excel centre because they had a minor fault on the vision mixer and I was driven to the OB to look at it. Good fun.
Was the Excel even there in 1992? I know the Docklands Arena was, as that was where the last series of You Bet ended up before the axe decended on it.
I was actually going to post a geek question about how Telethon tied up resources at LWT.
The main gallery and director(s) were in Studio 1 gallery, and Studio 2's gallery was used as the primary reception for the incoming OS circuits, act as the 'hub' for the regions and OB's, set them up, check they were all ready for air, then patch them across to St1 gallery for mixing into the main production?
If Studio 1 failed, what then? Would the London OB take up the network running of the show, or was another region nominated to pick up until KRS was back up and running - or just a case of crash to the regions for an update, or just cut to a break?
One notable memory I have from the 1988 Telethon was Michael Aspel making an announcement about the total raised so far, or similar, and when there was no reaction from the audience he muttered (loud enough for the mic to pick up) “Somebody clap then, for God’s sake”! I’m not sure if he intended that to be broadcast!
This would, apart from Thames Weekend News on a Friday night in the early 80s, have been the only other occasion that Thames was broadcasting something outwith its normal hours.
Sort of, but remember Thames also provided OB coverage for the network, notably horse racing from Epsom and Kempton Park, so the Saturday races would have been 'Thames on LWT'..
Also the Pope's 1982 UK visit, where BBC and ITV pooled their OB units. I think Thames covered the Westminster Abbey visit, that ended up being shown on BBC 1. Similarly Granada and the BBC covered his visit to the two Liverpool cathedrals, but each other's output was shown on the other.
All very ecumenical on two levels !
Was the Excel even there in 1992? I know the Docklands Arena was, as that was where the last series of You Bet ended up before the axe decended on it.
I was actually going to post a geek question about how Telethon tied up resources at LWT.
The main gallery and director(s) were in Studio 1 gallery, and Studio 2's gallery was used as the primary reception for the incoming OS circuits, act as the 'hub' for the regions and OB's, set them up, check they were all ready for air, then patch them across to St1 gallery for mixing into the main production?
If Studio 1 failed, what then? Would the London OB take up the network running of the show, or was another region nominated to pick up until KRS was back up and running - or just a case of crash to the regions for an update, or just cut to a break?
You’re asking a lot of questions there! Firstly, maybe it was the Docklands Arena rather than the Excel as wiki confirms it was built later. Wherever it was it was definitely an LWT OB otherwise I wouldn’t have been driven out there to look at a minor fault on a gvg mixer by the Head of OB’s.
Studios 1 and 2 control rooms rooms were indentical to all intents and purposes. All incoming sources were lined up in the Lines area for levels etc and if the source was destined for a studio the Lines engineer and the studio engineer would make that source synchronous with the studio in question generally using a frame store. As per my note above, uniquely for telethon adjusting a source to be right for one studio would make it right for the other too. The production staff in the gallery would ‘see’ sources selected to them on small monitors in the gallery stack as per usual practice. A studio fail! Unthinkable! Lots of backups with the studio infrastructure.
As an aside, studio 3 had more outside sources available than the two big studios because it’s where World of Sport was produced and needed lots of access to external sports feeds and events as you might imagine.
The 1990 version is well remembered for one thing, which was later shown on "It'll be alright on the night". The attempts at trying to get sound from HTV Wales, at Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff. Twice, Michael Aspel handed over to Arfon Haines Davies, and all we got was silence, as Arfon was talking. Nerys Hughes was there with him, trying to put a brave face on things.......
The 1990 version is well remembered for one thing, which was later shown on "It'll be alright on the night". The attempts at trying to get sound from HTV Wales, at Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff. Twice, Michael Aspel handed over to Arfon Haines Davies, and all we got was silence, as Arfon was talking. Nerys Hughes was there with him, trying to put a brave face on things.......
