Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

According to http://www.hhg.org.uk/tech.html Bath VHF ch 7 and St Hilary VHF Ch 10 broadcast the 'HTV General Service'. This was similar to the 'West' service broadcast on UHF except for some differing adverts and the half hour evening news was the first 15 minutes of the West's news followed by the 15 minute English language Wales news programme.

Apparently at one point they use to split programmes for Wales, different ones on UHF colour and VHF black and white! And then there were the north Wales/South Wales splits in the TWW days


Incidently http://www.hhg.org.uk/tech.html has a lot about how HTV and TWW before that worked and handled having two regions

Thanks for the link, Inspector, and to everyone for the additional info about HTV. Interestingly that website states that HTV West pres was handled by Cardiff after the new studios opened. Does that mean that HTV West trailers and idents were played out from Cardiff?

Another presentation routine sheet for you all to browse, this time from the early part of Thursday 14th May 1992, and from Thames Television:

Thames Transmission Schedule - 14 May 1992

Note the differences between this one and the Tyne Tees 1987 one I recently uploaded. This one is split into two parts, with a summary at the beginning. It doesn't list all commercials individually, but does have cues for holding slides, presentation slides and trailers, and additional info such as end credit lengths and comments such as 'same time tomorrow', probably for the announcer's benefit.

As I mentioned earlier, all morning shows were fed to the network via Granada, with the morning ITN bulletins routed to Thames, then Granada, then to network (and hence back to Thames I assume). The TVS networked show TV Weekly was networked via Thames, but played out from Southampton - any idea why?

Take the High Road - part-networked, as in 1987, but is being fed via Thames but played out at STV, if I'm interpreting things correctly. I'm not sure STV showed it in that afternoon slot themselves though - odd that an English region wasn't part-networking it from their own VT if that was the case.

Thames at this point seemed to have the Home and Away masters, and all regions recorded the 13.25 show from their feed for the repeat showing at tea-time, or if scheduled later in the afternoon, and Anglia are recording A Country Practice from Thames to play at a later date - I assume they must have been only a few episodes behind (TSW used to do the same with Sons and Daughters after they broke away from the Thames feed in the 80s, I believe).

I wonder if a TTT Routine Sheet from 1992 would have mirrored this one more closely, in terms of the pres side of things.

Stv never broadcast high road in the afternoons, it always went out around 6.30/7pm. only other two companies like that were Grampian and borders, nice tea time slot for it.

Why couldn't STV feed the show to the network direct? I dare say Central and TVS recorded the show from this slot?

It was a live programme if that makes any difference, although TTHR, the trail from Manchester and ITN news that follow are also labelled 'via THS: ALL' so maybe Thames just handled the lot, unless that's what Thames as Nominated Contractor did normally. That's the only bit of programming that's networked normally... everything else is via GRA or CEN, maybe on the evening schedule everything is via Thames?

(re the '88 ITV Telefon and feeds into LWT)....

Guess and speculation :

Is the L? Limehouse Sudios, which was still (just) up-and-running then. Because of its location, it may have connected into the BT London distribution network via BT London Teleport (North Woolwich Ferry) rather than Tower?

Channel needed satellite to feed the ITV network, possibly being routed via OTS (the old ESA Orbital Test Satellite) and BT London Teleport? Hence both arriving at LWT on the same cct.

Was '88 the year they did the live Treasure Hunt insert - wasn't this BT sponsored, and probably used satellite as well?

Typically a traditional BBC 1/2 dirty feed would be clean and predictable compared to the arrangements that exist today for programme junctions.

Perhaps the fact TV Weekly was live made a difference, though I wouldn't have thought so. I can see the sense in the morning programmes going via Granada, due to the trails for This Morning and TTTP that were sandwiched between them, often as a direct lead into the programmes, but that's not the case in the afternoon. 'Nominated contractor', as far as I know, was more about the scheduling of networked shows rather than being responsible for feeding them out (unless things were slowly becoming more centralised by then). Maybe it was due to the booking/availability of the microwave links?



It certainly wasn't unheard of for one company to play out a show for another, even if they weren't showing it in that time slot themselves. My point is that the arrangement had obviously changed since 1987, when Granada networked TTTH (to all bar Scotland) from their own VT, although at that point England was well behind the Scottish companies in the storyline. Maybe the gap was closer in 1992 and it was easier for STV to play out the show. I notice not all English regions were taking it in the Thames timeslot in 1992 - but there is no mention of Central or (I assume you mean) TSW recording the Thames feed for later playback - unless they were taping it direct from STV, but if that was the case, why couldn't everyone just hook up directly to STV?

Mr Currie, are you out there?

Very much doubt it.

Very little changed that I am aware of between 1987 and 1992 at Tyne Tees. Playout became semi-automated in the meantime, and as a result they were able to play more than two trails in a junction (one either side of the break) more easily than before, resulting in often shorter IVC segments. But that was about it really, and the junctions were still done very much on an ad-hoc basis.

Move on to 1993 of course and it's a totally different story. YTV were one of the first to introduce completely automated transmission and, from what various people have said the system that was introduced at Leeds during this period, and perfected over the following years, forms the basis of what is still used at ITV today.

...

Machine Automated Robotic Controller - Panasonic's equivalent of a Sony LMS. Thames used MII format tape so couldn't have an LMS (which only handled Sony tape formats)

From what I remember being told, the way the MARCs were used varied, but normally they'd compile the breaks onto tape during the programmes rather than live to air. It depended how reliable they were being. The MARCs were in a seperate area, it could be that 'MARC' on the schedule could mean just the 'MARC area' rather than the machine itself - the ads or trail/ident junction coming from a pre-compiled tape


Incidently when Thames closed down their two MARC machines (they needed one for ITV and one for C4) went into semi retirement working on UK Living at Teddington (must have been some job moving them, they were big machines)

Central did keep playing it, not sure where but even after it was dropped by the network it was one of the areas that kept going.

So that's what gave BBC Wales the idea to do split programming on BBC2 digital (2W) and analogue!