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Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

(August 2010)

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KB
Kent Brockman
Si-Co posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Si-Co posted:
I remember Granada opting out of This Morning to show regional news updates during the 1993 Manchester bombings, whilst still feeding This Morning to network.


I wonder whether This Morning was fed directly to the network stations (from Liverpool) or whether it was routed through Manchester?

The Manchester Bomb was on a Saturday (and was in 1996)


Sorry, I was referring to this incident from December 1992.

Steve, I believe it went through Quay Street who inserted ITN News etc into the feed for all regions.


I very, very vaguely seem to remember Granada cutting into programmes to do their own news updates on the day of the 1985 Manchester air disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airtours_Flight_28M) - in fact I don't recall any ITN newsflashes, just Granada ones.

Can anyone shed more light?
MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
There was also another need for that to be the case. Oracle's computer was in London, and the data was carried 24/7 on ITN's outward video circuits. So, if for instance Granada were feeding the network, they would data bridge the teletext data from ITN's incoming feed, into the network outgoing feed, and the other 14 regions would have teletext data during the programme. At each ITV company there would be a further data bridge that would take the data from the network feed, and bridge that onto the outgoing local transmitter feeds, so that data was present during local programmes and commercials. All explained in IBA Tech Review 20, pages 27-36.

That was only in the early days of Oracle though wasn't it?

I think I'm right in thinking that Oracle wasn't available during TVam at first for the same reason


Well, I have a look when I get home, but the IBA paper was written in the 1980s, and talks about TVS (they had to have a data bridge installed at the BT Tower because their lines between So'ton and Maidstone passed through there, and without a bridge they'd lose Oracle data when being fed from Maidstone). So I guess the arrangement must have been from 1974 until at least the mid to late 80s, but then again perhaps the special TVS arrangement opened up a wider practice of IBA data bridges being installed at the BT tower and some other strategic NSCs ?

Post Jan 1 1993, totally different of course, because Teletext Ltd had (still do) the servers at each primary regional Tx, and 6** pages 'locally' generated at each ITV centre.
Last edited by Markymark on 12 August 2010 1:46pm
SW
Steve Williams
Kent Brockman posted:
I very, very vaguely seem to remember Granada cutting into programmes to do their own news updates on the day of the 1985 Manchester air disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airtours_Flight_28M) - in fact I don't recall any ITN newsflashes, just Granada ones.


Well, I do know that on that day TVam did a newsflash on ITV after official TVam time was over, about 10am, because they were the only company that managed to have pictures of it - the Beeb and ITN were stuck in traffic but TVam were already there, so ITV let them run an extra bulletin out of hours.
MA
Markymark
Steve Williams posted:
Kent Brockman posted:
I very, very vaguely seem to remember Granada cutting into programmes to do their own news updates on the day of the 1985 Manchester air disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airtours_Flight_28M) - in fact I don't recall any ITN newsflashes, just Granada ones.


Well, I do know that on that day TVam did a newsflash on ITV after official TVam time was over, about 10am, because they were the only company that managed to have pictures of it - the Beeb and ITN were stuck in traffic but TVam were already there, so ITV let them run an extra bulletin out of hours.


ISTR ITV let them run on after 09:25hrs, they had been in 'Breaking News' mode for most of their slot. As far as the viewers were concerned the coverage was seamless right up to 10:00 (albeit for a switching splat at 9:25)
SC
Si-Co
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
There was also another need for that to be the case. Oracle's computer was in London, and the data was carried 24/7 on ITN's outward video circuits. So, if for instance Granada were feeding the network, they would data bridge the teletext data from ITN's incoming feed, into the network outgoing feed, and the other 14 regions would have teletext data during the programme. At each ITV company there would be a further data bridge that would take the data from the network feed, and bridge that onto the outgoing local transmitter feeds, so that data was present during local programmes and commercials. All explained in IBA Tech Review 20, pages 27-36.

That was only in the early days of Oracle though wasn't it?

I think I'm right in thinking that Oracle wasn't available during TVam at first for the same reason


Well, I have a look when I get home, but the IBA paper was written in the 1980s, and talks about TVS (they had to have a data bridge installed at the BT Tower because their lines between So'ton and Maidstone passed through there, and without a bridge they'd lose Oracle data when being fed from Maidstone). So I guess the arrangement must have been from 1974 until at least the mid to late 80s, but then again perhaps the special TVS arrangement opened up a wider practice of IBA data bridges being installed at the BT tower and some other strategic NSCs ?

Post Jan 1 1993, totally different of course, because Teletext Ltd had (still do) the servers at each primary regional Tx, and 6** pages 'locally' generated at each ITV centre.


We got our first Teletext TV in late 1984, and I remember there was either no ORACLE at all - or no 'local' ORACLE pages - on ITV before 09:25 in those days, but this changed later in the 80s when we began getting regional news inserts on TV-am.
NW
nwtv2003
Si-Co posted:
We got our first Teletext TV in late 1984, and I remember there was either no ORACLE at all - or no 'local' ORACLE pages - on ITV before 09:25 in those days, but this changed later in the 80s when we began getting regional news inserts on TV-am.


There's a clip on YouTube somewhere of an IBA Engineering Announcements from around this time and they promote a couple of their pages, stating they're only available after 9.25am on both ITV and Channel 4.
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Col posted:
Arrow The sixth is labelled (L?) Studios and Channel TV (surprised to see them having their own feed rather than travelling via TVS!)


Probably down to the non-standard way Channel are connected to the ITV network, if they were able to do live inserts into Telethon there would have had to be some special arrangement made to allow that.
JT
jolly turnip
Si-Co posted:
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
There was also another need for that to be the case. Oracle's computer was in London, and the data was carried 24/7 on ITN's outward video circuits. So, if for instance Granada were feeding the network, they would data bridge the teletext data from ITN's incoming feed, into the network outgoing feed, and the other 14 regions would have teletext data during the programme. At each ITV company there would be a further data bridge that would take the data from the network feed, and bridge that onto the outgoing local transmitter feeds, so that data was present during local programmes and commercials. All explained in IBA Tech Review 20, pages 27-36.

That was only in the early days of Oracle though wasn't it?

I think I'm right in thinking that Oracle wasn't available during TVam at first for the same reason


Well, I have a look when I get home, but the IBA paper was written in the 1980s, and talks about TVS (they had to have a data bridge installed at the BT Tower because their lines between So'ton and Maidstone passed through there, and without a bridge they'd lose Oracle data when being fed from Maidstone). So I guess the arrangement must have been from 1974 until at least the mid to late 80s, but then again perhaps the special TVS arrangement opened up a wider practice of IBA data bridges being installed at the BT tower and some other strategic NSCs ?

Post Jan 1 1993, totally different of course, because Teletext Ltd had (still do) the servers at each primary regional Tx, and 6** pages 'locally' generated at each ITV centre.


We got our first Teletext TV in late 1984, and I remember there was either no ORACLE at all - or no 'local' ORACLE pages - on ITV before 09:25 in those days, but this changed later in the 80s when we began getting regional news inserts on TV-am.


There wasn't any regional news on TV-am
MA
Markymark
Si-Co posted:

We got our first Teletext TV in late 1984, and I remember there was either no ORACLE at all - or no 'local' ORACLE pages - on ITV before 09:25 in those days, but this changed later in the 80s when we began getting regional news inserts on TV-am.


I didn't think there were ever regional opts on TV-am, that didn't happen until GMTV in Jan 93?

Anyway the TV-am thing is all explained in the IBA Tech Review I mentioned earlier.

Here's the link:-

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/100181997342891987565/OracleNetwork?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6gv9O5rNT8Wg&feat=directlink
Last edited by Markymark on 12 August 2010 7:28pm - 2 times in total
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Imagine this scenario: Yorkshire TV are playing out Emmerdale Farm to the network, and showing it locally. The BT circuit between YTV and the local exchange fails, but the local distribution circuit to the transmitter is ok.

Would Yorkshire keep showing it locally and other stations would rejoin it when the fault was sorted, or would they go into apology mode as well and restart when the rest of the network was back with the programme?
SO
SOL
This is really interesting. I always thought networked programmes came from London. I take it, with the way ITV is now, everything comes from London, even the likes of Taggart?
IS
Inspector Sands
Markymark posted:
Anyway the TV-am thing is all explained in the IBA Tech Review I mentioned earlier.

Here's the link:-
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/100181997342891987565/OracleNetwork?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6gv9O5rNT8Wg&feat=directlink

Fascinating stuff, not just in terms of teletext/Oracle but also networking in general. In these days of broadband it does seem a heck of a faff but it worked well

So the TVam problem was just the lack of regional Oracle. MB21's Teletext Gallery (http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/oracle/main1.shtml) says that the regional Oracle during TVam still wasn't available in 1988, however that document says that STV found a way round it early on. I wonder how many regions did do it and why others didn't?

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