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Split Personality

A question about ITV pre 1968 (March 2019)

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TT
ttt
bluecortina posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
robertclark125 posted:
When the ITV companies sold the C4 airtime, it's been mentioned already that there was a clock before the programme at 17:15 on a Friday on C4, and in the London area, an on air glitch. Was that glitch present elsewhere, or just in London?

I don't know what you mean about there being a clock or why there would need to be one, but there was always an on air glitch at 5:15 during whatever was on. Presumably they were careful lot to schedule an ad break to be on air at 5:15 on a Friday.


I don't see why any other region would see any glitch on a Friday, though of course they all got one on channel 4 at 0600 and 0925 every day


Yes, in all respects. Did you know that we had to give a programme grading for each programme (and agree a random selection with the local transmitter) even though C4 were the broadcasters? Must have been some sort of technicality. I ‘hated’ having to grade programmes and agree the result of my opinion with the transmitter engineers. I think you had to agree within half a point on the IBA scale. Very much more often than not you did agree but I never liked doing it.


Was this a London-only thing or did all regions have to do this?
NG
noggin Founding member
ttt posted:
bluecortina posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
I don't know what you mean about there being a clock or why there would need to be one, but there was always an on air glitch at 5:15 during whatever was on. Presumably they were careful lot to schedule an ad break to be on air at 5:15 on a Friday.


I don't see why any other region would see any glitch on a Friday, though of course they all got one on channel 4 at 0600 and 0925 every day


Yes, in all respects. Did you know that we had to give a programme grading for each programme (and agree a random selection with the local transmitter) even though C4 were the broadcasters? Must have been some sort of technicality. I ‘hated’ having to grade programmes and agree the result of my opinion with the transmitter engineers. I think you had to agree within half a point on the IBA scale. Very much more often than not you did agree but I never liked doing it.


Was this a London-only thing or did all regions have to do this?


I suspect it was an IBA thing to ensure circuits between ITV franchise holder and the IBA transmitters were OK/ensure IBA tech standards adhered to?
TT
ttt
Si-Co posted:

Normally the ITV company who produced a show would make a generic ITV-branded trailer that any region could use, as well as a local version to show in their own region, and often a third “version”, which was just the raw footage for companies who wanted to make their own promo for the show in their local branding. (Tyne Tees, incidentally, often just ran the raw footage with a live voiceover and super). Post 1989, I believe there was a dedicated network promotions team who produced the trailers, but the principle was the same.


Even post-1989 the procedure was the same -- a minority of promos were made by Thames/LWT to a common template but I don't think anything really changed other than stricter branding. Some other ITV companies broadly used the same template (YTV in particular) but others such as Anglia and Central continued to use the same style as for their local promos.

And I think Tyne Tees were just behind the curve when it came to running the raw footage with live voice/caption -- in the 1970s most companies did the same thing, but by the late 1980s almost all had stopped (YTV did occasionally until around 1988 for example). Only TTT were still doing this (occasionally) into the 1990s.
Last edited by ttt on 1 April 2019 2:39pm
JA
james-2001
Markymark posted:
james-2001 posted:
Inspector Sands posted:

I don't see why any other region would see any glitch on a Friday, though of course they all got one on channel 4 at 0600 and 0925 every day


Though most days there wouldn't have been much on at those times anyway, apart from the start of the ITV schools interval.


The routing of C4 via TVam only started with the start of The C4 Daily, from May 1989. Up until then C4’s transmitters didn’t even come on until about 08:30


I guess there was no point routing it through TV-am when they wouldn't even be on air at the time. Were they not even on air in the mornings on weekends before 1989?
NL
Ne1L C
Never occurred to me when I started the thread that ITV/TVAM/GMTVwas a split personality.
Last edited by Ne1L C on 1 April 2019 5:24pm
MA
Markymark
james-2001 posted:
Markymark posted:
james-2001 posted:

Though most days there wouldn't have been much on at those times anyway, apart from the start of the ITV schools interval.


The routing of C4 via TVam only started with the start of The C4 Daily, from May 1989. Up until then C4’s transmitters didn’t even come on until about 08:30


I guess there was no point routing it through TV-am when they wouldn't even be on air at the time. Were they not even on air in the mornings on weekends before 1989?


I don't think so, not routinely, but they did carry overnight/early morning coverage of the 1988 Korea Olympics (a joint venture with ITV of course). I can't remember, but I don't recall any ad breaks during the 06:00 to 09:25 slot ?
BL
bluecortina
ttt posted:
bluecortina posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
I don't know what you mean about there being a clock or why there would need to be one, but there was always an on air glitch at 5:15 during whatever was on. Presumably they were careful lot to schedule an ad break to be on air at 5:15 on a Friday.


I don't see why any other region would see any glitch on a Friday, though of course they all got one on channel 4 at 0600 and 0925 every day


Yes, in all respects. Did you know that we had to give a programme grading for each programme (and agree a random selection with the local transmitter) even though C4 were the broadcasters? Must have been some sort of technicality. I ‘hated’ having to grade programmes and agree the result of my opinion with the transmitter engineers. I think you had to agree within half a point on the IBA scale. Very much more often than not you did agree but I never liked doing it.


Was this a London-only thing or did all regions have to do this?


I can’t definitively answer your question, I think Noggin’s reply would be along the right lines.
SC
Si-Co
Markymark posted:
james-2001 posted:
Markymark posted:

The routing of C4 via TVam only started with the start of The C4 Daily, from May 1989. Up until then C4’s transmitters didn’t even come on until about 08:30


I guess there was no point routing it through TV-am when they wouldn't even be on air at the time. Were they not even on air in the mornings on weekends before 1989?


I don't think so, not routinely, but they did carry overnight/early morning coverage of the 1988 Korea Olympics (a joint venture with ITV of course). I can't remember, but I don't recall any ad breaks during the 06:00 to 09:25 slot ?


I have a feeling there were ad-breaks in The Channel Four Daily - and, if so, I assume these must have been provided by TVam.
MA
Markymark
Si-Co posted:
Markymark posted:
james-2001 posted:

I guess there was no point routing it through TV-am when they wouldn't even be on air at the time. Were they not even on air in the mornings on weekends before 1989?


I don't think so, not routinely, but they did carry overnight/early morning coverage of the 1988 Korea Olympics (a joint venture with ITV of course). I can't remember, but I don't recall any ad breaks during the 06:00 to 09:25 slot ?


I have a feeling there were ad-breaks in The Channel Four Daily - and, if so, I assume these must have been provided by TVam.


Yes there were, and yes they were provided by TVam, but I was referring to the 1988 Olympics coverage that was pre regular C4 morning programming

It’s driven by the moment TVam started making contribution payments for the running of C4, it couldn’t have been before C4 started broadcasting during Tvam hours ?
Last edited by Markymark on 2 April 2019 7:53am
MA
Markymark
noggin posted:
ttt posted:
bluecortina posted:

Yes, in all respects. Did you know that we had to give a programme grading for each programme (and agree a random selection with the local transmitter) even though C4 were the broadcasters? Must have been some sort of technicality. I ‘hated’ having to grade programmes and agree the result of my opinion with the transmitter engineers. I think you had to agree within half a point on the IBA scale. Very much more often than not you did agree but I never liked doing it.


Was this a London-only thing or did all regions have to do this?


I suspect it was an IBA thing to ensure circuits between ITV franchise holder and the IBA transmitters were OK/ensure IBA tech standards adhered to?


Here's a couple of sample IBA QC reports taken from Tech Review 2 (1977)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/heohdm6wrx5bseg/IBA_QA.pdf?dl=0
BL
bluecortina
Markymark posted:
noggin posted:
ttt posted:

Was this a London-only thing or did all regions have to do this?


I suspect it was an IBA thing to ensure circuits between ITV franchise holder and the IBA transmitters were OK/ensure IBA tech standards adhered to?


Here's a couple of sample IBA QC reports taken from Tech Review 2 (1977)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/heohdm6wrx5bseg/IBA_QA.pdf?dl=0


We didn’t use these of course as they appear to be internal IBA documents. What I find odd with them is the ‘low’ values for picture grading. They almost seem to be the complete inverse of our internal grading. For example a live studio programme would be absolutely expected to get a pair of 5’s for vision and sound as you really couldn’t get anything better. Giving a programme a rating, say, of 2 would really ring alarm bells as you should not be transmitting a programme of such low technical quality. Given that a representative list of transmitted programmes had to be agreed each evening between an ITV MCR and the transmitter engineer it makes you wonder how it was possible if they were using different scales? I wonder if the system changed at some point? It might be ringing some faint bells somewhere?
JA
james-2001
I imagine loads of programmes go out these days with what would have been a 2 then, standards seem to have dropped so much.

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