In news areas, yes TX is what we’d now probably call Playout, though of course not a lot is played out from tape these days. There were usually two or three TX lines to a news gallery and many VT machines which could be switched to those lines. As tapes of edits were delivered to TX they’d be loaded and cued into a VTR, routed to the appropriate TX line and when the gallery called Standby TX the appropriate tape would be cued to the clock and a buzz given as a signal they were ready. It was the norm to give two buzzes for No or to indicate something was not ready.
The term “deliver to tx” still exists within the BBC Jupiter system, in that the transmission servers and the edit servers at NBH are separate. So anything that has been cut needs to be published and delivered in order for a gallery to be able to play it.
Incidentally that Philip Hayton One still makes me shiver now. I have known it to be played to new directors to demonstrate how to keep a programme going with chaos around you. On air it’s relatively clean though it really didn’t deserve to be, given that virtually nothing seemed to be ready for the first 10 Minutes of the show.
Someone once told me that the bit with Michael Buerk saying it was a slow news day etc was actually recorded later in the day after Lawson's resignation was announced in order to make for a bit more exciting storytelling.
In this now famous BBC News studio invasion you can here the gallery talkback, but amongst the chaos and the gallery countdown, what does the director mean by "animate charisma"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8c3P5vDDxA
Charisma was a DVE - Digital Video Effects - device. It provided the fly-in fly-out and picture twists during the headlines. In those days vision mixers didn’t have that capability built in so you had to route sources out of the desk and via a DVE to get that kind of effect.
You'd think they'd find a cue shorter and snappier with less syllables.
Charisma was one of those things I think where the name was simply adopted from the manufacturer - like Aston. DVE might have been better and more generic but I daresay someone somewhere expressed a doubt that it might be confused for VT or something. Talkback can be confusing especially in a noisy environment and via fuzzy intercom boxes and so on. One thing you are often first taught on directing courses is how to be clear and concise on talkback. I was told to “standby Vt, standby graphics, standby cameras” etc as you can have time in advance to say all that, and then just say “Cue” or “Go!” to make it all happen. There’s no right or wrong way, so long as you’re clear. Saying very little is far better IMO than saying far too much. These days with automation, fewer people and play out from server, you don’t need to say half the things you used to have to (though that doesn’t seem to stop some directors!)
In the Eurovision clip from 1977, the confusion arose primarily because Stewart Morris said “go revolve” and the guys operating the stage revolve and the chap who’s one job it was to “run the roller” (credits - literally printed on a piece of paper which wound up from one roll to another in front of a caption camera) each mistook it as their cue. Credit rollers once rolling couldn’t be easily reset as I understand it, hence why no one got a credit apart from Stewart.
In this now famous BBC News studio invasion you can here the gallery talkback, but amongst the chaos and the gallery countdown, what does the director mean by "animate charisma"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8c3P5vDDxA
Charisma was a DVE - Digital Video Effects - device. It provided the fly-in fly-out and picture twists during the headlines. In those days vision mixers didn’t have that capability built in so you had to route sources out of the desk and via a DVE to get that kind of effect.
You'd think they'd find a cue shorter and snappier with less syllables.
There's two different One O'Clock News ones floating around, there's one from a Michael Buerk fronted edition that's a total shambles, as none of the reports are ready when they went on air.
What exactly is “TX” that the director refers to here, such as “run TX”? Something different to “run VT”?
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere calling it TX is a BBC-ism, the rest of the industry used TC (for tele-cine), but with them being in Television Centre, in studios labelled TC they had to find another initialism.
I presume the "TX A/B/C/D" feeds seen on the monitor stack in the studios at NBH are the server channels, named as such for historical reasons?
What exactly is “TX” that the director refers to here, such as “run TX”? Something different to “run VT”?
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere calling it TX is a BBC-ism, the rest of the industry used TC (for tele-cine), but with them being in Television Centre, in studios labelled TC they had to find another initialism.
I presume the "TX A/B/C/D" feeds seen on the monitor stack in the studios at NBH are the server channels, named as such for historical reasons?
I've always known TX as 'Transmission' (and RX as 'Recording'), so the TX Lines in NBH (and plenty of other galleries) just mean Transmission or Playout, and they could be from Server or Tape depending on what was routed.
In the BBC, TC stood for Television Centre so they used TK (I think from the German Tele-kino?) for Telecine.
In the Eurovision clip from 1977, the confusion arose primarily because Stewart Morris said “go revolve” and the guys operating the stage revolve and the chap who’s one job it was to “run the roller” (credits - literally printed on a piece of paper which wound up from one roll to another in front of a caption camera) each mistook it as their cue. Credit rollers once rolling couldn’t be easily reset as I understand it, hence why no one got a credit apart from Stewart.
To be fair to the roller guys, Morris said "cue the revolve" and when there was a slight delay in it starting he spat it out again but slurred so it sounded like "cue the roll".
I read somewhere that Morris hated rollers and had two identical sets installed as he didn't trust them to work properly, and neither worked. I'm not sure how true that is but it makes the situation funnier still to me.
I've worked with a few people like Morris. He seems the sort that will eff and blind at you during a job then have a joke about it immediately afterwards.
Jim Moir was always one for war metaphors when talking about light entertainment. It certainly sounds like a battle in every clip of Morris' producing I've seen.
