Television About Television

A friend reminded me (as a running joke) last night, that there was a very good RTE documentrary series which found it's way onto You Tube, which looked at various behind the scenes areas of RTE.

These included putting together and the live transmission of a Gerry Ryan RTE2fm Show, Tom McGirk's preperations for a live Ireland Internation Rugby game from (the old) Landsdown Road, and Winning Streak.

I think it was called RTE Unwrapped, but searches on You Tube have drawn a blank - despite me watching these editions on it a couple of years ago.

There was a documentary about 1995/6 about the Calendar newsroom at YTV called 'Deadline'. Can't find it on YT sadly.

Made by Ruth Pitt's TV company, Real Life productions. They were based next to YTV. Her hubby was editor of YTV news programme Calendar.

That was the one where the Calendar producers were frantically calling their colleagues in Newcastle/Billingham, pleading with them to move the break five minutes later because of a big breaking story, despite the fact it was YTV that dictated the timings in the first place, if I recall correctly. Tyne Tees told them to bugger off as I recall. I found the irony rather amusing.

I’m surprised that YTV and TTT would need take their ad breaks at the same time during their respective local news magazines. Surely other local variations had breaks in different places. Or have I misunderstood?

No misunderstanding. At the time Calendar, Tyne Tees Today and Network North all had the same fixed timings for commercial insertion. And it caused the producers of all three programmes hassle it would seem.

You can imagine that being asked to move the routine of any of the programmes at (IIRC) 5:30pm on the day was always going to be met with irritation at the other end of that phone line 😉

It was a very good programme that one BTW, would be good to see it again. Wasn't it shown as a YTV local then repeated on C4?

I know that all three programmes got on the air via Kirkstall Road and at this stage YTV were playing out the ads and most of the pres for Tyne Tees. I can understand why TT Today and NN would need to take the same break, but not Calendar. As I stated above, TTT and YTV’s non-news variations didn’t have the same commercial break timings, so why would Calendar and TT Today/NN?

Dunno. I guess they decided to standardise on one time to make life easier for the transmission controllers, but yes it was a strange one.

There was a piece in the Independent where Tyne Tees staff referred to the fixed advert playout as a loss of editorial control. Which I guess it was.

ETA: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/labour-calls-for-inquiry-into-tyne-tees-tv-dossier-sent-to-itc-alleges-breaches-in-television-1452983.html%3famp

Ruth Pitt herself was a Calendar presenter in the 1980s I believe.

Low and behold it has been uploaded again today.

Hopefully the whole series will surface.

The English Programme did a few behind the scenes episodes.

The Tube:


Spitting Image


And 'Middle English' covered behind the scenes of Thames News:


CBTV seems to have been good for behind the scenes items too, here's Sooty:


And a fantastic item about the recording of Dangermouse, I could watch David Jason and Terry Scott record the voices all day