UTV strike 1990s?

Yes, in so far as there were no union issues in that situation, but still a lot of 'legalities' to consider.

Remember that up until 1991 the ITV companies were not broadcasters, they were programme contractors, providing content for the IBA. It was the IBA who were the broadcaster.

I've heard of ATV having to evacuate, and Granada taking over their tx, but just inserting a static ATV logo
during the ad breaks etc. I suspect before ATV left their MCR they left a slide of their logo going out
on their lines, and Granada used a spare ME on their pres desk, that simply cross faded between network and the ATV logo, getting BT to feed that back to Sutton Coldfield etc ?

In another instance, Thames had to evacuate, and the IBA simply fed TVS's output (inc ads) to Crystal Palace. Apparently TVS were not permitted to make any reference or concessions for their suddenly gained London audience ?

Granada would have had a copy of ATV's logo available so may not have needed it sending up the line. I think the version of that story I heard was that Granada used their reserve network mixer but it had very limited capabilities.

Apparently there have been many occasions where IBA/NTL engineers have been sat with a set of U links in hand ready to patch an off-air feed of a neighbouring region onto the air when lines have failed, just as soon as they were given permission to do so by both the donor region and the region who had suffered the failure.

I think Tony has mentioned before the night that STV had a fire which destroyed one of their studios, they were able to resume operations from Black Hill. I'd be interested to know what kind of facilities main transmitter sites had that could be used in these circumstances, I'm guessing there were some facilities to originate trade test sequences?

There were a number of evacuations over the years - and around 3 or 4 in the period from the late-1980s to early-1990s.



This did happen - and as I recall, they hit the play button on a Daniel O'Donnell-hosted music programme, before evacuating the building. This was one of the examples that I mentioned - where the VT clocks at the start/end of each part of the programme were shown in their entirety.

You mention the 'network feed', Col, but back then I'm sure there wasn't one as such. Did they just show the clean feed of whatever was being beamed in, and then auto-configure for News at Ten if required? Why would Border appear though if they'd gone clean?

In the 60s the ITA control rooms at the Tx sites had slide scanners and telecine machines (I think some of the Beeb ones did too ?), I'm not sure how far into the 70s, and colour that lasted ? The 14 control rooms were replaced by 4 ROCs (Regional Ops Centres) by the end of the 70s,

I believe Sutton Coldfield was the only BBC one which had TK, with a copy of Swiss Family Robinson permanently on it, for use if the line from Ally Pally failed.

How badly disrupted was recording of regional programming for UTV, excluding news, during the strike?

From what I can remember, I don't believe any programme production was taking place during the strike. The only local news programming was short bulletins from the small continuity studio, read by the announcer (I'm nearly sure that CAs Keith Burnside and Barbara Palmer were on air during the strike). I don't recall any video reports. My recollection may be wrong but this is how I recall events.

When it's mentioned that during the day, UTV broadcast a blue caption with white lettering apologising, are we meaning one similar to that used during the 1979 ITV strike, or perhaps one similar to that used during a strike at thames in 1984, when one day programmes didn't start until 13:00, and the caption said what time they would be back on air? A clip of that exists on TV-ark.

The caption was pretty much like this one:

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-z/z-011/main-000-311.jpg

As far as I recall, it was just the standard IBA apology caption and made no reference to the strike.

As you say, the Thames one was tailored - something like this:

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-b/b-101/main-000-98.jpg

Those captions were generated by the IBA at the transmitter sites.

I've got the the Tyne Tees area generator from Pontop Pike in my garage (don't ask), one of those rainy afternoon jobs remains firing it up again ! It has GPI remote control selection of different wordings

It was usual in the 70s and 80s for the IBA to disconnect an ITV company from its transmitter, during industrial disputes

Loving this thread. Exactly the sort of thing the forum used to be full of!