What went wrong with night time

For the most part announcers did just that: announce. If the announcer went home the only hit the station took was not being able to issue a live apology if things went wrong -- and faults are the easiest things in the world to sort out with recorded messages.

Whilst it was technically more difficult to rely on recorded announcements in the early 1990s (no minidisc) it wasn't impossible -- which is probably why LWT relied on repeated announcements rather than recording them regularly. Tyne Tees did the same on mornings post-1993 with a set of idents which had announcements "burned in" to them as the announcer didn't turn up for work until 11.30am.

It has to be said that, around 1993 or so the larger stations started using minidisc or similar to send out recorded announcements. YTV certainly didn't have a live announcer on overnights post-1993, and I doubt many other stations would have either. The only difference between them and LWT is the methods used to put out recorded announcements -- LWT seem to have retained their older system.

The days of the announcer being effectively the assistant tx controller had long gone by the early 1990s. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if TTTV were the last ITV region to continue this practice -- the announcer in Newcastle up to 1996 was responsible for technical checks, ident/trail playout, holding slide switching for regional programmes and source switching between the various studios for piping down to Leeds. No TXC was employed after 1993. This meant that a live announcer needed to be employed by the station if a live programme was transmitted from City Road, even if a programme ran very late -- at least this is how it was done, presumably they *could* have drafted in a director from somewhere else but didn't for whatever reason.

But I suspect this was very much the exception rather than the rule -- annos generally read a pre-prepared script at appropriate times, and that was it. So they were very much dispensible as soon as MD technology came on-line.

Why did that all wait till MiniDiscs came out? Carts had been around since the 60's and did exactly the same job

Dunno -- unreliable?

All I know is that Tyne Tees *never* had a mechanism for sending out recorded messages, and YTV only started the practice once MD-based systems had been installed in Leeds in September 1993.

Other stations may well have used carts -- same technology as used in radio stations after all.

Actually I've just realised that isn't true -- TTTV did use carts in the 1980s, predominantly to play out news jingles when the local news was made in the continuity studio. You even heard the characteristic 1KHz tone just before the jingle began on broadcasts.

But they never used them for recorded voice as far as I know.

The national agreement with Equity was that an announcer would be on duty at all times - which is why continuity was hardly ever pre-recorded. At STV we used carts for pre-recorded commercial/slides but there was also a standby station opening (with my voice on it) to be used if the announcer failed to turn up.

One morning I was enjoying my breakfast and heard my voice on the telly.....just as I was wondering which prat had failed to turn up, the phone rang........I was the prat in question!

It happens to best of us
I take it the Agreement went out the window in 1993?



I forgot to ask, How did it come back those 3 decided to take the london feed and NOT the Granada one instead, ( HTV is closers to Granada land ) and why did Thames run it. Can you grasp what I mean,

There was a ready made night time service in place, so why set up a new on instead!?

Thanks Tony, that makes sense actually. I sadly never got to talk to any of the announcers themselves at Tyne Tees other than to say hello to occasionally, but I was always fascinated by the technical side of transmission control. I think a part of me secretly wanted to do the job myself, but it wasn't to be.

Rather amusing anecdote -- how long did STV have to do without an announcer before you managed to race to work then?

and further to my post this evening, it seems West country may started its own night time service form 1996 - 1998 ish?

They didn't have a 'night time service at all', they just used their normal idents (clean) before all their programmes. Most junctions had a 'Westcountry Life' sting to fill time too

I really don't know 623058. I can only surmise that the companies in question got a better package deal from the London companies than they could have got from Granada.

I'm not sure about HTV though -- the HTV fansite mentions that they did take the "impersonal" Granada when they switched off their service, and I seem to recall their schedule looking rather like TTTV's for a while.

It surprises me that more companies didn't do this sort of thing.

If you have a guy manning the station, what exactly is the issue with adding a few extra elements to the playout and opting out early? It adds to the branding of your station and would cost next to nothing.

As for Westcountry, their transmission was handled by HTV from the start wasn't it? What were HTV doing at the time -- were they broadcasting the generic service for the HTV area and overlaying this with Westcountry stuff for the South West? Odd little arrangement if so, you'd have thought that Cardiff would have wanted to make life as easy as possible for themselves, although if Westcountry were prepared to pay a little more for the privilege...

I would have thought that the junctions would have to be planned and scheduled in advance with junction opt-outs and ad breaks of pre-determined lengths and then the schedule adjusted to loosen or take up any slack caused by late running from the evening.

The only reason they would have been used would be as an alternative to trails. They'd still need to hit the programmes on time - whether these were coming from HTV, Granada or London. Plus there were news bulletins over night at that time, although were these live?


That all came about because of the appeal brought about by TSW. This meant that whereas Carlton, GMTV and Meridian had almost 15 months to get on air, Westcountry had just under a year. They couldn't/didn't want to take over TSWs premises and they missed out on their original plan of premises in the Barbican area of Plymouth.

So they took on smaller premises in the outskirts of Plymouth and outsourced their playout to HTV, who had spare capacity in Cardiff. The announcer would sit in the WCTV building in Plympton but the TX controller was in Cardiff (incidently they had one announcer a day - from 12 to 12, he would then record the next morning's).

It was much cheaper and quicker to set up than building a playout area from scratch. Sharing playout would have had big operational, logistical and cost advantages in the long run too. Overnight I'm pretty sure WC and HTV Wales had the same schedules but with split junctions. The Westcountry idents were anno-free and often went on for a while, presumably being used for timing purposes too