MA
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
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.
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
WCTV's pres suite was indeed at HTV Cardiff, it was actually the displaced S4C commercial insertion suite that was in use Nov 1 1982 until Dec 31 1992. It was a separate suite and operation to the main HTV Wales playout, though of course no reason not to use the HTV Wales as the 'high level' feeds for WCTV. HTV West and Anglis pres moved to Meridian Southampton around 1997, but HTV Wales playout remained in Cardiff for much longer.
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
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.
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?
Quote:
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...
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
WCTV's pres suite was indeed at HTV Cardiff, it was actually the displaced S4C commercial insertion suite that was in use Nov 1 1982 until Dec 31 1992. It was a separate suite and operation to the main HTV Wales playout, though of course no reason not to use the HTV Wales as the 'high level' feeds for WCTV. HTV West and Anglis pres moved to Meridian Southampton around 1997, but HTV Wales playout remained in Cardiff for much longer.
