TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns (/showthread.php?tid=16)

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Scrotnig - 02-07-2023

Wasn’t it originally 9:15 and then there was a gap before the regional companies took over?

Or am I misremembering that?

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Steve in Pudsey - 02-07-2023

Yes. There's an example of the kind of interval on Transdiffusion's YouTube. One day per week IBA engineering announcements filled the gap - exact detail of how has been debated several times

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Stooky Bill - 02-07-2023

Yes there was regional advertising in the early days of TVam, some originating in Knutsford which would have been providing those seen in Granadaland. Some details here: http://www.dgsys.co.uk/btmicrowave/sites/293.php 
Possibly it was some early days teething issues with the BT switching?

Difficult to tell with that video exactly what's going on with those colour bars as theres a lot of signal disturbance which isn't helped by the recording. The BAT identifier appears and disappears seperately to the bars, possibly there's even two sets of bars seen there but I think it's the video levels fluctuating in the switching. Possibly that's not a fade but just something in the switching and the video level disappearing slowly?

If it was an outside source left switched to air when Granada went live then it's not the only example, there's a clip on YouTube of them going on air with the audio from TVS's opening sequence.
https://youtu.be/AJExDkOJC0g 

Same announcer oddly, I wonder if there was some sort of routine where they'd watch, reversion/voiceover and/or record trails coming down the line through the TX desk before they started for the day? Then they forget or don't get round to taking it off the desk?

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Scrotnig - 02-07-2023

The great, legendary Colin Weston.

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Si-Co - 02-07-2023

The 9:15-9:25 switchover period lasted until May 1983, so that was well over by the time of this recording. I agree that it appears the switch from TVam to Granada happens when the eggcups cut to the colour bars, and the fact these bars originated at Central seems to support this. Perhaps the first programme (despite being a YTV production) was being played out by Central, or perhaps Granada were planning to record something down the line from Birmingham.

What still confuses me is the hyper-local Granada region ads being shown in TVam’s airtime. I don’t ever recall anything as local as that in TVam’s ad-breaks - in fact in the early days they suffered in a similar way to Channel 4, with only a limited variety of ads due to the Equity/IPA dispute. I stand to be corrected of course. I assume that whoever was playing these ads into the TVam feed wouldn’t have been Granada themselves?

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Neil Jones - 02-07-2023

I believe TV-am sold their own advertising, not the ITV companies. That was only done AFAIK for Channel 4 so far as the ITV companies were concerned.

Must be remembered of course they laughed at the idea of TV at such a ridiculous time of day, until TV-am started actually making it work, so they missed the boat on that (Was it YTV who had the first TV show that was only a 15 minute show at something like 8:45?)

It might well be an early example of TV-am advertising before they dumped all that (and pretty much everything else) to save money.

I was going to argue whether it was they'd been doing some programme distribution down the lines while TV-am was on the air, as it seemed an ideal time to do such a thing without screwing anything up output wise. But would that sort of thing happen before 9am? Pretty sure companies had things to do when they weren't on air, I mean LWT had all week to make programmes, find news, make trails, get programmes etc, and Thames had the weekend to do... whatever Thames would have done at the weekend while off air. Presumably they didn't just turn the lights off at 5:15 on Friday and go home until 9am Monday morning!

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - James2001 - 02-07-2023

The 1983 eggcup caption is only on screen for a couple of seconds, I wonder if the switch back to Granada was thrown a bit too early, and that's why the colour bars were still on the output.

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - thegeek - 02-07-2023

Techmoan on YouTube has got hold of an audio tape of BBC transmitter breakdown announcements and music from the 1960s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ENRbOWDXmI 

(not sure I entirely agree with the explanations by 'Ringway Manchester' - I'd have thought the first side would be played if the transmitter lost its link from the studio centre; and the second for relays if they lost reception from the main transmitter - but this isn't quite my area of expertise)

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - Steve in Pudsey - 02-07-2023

Is that Granada/TVS mash up genuine? It seems pretty impossible for that to have happened.

(And we probably need a dedicated thread for that Techmoan video - I think this is at least the third mention it's had in various threads, and I agree that the Ringway contribution is factually dubious in places)

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RE: TV Mistakes/Breakdowns - bilky asko - 02-07-2023

(02-07-2023, 10:48 PM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote:  Is that Granada/TVS mash up genuine? It seems pretty impossible for that to have happened.

(And we probably need a dedicated thread for that Techmoan video - I think this is at least the third mention it's had in various threads, and I agree that the Ringway contribution is factually dubious in places)

I would say it's probably quicker and easier to start a thread and let the moderation team merge and split other posts from the other threads as necessary.

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