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Back when we had in vision pages from ceefax, on bbc1 and bbc2, there was a wide choice of music played. One example from the last day of term, June 1988, on YouTube, has four separate ceefax junctions! And four different music tapes.
Simple question, was it the announcer who chose the music, or someone else in presentation?
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…the glory days of Ceefax in vision ..
The announcer seemed to do it but anyone may help with the section …
Including me !
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(26-06-2023, 03:42 PM)robertclark125 Wrote: Back when we had in vision pages from ceefax, on bbc1 and bbc2, there was a wide choice of music played. One example from the last day of term, June 1988, on YouTube, has four separate ceefax junctions! And four different music tapes.
Simple question, was it the announcer who chose the music, or someone else in presentation?
As an aside, my wife used to be a POA (Presentation Operational Assistant) in BBC presentation in the early 1980’s. The role was to switch between the various sources incoming to Presentation. One of the jobs during the day was to play the quarter inch music tapes that accompanied the Test Card (so not Ceefax) and she tells me they could put on any tape they wanted within the ones supplied to them so no fixed order or anything like that. The only stipulation given to them was that they had to change the tape that had run out to the next one within 60 seconds - no doubt this was to a avoid excessive periods of silence going to the transmitter network.
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Did they only have one machine? I guess using one of the interval tracks from cart used for Schools transmissions might have been an option to bridge the time required to rewind the tape and spool up the next one?
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(28-06-2023, 12:16 PM)Bluecortina Wrote: As an aside, my wife used to be a POA (Presentation Operational Assistant) in BBC presentation in the early 1980’s. The role was to switch between the various sources incoming to Presentation. One of the jobs during the day was to play the quarter inch music tapes that accompanied the Test Card (so not Ceefax) and she tells me they could put on any tape they wanted within the ones supplied to them so no fixed order or anything like that. The only stipulation given to them was that they had to change the tape that had run out to the next one within 60 seconds - no doubt this was to a avoid excessive periods of silence going to the transmitter network.
As Techmoan has shown us on Youtube over the years, there was a wide variety of long playing endless loop cartridges on the market for various industries between the 60's & 80's. BBC Radio even used one type for jingles. I'm surprised BBC Presentation didn't just get one of those as they were designed to just sit in a room playing music continually with minimum maintenance.
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(29-06-2023, 08:37 AM)TIGHazard Wrote: As Techmoan has shown us on Youtube over the years, there was a wide variety of long playing endless loop cartridges on the market for various industries between the 60's & 80's. BBC Radio even used one type for jingles. I'm surprised BBC Presentation didn't just get one of those as they were designed to just sit in a room playing music continually with minimum maintenance.
I'm not sure the kind of tape that would hold enough music for this situation would be anywhere near broadcast quality.
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Yeah, the sort that Techmoan has shown that runs for hours on end run and very slow speeds and aren't great quality at all, made for supermarkets, lifts and the likes where quality isn't that important.
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there were two tape machines and it was what we would today call a "water cooler moment"
for whoever was around at the time to help decide which tape was put on!
Very different times 40 odd years ago!!!!
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A friend who was a playout director in the mid-2000s said that one night shift near Christmas, he was enjoying one of the tracks so much he played it three times in a row. (I'm sure I once found it on the Test Card Circle's logs but can't see it just now)
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Not to go all self-promotion on you... but if you're missing Pages From Ceefax, I occasionally stream my own re-creation on YouTube. Past streams are available here:
www.youtube.com