One such person was John Ranson, so much so that he kept many mementos of his years at ABC in Didsbury.

Amongst them is this ABC Television transmission schedule for Sunday 28 July 1968, ABC’s last day on air in the north and midlands before management upped-sticks and moved to London to become the dominant half of Thames Television on 30 July.

With a system as complicated as ITV, where there were over a dozen companies serving around 20 distinct advertising areas, swapping some programmes, timeshifting others, networking still more, there was a lot of admin work. The key to the administration of ITV was the use of transmission schedules, detailing down to the second what each company would be doing when. 18 seconds for an announcement here, 28 seconds of commercials there, programmes coming in from one company, programmes going out to another… the transmission schedule governed them all.

For ABC’s last day, John made sure to get a copy of the schedule to keep – he worked in the lines department, supervising the feeds coming in and going out along General Post Office co-axial links as well as ITA microwave connections, so he was entitled to have one. More than that, he popped round and asked staff on duty to sign it, turning it from a memento for him into an important historical document for us 50 years later.

The end of ABC meant upheaval for all staff, even those who would still be doing the same jobs in at the same desks in Teddington as the hours of broadcasting changed. This disruption would lead to strikes and lockouts taking the entire ITV network down in August, but for now it was time to say goodbye.

For administrators Pat and Deirdre, charged with collating this document, typing it up and producing Gestetner cyclographs for everybody who needed one – across the entire network – saying goodbye was done on the last page, with a jaunty drawing of Rediffusion and ABC saying goodbye while Thames emerges beneath.

From memento to historical document to a thing of beauty across 21 pages and 50 years, it’s worth reading in full just to see how complicated and planned television was and is, and how the people behind television usually are the people who love television most.

The post Inside ABC’s last day appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

From ABC TV News, the house magazine of ABC, April 1962

Already a large amount of cable has been laid and units are being fixed into the racks in Central Apparatus Room – the whole place is full of wiremen crawling around the void under the ‘waffle floor’ or running cables into the studio trunking. Painters have got the undercoat finishes on the walls and the control desks have had their woodwork polished ready for a final finish when installation is completed.

SMOOTH PASSAGE…

Camera tests have been made on the studio floor and the odd humps and hollows smoothed out before the lino is laid. The working area of Studio One is over 7,000 sq. feet – so the lino laying is no small job.

To give the best possible chance of keeping a flat floor, any high spots on the concrete screed were ground down, then the asphalt laid with extreme care, being continuously checked by level, and straightedge – and finally by running a camera on a crane over the floor and watching the output on a line strobe monitor (a sort of electronic straightedge!).

Now that the main building work is practically finished, many smaller jobs are being tackled, and Make-up and Wardrobe have both been invaded by bricklayers, carpenters, glaziers and the like. It makes a change from actors – and what is more, before long it will be possible to walk under cover from these departments to any studio – which will make a change for actors! In spite of what you might think in Manchester, Teddington is not always bathed in Mediterranean sunshine.

WORLD BEATER…

The Planning and Installation boys are kept pretty busy making sure all the bits of equipment go together, and feeding information to Marryat and Place’s wiremen. Three Cintel Telecine machines and an R.C.A. recorder have been negotiated up the goods-lift (with fractions of an inch clearance in one case) and should be working in advance of the studio equipment. Then comes the job of transferring Master Control and C.A.R., which is going to be a great day indeed.

Meanwhile, it all looks very exciting and those visitors who are allowed to penetrate into the first floor are obviously highly impressed. There seems little doubt that Teddington No. 1 will soon be a first-class studio able to stand comparison with anything elsewhere in the country (or in the world for that matter) and will set the pattern for future ABC studios.

The post Progress report from Teddington appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

It is an impressive record. From its Manchester headquarters, the outside broadcast fleet is out every weekend, bringing on-the-spot coverage of sport and entertainment from all parts of the North and Midlands.

The programme planners, and the ABC communications engineers, who made TV history by being the first to overcome technical difficulties in bringing pictures from the Isle of Man and the Yorkshire coast, are always looking for new locations.

During the past 12 months, their list of “firsts” ranges from little-known places like Steeple Aston, Thwing and Pott Shrigley, to towns like Stockton. Peterborough, Towcester, Huntingdon and Burton-on-Trent.

Outside broadcasts cameras have been covering as many as four different events in less than 24 hours, packing all their equipment the moment one programme ends and rushing across country to set it up again.

This is no small operation. The fleet needed to convey all the men and material for this Sunday’s programme, for instance, consists of an eight-ton scanner, which carries £40,000 worth of electronic equipment, two three-ton supply vehicles, a “links” truck, two generators — on isolated locations the unit usually has to provide its own power — and at least six cars.

Then there is the problem of getting the programme back from the unit to the transmitter and so into viewers’ homes. This is usually done by “bouncing” the picture over a series of shortwave radio links, and, at the same time, sending the sound over the Post Office telephone network.

On a new location, getting the picture back is the result of weeks of work by communications experts, who, after plotting a route on contour maps, often have to scramble up mountains to see whether their ideas will work out.

Even linking-up the sound is not as simple as it appears. For the Bentley Springs programme, private telephones nearby are connected with the central control van. The lines, which local farmers willingly lend to ABC, are used for feeding the sound commentary and maintaining constant telephone contact with the Manchester headquarters.

This not only happens in out-of-the-way parts of the country. When ABC go to Coventry for wrestling, city men lend their office phones.

Outside broadcast crews are always on the move. Some of the ABC team travel 28,000 miles a year — well over 500 miles a week.

Look at their timetable for the next seven days:

SUNDAY: By 9am they are arriving at Bentley Springs. Most of the equipment has been put in position the previous day, but the morning is spent checking and testing.

Though ABC have paid numerous visits to Bentley Springs, new camera points have had to be worked out because the course has been lengthened to include the crossing of a deep ravine. One of the organisers described it to me as “most difficult and bound to cause a lot of excitement.”

MONDAY: The crews clean the weekend mud off their equipment and prepare for their next assignment.

TUESDAY: The team go to Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, where horse-racing is to be screened later in the week for the first time.

CHRISTMAS EVE is spent setting-up and testing the equipment and trying out the three-hop radio link between the racecourse and the ITV transmitter at Winter Hill.

CHRISTMAS DAY is a day off, but the team are spending it in Lincoln. 20 miles from the course and 100 miles from their families in Manchester. One of them told me: “We can travel home and back if we want — but we have agreed not to. We cannot face the risk of being delayed and jeopardising the next day’s programme.”

BOXING DAY: The Market Rasen crew starts at 9am to cover the afternoon’s racing. At the same time, a second crew is at a Bolton theatre setting-up equipment for a circus programme.

SATURDAY means another early start for the crews. Rehearsals at Bolton, where the theatre stage has had to be shored up to take the weight of the two performing elephants, begin at 10am. At Market Rasen, the racing continues until 3.15, when viewers are switched south for table-tennis and then back north for the three-quarter-hour circus transmission.

Then their week’s work, as far as viewers are concerned, is over. But there is still plenty to do, dismantling the equipment and putting it on the road for Manchester. It will be 10pm before the Bolton crew are home. Some of the Market Rasen team will be travelling back overnight, while others will have to stay the night in Lincoln.

A week of non-stop activity. And while all this has been going on, other members of the outside broadcasts division have been out making final arrangements for programmes that are four weeks away.

These outside racing broadcasts make life hectic, also, for the three talking members of the ITV team — Peter Moor, Tony Cooke and John Rickman. Rickman, for whom life as a journalist and broadcaster almost begins and ends on a racecourse, reckons 1,000 miles by train and car each week is a fairly normal stint.

He told me: “Friday is often the start of the long haul. We may be racing in the South on that day and due in Catterick the next. So it means the night sleeper … out of the train at Darlington with the morning papers, and work out the form on the way to the course.

“There are owners and trainers to contact and interesting characters to be lined-up for interviews. Then there’s the business of getting people in the news — a winning jockey, owner or trainer — in an off the-cuff interview before we go off the air. After that, a car dash to the station and back on the train to London.”

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From ABC TV News number 11, the house magazine of ABC Television & Iris Productions, published April 1962

The Mount Street mob’s ascent to the 9th floor is, at last, achieved. Just about on time and not without a sigh of relief after a rugged year on the First.

In our temporary abode we have enjoyed the company of stalwart workmen, who have shared our simple life and our simple toilets – simply everything. Their grit and determination has been most evident – plenty of grit still remains.

The British architectural system has filled us with awe and has provided staccato symphonies – a sort of primitive Musique Concrete on the basis that a building will be made solid and that all holes will be blasted out afterwards.

The drill, a symbol of power and obliteration, was instrumental in our passing from our old building to the new just over a year ago. A large hole in the wall suddenly appeared on the first floor and a few rickety planks supported our escape. Filing cabinets and desks perilously perched on a swinging plank 20 feet above was a sight never to be forgotten.

SUCCESS REGARDLESS . . .

The past year in our temporary home has produced in us those fine qualities closely associated with the British under stress -frustration and despair and the desperate will to survive.

What happened? Advertising targets were reached. Press coverage increased and TV TIMES raised its circulation. In truth, a refreshing unity grew amongst the team – the workmen, through their crust of cement, softened a little and service reached new heights. One word from us about the noise and tools were downed and overtime created just to help us.

Tickets to Didsbury shows produced a sort of mutual and cunning goodwill but now we have taken our leave of these giants of the scaffold – these masters of the drill – and rise to the dizzy heights of luxury on the 9th.

WE ARRIVE . . .

We must not, however, underrate the Interior Decorators in our new abode. They too have shown great independence of thought and worked hard to achieve their target.

Their trade mark, until very recently, has lain all around us in undulating piles of shavings, putty, wood screws and dog ends, but beauty abounds and underneath this rough exterior lies a structure, and as we remember, a carpet, simple and tasteful of Hanoverian quality which will now, and in the years to come, fill our thoughts with joy and reinforce our confidence that we have “arrived”.

The post The Passing of the 9th Floor Back… appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The television audience, while demanding a full share of drama, light entertainment and feature programming, also enjoys sport – even if only from its armchair. And because you can’t take a football field to a studio, the studio must go to the field. In outside broadcasting the scene is set by the programme. For the rest it requires the same basic resources as any other television production, plus a few of its own. The first of these is mobility; getting the cameras, control unit and attendant vehicles to the scene and, having got them there, getting the cameras to the spot that will deliver the best shots. The second is a private, flexible and extremely positive link with the studios. Where there are no GPO land-lines for carrying the pictures back to a Master Control, and so to the transmitters, the OB unit must create its own contact; by bouncing the signals in a straight, uninterrupted line from one high, lonely point to another; from one mobile micro-wave relay transmitter to the great dish aerial of a receiver on another – regardless of weather or terrain.

In short, the whole coverage of an event in the open requires men who are rugged and optimistic, and determined enough to go anywhere; with vehicles tough enough to get them there. The ‘vehicles’ in any of ABC’s three OB units might include a mobile generating plant for producing lighting power, a hydraulic tower for camera or micro-wave aerial, tender vehicles and, if the programme is not being transmitted ‘live’, a mobile VTR unit. Once these have been positioned, the necessary connections made, and the line back to Master Control set up, a normal transmission procedure follows.

The show must go on. Travelling with an outside broadcast unit is like being with the circus. The rigging and de-rigging before and after shows, the long caravan of vehicles… all this reminds you of the Big Top. The same spirit pervades both; whatever happens, whatever the difficulties, the show must go on.

Top: The floor manager holds up a caption card to begin recording. A familiar television scene, acted out in unfamiliar conditions.

Left: Like the circus, an outside broadcast unit needs large supplies of electricity in remote places where they are not always readily available. ABC has the same answer: a mobile generator.

Right: The numbed yet willing fingers of an electrician make a last-minute adjustment to one of the lamps lighting a cattle shed.

The cameras are the same as those in a studio, though perhaps fitted with ‘zoom’ lenses; the control suite – a ‘scanner’ – has nearly the same crew; and the radio or telephone ‘talk-back’ link with Master Control holds the unit as close to home as it would have done if it had been just down a corridor. ABC with its weekend contract in the North and Midlands, and a lot of difficult country-including the Pennines-to be crossed, has gained a great deal of experience in operating an OB fleet. The fact that they are now doing more ‘remote’ programmes than any other ITV company, and not many less than the BBC, is a strong pointer to the power they have built into their OB division.

The post Outside broadcasts: programmes set the scene appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Future trends must be considered together with present requirements in the planning of any production line. Plant has a limited life; there must be room to grow; the quick reorganisation of equipment, demanded by new, more advanced methods of manufacture, must be easy. Truisms all, but particularly pertinent to television; a virile young industry, learning fast, changing with the pattern of public demand, and growing at the accelerated pace of all development in electronic processes.

As a company ABC TV has always been very awake to this changing face. While establishing its resources, it has also been especially busy anticipating the demands of promising and probable developments. A switching of line standards was something to expect. The arrival of colour television was another. Decisions have now been taken on the standards, but in 1959-when the new technical block was being planned for Teddington – the question was still wide open, and suggested the adoption of equipment that would work equally well on 405, 525 or 625. Fortunately manufacturers, too, were then beginning to recognise this need and cameras and monitors designed for quick switching between standards were on the way.

But as very little had been done to produce equipment for signal switching and distribution in a multi-standard form, ABC engineers started development along these lines themselves. And with the obvious advantages then being offered by transistorisation they naturally concentrated on designing equipment that employed this new technique to the full. The result has been a complete range of modular devices for the routing of signals, and with a performance capable of handling colour-another facet of the future that ABC had been investigating in the most practical way possible, through experimentation.

As the BBC were already putting a great deal of effort and brainpower into their design for British colour television, based on the American NTSC system, ABC decided that any experimental and development work they did would be of more value if directed at the embryo SECAM system. Out of this pioneering work, done with the co-operation of GEC, has come some very worthwhile equipment refinements, real flexibility and a lot of novel advantages in the arrangement and design of their technical facilities, and a valuable familiarity with the problems that colour television will bring. And, most practical of all, it has now led to the SECAM system being given high-power transmission trials.

One of the best examples of the Company’s foresight is embodied in the very skeleton of the new Teddington block. With the future promising an influx of new equipment, and new applications of technical space calling for massive reshuffling of facilities, ABC introduced a unique element into the design of the block. The entire floor of the technical area is a pre-cast concrete network of one-foot square holes, supported over a void that can be pressurised with fresh air during operation and is deep enough to crawl in.

Above the ceiling is a similar void that can be exhausted. As a result, equipment can be placed wherever it is needed, and supplied with cooling air and cables simply by cutting corresponding holes in the tiles covering the floor and ceiling grills. Other examples of their eye to the future can be found in the equipment they have chosen; telecine and VTR machines that are instantly switchable between line standards, easily and quickly adaptable for colour; lighting installations with sufficient reserve capacity for colour productions. Or in the arrangement of their facilities; the interlocking of production areas and routing of signals through one, central apparatus area; the special VTR suite equipped for electronic editing.

Perhaps the best composite example of ABC’s planning is Teddington as a whole. It is one of the most modern studio centres in Europe. But the drive towards tomorrow is the same throughout the Company.

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An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

For economic productivity factories must work to full capacity; turn out a steady flow of goods. And as with factories, so with television…

In the beginning all programmes, other than those made in film studios, were ‘live’; acted out at the actual moment of transmission. This meant that all television companies suffered from unbalanced output; had fully equipped studios that were only called upon for short bursts of productivity. As weekend-only contractors the facilities in ABC studios were particularly wasted. During five days of every week the floors were virtually idle, their costly equipment unused. So the urgent need for some method of spreading the studio load, by staggering production and stockpiling, was an early one.

Like any other need, it was satisfied. The first preserving process to arrive was telerecording; a photographic method of capturing the fleeting television picture on cine film. ABC TV bought it. And led Britain in its use when they installed the 16mm fast pull-down system in their Manchester studio centre. As well as unshackling productions from actual transmission time, telerecording brought a bonus: it also meant that the programmes could be offered for sale overseas.

Next came VTR – Video Tape Recording – a process for recording the signals generated in a camera channel in much the same way as the waves generated in sound equipment can be preserved on a domestic tape recorder.

Once again ABC were quick to take advantage of the new system; to use it fully, incorporate improvements as they were developed, change to new machines when they offered better recordings, greater ease of control and flexibility, and advances that promised wider usefulness in the future. Such a machine is the RCA TR22. Fully transistorised, completely self-contained, and capable of remote control from the production suite or the electronic editing console; it is also instantly switchable between line standards and can record colour. Not much larger than an upright piano, it is the most advanced, most useful VTR unit on the market. ABC TV have bought the first four off the production line.

Until recently VTR had been used solely as a means of ‘canning’ whole programmes; of taking a continuous feed from the control suite, storing it on tape, and playing it back, unaltered, on the day of transmission. As no pictures appear on the tape editing was an expensive, difficult, and usually unsatisfactory business. But with an electronic process that has now been worked out, it has become possible for special sequences – such as Sunday Break interviews that cannot be timed to fit into the programme’s production schedule, outside broadcast sequences for programmes like Silver Wheel, and scenes that need perfect timing and could easily go wrong on ‘transmission’, like fights in drama productions – to be shot beforehand and fed into a programme in the same way as an output from telecine or a camera on the floor.

The post VTR: preserving the programme appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Programmes are moving pictures, music, voices-and captions, animated cartoons, still photographs, graphic designs. Studio cameras, gramophone records, magnetic tapes and microphones can take care of the former. But some other form of picture and sound device is necessary for the screening of filmed programmes like The Human Jungle, the animated triangle symbol that introduces every ABC production, complex caption and graphic design effects, and the slotting in of sequences that can be shot more easily and economically with a film camera.

The need for such a device led naturally to the development of telecine; in its simplest form a single-lens camera aimed at an image produced by a film projector. In its most highly developed form (a refinement of one of the earliest scanning devices used by Baird) it does away with the projected image and instead directs a spot of light – along a pattern identical to that followed by the electron beam that creates the picture on a television screen – through the film and onto a photo-electric cell. Each of these latest telecine units – there are three at Teddington – consists of a flying-spot projector, two machines for presenting 35 and 16mm film, and a slide carrier. All can be pre-loaded, and selected and operated from the control suite requiring the picture feed. Allied to each telecine unit is a caption scanning unit. This too can be pre-loaded and controlled by a Vision Mixer in any of the production control suites.

In it are two caption holders shaped like paddle wheels and each capable of presenting any one of sixteen captions, still photographs, or pieces of graphic design at the touch of a button; a VTR clock, an ABC-designed-and-built device for identifying video tape recordings and cueing the studio at the start of ‘transmission’ runs; and a roller-caption machine, used mainly for the moving ‘credits’ at the end of a programme. Each has its own light source and is scanned by a single vidicon camera through a multiplicity of prisms as it is selected and illuminated. As with other sources, the feed from each telecine/caption suite must be monitored; skilfully adjusted for perfect picture quality before being passed to the bank of pre-view screens in the Director’s suite. This is the Telecine Operator’s job. Following the studio through monitor and ‘talk-back’, alone in almost permanent twilight, he is alert for the cue ‘roll telecine!’

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An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

The pictures in television may only be waveforms to an engineer; but to the Director they are one of the plastic components of his art; to be moulded, selected, drawn upon at will.

They pass through to the Control Suite for his assembly from a variety of different sources. But, unlike sound which is fed into a programme from a microphone, the point of a pick-up stylus, or a magnetic play-back head, the initial television picture always starts in an electronic scanning device. The first, and most important of these in true television studio productions, is the camera.

In most ABC studios there are four 4½” Image Orthicon cameras; as many as six in Studio 1 at Teddington. And close technical links established between control centres allow extra cameras to be brought on to a set if specially demanded. Each camera is crewed by a cameraman who is solely concerned with switching lenses, framing the shot, and focusing on the action. Electronic control – the choice of picture density, contrast and brightness – is managed by the Vision Controller from the vision and lighting section of the control suite.

Here the cameras are ‘set-up’; their channels adjusted for matching performance during the next run.

Control is passed to the ‘joy-sticks’; simple-looking knobs that are designed to cope with final adjustments during ‘transmission’. Working closely with the Lighting Supervisor cameras and lights can then be adjusted for clear pictures in balanced sequences.

Beyond the ‘joy-sticks’ the pictures pass to the vision mixer and the banks of monitors facing the teams in the three control suite sections. From these the Director will make his final selection; cue the Vision Mixer in his electronic editing. And from these, through the check-point of the Technical Supervisor, will go the version to be seen on home screens.

The post Vision: pictures that qualify appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Sound – as with light – is a basic dimension of all television. Starting with the symbol and mood-setting theme music, it is an integral and indispensable part of the fabric of every production. So its quality must be perfect; its timing exact; its perspective placed precisely.

During the actual ‘transmission’ of most programmes it is gathered together from three sources within the production area; from microphones on the studio floor, and pre-recorded tapes and gramophone records ‘played-back’ in the Sound Control room of the Control Suite. In programmes like Thank Your Lucky Stars – mimed because it seeks the best in sound and vision; the excellence of quality that can best be achieved under the skilfully controlled conditions of a recording studio, and the free movement of artists and cameras unchecked by the limitations imposed by trailing microphone cables and hovering booms – a great deal of the sound is fed from recordings. In feature programmes like Tempo, and drama series like Jezebel-Ex UK most sound comes from the studio. But wherever it originates, it passes through one common point – the Sound Console. Here, ready and balanced, it is held by the Sound Supervisor for mixing with its picture.

And, as with lighting, each sound sequence – carefully rehearsed, timed, numbered – is pre-cued by the P.A, cued by the Director, checked for final quality by the Technical Supervisor.

In their overall planning for a perfect product, ABC engineers give sound as much attention as everything else. Equipment is picked for its flexibility in performance as well as ease of operation; where anything can be done to raise production quality and efficiency, it is done. The following are only a few of the innovations and facilities they have incorporated in the ABC studio centres.

During the building of the new block at Teddington, one rehearsal room was acoustically treated as a site for ‘live’ musical backings, and for the pre-recording of special sound effects. Next to this was built a soundproof control room and announcers’ booth that allows complex dubbings to be made without spilling into busy studio areas.

The sound distortion network linked to the Sound Console has been switch-coupled to the Vision Mixer so that it will automatically apply to particular shots in a picture run-through. And the output from the console has been split into separate ‘music’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘effects’ outputs so that recordings could be made which foreign buyers can add alternative music to, or dub in some other language. Everything that can be done for good sound… is done.

The post Sound: planned for perfection appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Every production needs light. Multi-set programmes like The Avengers and fast-moving shows like Thank Your Lucky Stars need a lot of it. Other, more static sequences, like the studio linking shots for Candid Camera, need less. But every studio programme must have it; under exact control, and in the right place at the right time.

The ‘right place’ means a system designed for speed of setting; a method that will allow a lighting engineer to place the lamp of his choice, at the point in space where he needs it most – with the least amount of effort. Basically two systems are in general use. Motorised barrel suspension and a point telescope system. In planning for the future, ABC decided that the flexibility of the telescope was the most practical, and a grid consisting of parallel slots, formed by steel rails and separated by light-weight metal decking, was installed. The lamps are suspended from this on individual telescopes hanging through the slots and attached to carriages rolling on the steel rails. Maximum manoeuvrability – the quick transference of lamps from one part of the studio to another – is attained by using a suspended trolley to carry complete lamp-telescope-carriage combinations along the lighting gallery, from the open mouth of one slot to either end of another.

The lamps themselves are raised and lowered by compressed-air driven winches built into the telescope carriages; leaving final direction of the light to be manipulated by pole from the studio floor. The result? Whereas it takes two or three days to rig lighting on a film set, it takes only two or three hours to rig the complete lighting for a major ABC television production. The slotted grid system is also ideal for carrying monitors, scenery, microphones and speakers, and microphone boom cables.

Power for the lighting, which in a production like the average Armchair Theatre play would keep a television receiver going for four years, is supplied by power points evenly spaced above the grid, and distributed around the studio. For ‘exact control at the right time’, each is connected to a switch on the lighting console and a dimmer on an adjacent control bank. Complete lighting sequences can be set on these and transferred to a lighting ‘memory’ that can hold up to twenty lighting combinations; to be called upon at the press of a button during the run of a production.

As the intensity of light in any sequence or set must be matched to the lighting in subsequent sequences and on adjacent sets, and plays an important part in the picture seen by the camera and demanded by the camera setting, the lighting and vision controllers share the same area and monitors in ABC studios – and work very closely together. They must devise lighting and camera alignments as a team, and this calls for an exact working knowledge of each other’s equipment. As a result, picture technique at ABC is evolving to a point where one man could finally have control of both facets of the end product.

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An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Three arrowheads; three chords; a familiar triangle symbol – and another ABC programme is announced.

It could be Thank Your Lucky Stars, The Sunday Break, ABC At Large, or one of many well known weekend programmes. At 9.35 on Sunday, 17 February, it was Armchair Theatre presenting ‘The Paradise Suite’ another play specially written for ABC and scheduled for screening across the ITV Network; another full scale-television production…

It started with an idea by author Robert Muller. It was acted out-against a set imagined by award-winning designer Voytek – on the floor of Studio 1 at Teddington. It was directed by Philip Saville. And it was the product of a system, a highly refined process, a time-tied progression of skilled technical events; the product of many uncredited experts, and a great deal of modern equipment.

This is an outline of that process, of the technical demands made by every television production, and the specialised way in which they are met by ABC TV.

The point of main activity is the Control Suite. Here, in a fluorescent cockpit of intense concentration, soundproofed against the world outside and set ideally with an eagle’s-nest view of the studio, the centre point is the Director. In front of him is a bank of monitor screens showing every picture source available for his selection. Flanking him him are some of the assistants and controls he will rely upon to link and blend all the elements that make a programme. Each assistant is an expert, in control of equipment

that is the latest the industry has to offer, as advanced as ABC’s development engineers can make it. And each is an integral part of a close-locked team that must do more than co-operate; must think in every dimension and, under the Director, hold the overall effect paramount. To achieve this in the new Teddington block, the operators and equipment have been grouped in the most practical way possible.

Three soundproofed compartments, viewed left to right from the studio, handle Vision, Production and Sound. The first is concerned with lighting and cameras, the second is manned by the Production Assistant, Director, Vision Mixer and Technical Supervisor, and the third by a Sound Mixer and Grams Operator. On ‘transmission’ – the final run-through of a programme for recording or ‘live’ (immediate) transmission – each is responsible for supplying the Director with a set sequence

of elements. These are demanded by the production, or issue from the Director’s interpretation, and are arranged, refined and fixed upon during rehearsal.

Most of these elements originate on the studio floor, through action controlled by the Director via the Floor Manager, and cameras and microphones directed by means of an elaborate intercom or ‘talk-back’ system. Other elements can be woven in from a variety of sources; from film,

tape recordings (video and sound), outside broadcast feeds, gramophone records and other studios. But whatever the source, final control of use must be the Director’s. And in working to achieve this in its simplest form, ABC engineers are pace-setters. Wherever possible, they have designed or adapted picture and sound source equipment for pre-setting, and made selection and operation available by the press of a button in the Control Suite.

This then is the place where programmes are put together; where the Director is king-pin. But between him and the finished product leaving the Control Suite, for recording or transmission, stands the final check of the Technical Supervisor. He has the last adjustment of sound and picture. Like a checker on a factory floor, only his acceptance passes the product as Well Made.

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The answer was yes. To get an overview of his new, unexpected empire, Howard Thomas made a trip to Pathé’s headquarters in Soho. There he found piles of tins of film in no order; there was no preservation or filing in operation; the film was decaying in the rusting tins and nobody cared.

His first order to his new workforce was to reverse this. The film, all millions of miles of it, was to be index and preserved. Rushes, too, would be kept from now on. There would be no throwing things away: someday, film going back to the wars in South Africa it would be of use to ABPC, and, if not, then at least to historians.

This is why we now have the huge and wonderful resource that is the British Pathé archives. In that resource are two tins of rushes from the opening of ABC Weekend TV in Didsbury in Manchester on 5 May 1956.

They’re a mix of rehearsals and live output; they’re mostly silent, but what was captured in sound is fascinating.

Here’s what you’re watching.

• 0:01 Guests arriving at the Didsbury studios
• 0:17 The outside of the converted Capitol cinema with its new, illuminated ABC Television sign
• 0:32 ABC Television camera inside, filming the stage from the gods
• 0:45 Rehearsals for the ensemble finale of the opening variety show
• 0:58 The sophisticated lighting control grid
• 1:15 Jerry Desmonde and Thora Hird rehearsing
• 1:20 Continuity announcer?
• 1:25 The lighting rig in operation
• 1:34 Betty Driver and Jerry Desmonde feeding a dog chocolate. Please don’t do this
• 1:48 Floor manager or director in action
• 1:58 Guests arriving at the Didsbury studios
• 2:02 Howard Thomas of ABC and Sir Philip Warter of parent ABPC arrive
• 2:13 More shots of the outside of the studios and more guests arriving
• 2:27 The Lord Mayors of Lancashire towns ABC North serves
• 2:37 More shots of the outside of the studios and more guests arriving
• 2:47 Rehearsals continue in Studio 1
• 3:39 Betty Driver singing
• 3:45 More rehearsals
• 4:08 Jerry Desmonde and Thora Hird rehearse their skit
• 4:23 An outside broadcasting van
• 4:42 Pretending to repair a camera for the cameras
• 4:57 Camera rehearsals while the scenery is constructed
• 5:05 Sound boom operator and an electrician playing with his inky-dink
• 5:24 Ready Camera 1
• 5:37 Scenery assembled, rehearsals starting
• 5:45 The actual event – dancers amongst the diners in the studio
• 6:15 Jerry Desmonde comperes
• 6:22 SOUND! Derived from the television output itself
• 8:12 The first ABC ident chimes! And the start of some title music
• 8:18 Dancing for the guests in the studio. ABC’s actual output is likely to have moved on by now

• 0:01 Camera rehearsals; wildtrack of sound
• 0:42 Jerry Desmonde and Thora Hird rehearsing
• 1:14 ABC’s “casual” symbol
• 1:21 Camera rehearsals
• 1:34 Wildtrack of sound; no vision
• 1:53 Choreography rehearsals
• 2:46 Launch programme underway, filmed from off to one side
• 3:44 Jerry Desmonde pauses. Commercial break?
• 3:48 Back to the show
• 4:20 Sound boom operator and cameraman
• 4:28 Conducting the music
• 4:35 Live output: the town cryer makes an announcement; meanwhile, “station host” Edward Ward can be heard in the background – his voice is going out live on the ABC Network
• 5:27 The film camera keeps running in the studio as Edward Ward sends the televiewers over to an OB in Liverpool. The hand-painted background ABC logo is… wrong
• 5:36 OB welcome is over, back to the studio and APBC starlet Susan Stephen
• 5:45 The big announcement from Edward Ward
• 6:09 Cue Susan Stephen!
• 6:58 The opening variety show starts with an exciting ABC-based jingle
• 8:26 The show continues
• 9:37 The show ends

The post Welcome to Didsbury appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

This weekend sees the passing of a TV Studio that has made history. A history that spans 12 years of weekend programmes from an address millions of viewers have written to – ABC Television, Didsbury, Manchester 20.

Appropriately, the last show to be made in the studio is Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks!. Called ‘Goodbye to Didsbury’, it will be shown on Saturday. And on Sunday, I have the sad honour of closing down the station with my own programme of memories of people and events that have been shared by viewers.

It was May 5, 1956, that ABC Television went on the air for the first time in a cinema converted to a TV studio in the remarkable time of 12 weeks.

And what a programme to open with – the F.A. Cup Final, when Manchester City beat Birmingham City 3 to 1.

That first weekend went on with film star Hazel Court, Macdonald Hobley and Ludovic Kennedy reading the news. There was also the first showing of Robin Hood and the first weekend drama, The Last Reunion, with Eric Portman and Michael Gough.

Through the doors of Didsbury walked stars of show-business, leading politicians and top businessmen. The names are endless. Premier Harold Wilson, the late George Formby, Sir Donald Wolfit, Lord Arran. I could go on forever.

In Studio One came the birth of Armchair Theatre, a drama series that was to shake off the cobwebs of old-fashioned theatrics and make way for what some call, in derogatory fashion, “kitchen sink drama”.

But it made playwrights like Alun Owen, and helped Ruth Dunning to win an Actress of the Year award. It also saw the start of Billie Whitelaw’s great career in a comedy series called My Wife and I.

This Saturday, Hughie Green will be talking about the tragedies and the fun that has gone on at Didsbury studios. For there have been heartbreaks and joy behind the scenes.

I wonder how many people realise that The Avengers really started in these studios. In those days it was called Police Surgeon and starred Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee as the mysterious agent.

(Editors’ Note: David Hamilton’s memories and those of the TVTimes caption writer are at variance with the established facts of The Avengers. Although the first – live – series did star Hendry, he was not playing the same character he created in Police Surgeon.)

It was in these studios that Mike and Bernie Winters became national names. And I will always have a tremendous affection for this cinema-turned-TV-studio because it was the place I first met Ken Dodd and found myself with a national name – “Diddie” David Hamilton. Ken, of course, couldn’t resist calling the studios “diddie Didsbury”.

Diddie it may be in some ways now but gigantic studios have, or are, being built all over the country ready for ITV’s new look which you will see on Monday.

But it has been a giant of a studio so far as paving the way for programmes in the past. Adult education started from here, teaching viewers everything from how to write correctly, to learning the background to their Sunday newspapers, to the geography of their own country, to simple cooking with Philip Harben.

The great days of rock ‘n’ roll began in Didsbury with programmes like Boy Meets Girl and Wham!! – those two exclamations were insisted upon – with stars such as Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard and the glamourous Vernons Girls. A young man starting his career here was guitarist Joe Brown, who later became a West End star in Charlie Girl.

To pop fans, one corner of Didsbury is almost sacred. It is the place where four young men from Liverpool made their first appearance before the nation. Yes, you’ve guessed it – The Beatles.

I well remember passing Brian Epstein and the boys on the steps up to my announcers’ booth and hearing Brian getting very angry with one of them because he hadn’t been to the dentist!

Another of my memories will always be the formation of ITV’s top, regular orchestra in the North, the ABC Television Showband with Bob Sharples. What a swinging sound those boys have made for people like Eamonn Andrews, Bruce Forsyth, Doddy and Matt Munro.

Unknown to most viewers, Didsbury has been the headquarters for the vast outside broadcast fleet of vehicles (until recently the biggest in ITV) that has brought viewers such sports programmes as wrestling, horse racing, rugby league and car racing.

These vehicles have enabled viewers to see programmes like The Blackpool Show and, years ago, Holiday Town Parade.

But this weekend it will all be memories. I shall take my place for the last time in the tiny announcers’ studio to bring you the final programme of a television era. And after saying my “Special goodnight to you” I shall feel sorrow as we lock the doors for ever on a building that has entertained a nation.

This article was first published on 25 July 1968 as part of the first TVTimes Granada (west of the Pennines) edition, for 27 July to 2 August. This was the last TVTimes to feature an ABC weekend. The article was not published in the east of the Pennines (ie YTV) region.

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Truisms all, but particularly pertinent to television; a virile young industry, learning fast, changing with the pattern of public demand, and growing at the accelerated pace of all development in electronics processes.

As a company ABC TV has always been very awake to this changing face. While establishing its resources, it has also been especially busy anticipating the demands of promising and probable developments.

A switching of the line standards was something to expect. The arrival of colour television was another. Decisions have now been taken on the standards, but in 1950 – when the new technical block was being planned for Teddington – the questions was still wide open, and suggested the adoption of equipment that would work equally well on 405, 525 or 625. Fortunately manufacturers, too, were then beginning to recognise this need and cameras and monitors designed for quick switching between standards were on the way.

But as very little had been done to produce equipment for signal switching and distribution in a multi-standard form, ABC engineers started development along these lines themselves. And with the obvious advantages then being offered by transistorisation they naturally concentrated on designing equipment that employed this new technique to the full. The result has been a complete range of modular devices for the routing of signals, and with a performance capable of handling colour – another facet of the future ABC had been investigating in the most practical way possible, through experimentation.

As the BBC were already putting a great deal of effort and brainpower into their design for British colour television, based on the American NTSC system, ABC decided that and experimental and development work they did would be of more value if directed at the embryo SECAM system. Out of this pioneering work, done with the co-operation of GEC, has come some very worthwhile equipment refinements, real flexibility and a lot of novel advantages in the arrangement and design of their technical facilities, and a valuable familiarity with the problems that colour television will bring.

And, most practical of all, it has now led to the SECAM system being given high-power transmission trials. One of the best examples of the Company’s foresight is embodied in the very skeleton of the new Teddington block.

With the future promising an influx of new equipment, and new applications of technical space calling for massive reshuffling of facilities, ABC introduced a unique element into the design of the block. The entire floor of the technical area is a pre-cast concrete network of one-foot square holes, supported over a void that can be pressurised with fresh air during operation and is deep enough to crawl in.

Above the ceiling is a similar void that can be exhausted. As a result, equipment can be placed wherever it is needed, and supplied with cooling air and cables simply by cutting corresponding holes in the tiles covering the floor and ceiling grills.

Other examples of their eye to the future can be found in the equipment they have chosen; telecine and VTR machines that are instantly switchable between line standards, easily and quickly adaptable for colour; lighting installations with sufficient reserve capacity for colour productions.

Or in the arrangement of their facilities; the interlocking of production areas and routing of signals through one, central apparatus area; the special VTR suite equipped for electronic editing.

Perhaps the best composite example of ABC’s planning is Teddington as a whole. It is one of the most modern studio centres in Europe. But the drive towards tomorrow is the same throughout the Company.

Written for and published in ‘ABC in Focus’, 1963

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Then the lower rank of hotels started offering radio rooms, so the top hotels, keen to stay ahead, moved the radio into the guests’ room – usually built-in to the wall and offering a choice of three stations – the National, the Regional and a foreign entertainment station like Normandie, Luxembourg or Paris PTT.

When the lower rank copied this innovation in the late 1940s, the top hotels converted their radio room to a television room. One 405-line TV surrounded by semi-comfortable armchairs, usually rusted in to the BBC Television Service even after ITV began in 1955 and generally surrounded by dozing older people.

Of course, the lower rank of hotels again copied this, and a television room was something expected of all but the smallest and cheapest hotels by the 1960s. So the poshest of the posh hotels went one better and started to put television sets in the guests’ rooms.

Free from the tyranny of the majority, guests could now choose to watch ITV rather than the more staid BBC output of the television room. The very very top hotels even added 405/625 dual standard sets, giving guests a rare chance to see the new BBC-2.

By the late 1960s, people staying in the “best” hotels expected en suite facilities, a kettle or at least 24-hour room service providing a pot of tea on demand and a large, 18″ television in the corner. These televisions, as with ones starting to become popular at home, had pre-tunable selection buttons, offering each channel at a push (generally a very hefty push that made a satisfying clunking sound and set the TV rocking slightly). And like the ones at home, they had 4 buttons available.

The debate over what to do with the fourth channel – allocated spectrum when BBC-2 launched but never used – had been going on since the establishment of ITV in 1955. A second ITV service to compete with the first and break the advertising monopoly of the rich ITV companies was the argument most often made in Conservative circles. For Labour, the goal was a BBC-3, although the thought chilled the BBC themselves who had no idea how to pay for it. The Liberals considered an educational network to be the best use, while the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland, still to gain much in the way of representation, wanted a dedicated public service broadcaster for their nations. A tiny group of progressive socialists and patrician Tories thought the best use would be an “open” broadcaster, providing small independent companies an outlet to serve the minorities of the UK, funded out of ITV’s profits.

While these arguments trundled on in parliament, conference fringe events and the letters page of The Times and The Observer, another idea was put into action.

The British Travel Association had noted both the unused button and the fact that the top hotels had their television and radio pictures “piped in”, rather than picked up off-air. The hotels noted that the concierge services, providing advice on what to visit and offering tickets for the main attractions, were popular but often formed large queues of people who didn’t even know what they could see, let alone intended to buy tickets. And ABC TV in Teddington noted that they had studios and staff idle on weekdays and a use for the spare capacity would be very good for the bottom line.

The result was Welcome TV. Piped to the top hotels from ABC and presented by ABC announcers – Sheila Kennedy in the picture above, for instance – it provided a short package of British Tourist Authority films and event guides. Guests could be informed about when the changing of the guard took place, what to expect from the weather, and a run down of the top West End shows. Armed with this information, the guest could then go to the hotel concierge already informed about what was available, and the concierge could then sell theatre tickets, make restaurant bookings and provide a map – all with a healthy cut going to the hotel. It was win-win for everybody.

Alas, it didn’t really work. Despite keeping the information bite-sized and providing lots of opportunities to catch each programme, people were reluctant to switch on the television early in the morning – such a decadent, sloppy thing to do – and just as unlikely to pop it on of a lunchtime. By the time the evening came round, the guest had already decided what to do, or had at least queued at the concierge desk and asked him for advice. Then ABC became Thames and the spare capacity at Teddington was needed for a weekday service and so evaporated. The economic reverses of the early 1970s choked off the tourism boom and with it the generous funding for the new, statutory, British Tourist Authority, which replaced the British Travel Association in 1969.

Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting forgotten piece of television history and an example of how spare capacity in a broadcasting system will always be filled, be it with “pirate” stations or piped-in tourist TV.

Article source: https://www.transdiffusion.org/2014/12/15/abc-and-the-fourth-channel

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In the midlands, the only economic option was to bunk up with rival weekday company ATV. Neither company had set its heart on the midlands and neither saw its ultimate future to lie there. With no real centre to the region (Birmingham was the official centre, but Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby all claimed to be more vibrant) both ‘Associateds’ felt that, with large London production facilities available nearby, the midlands was just too close to support two more studio buildings.

The result of this apparent lack of faith was the birth of Alpha Television. Based in the run down industrial area of Aston, a former village subsumed into the sprawl of Birmingham, the joint company provided facilities to both companies with an agreeable economy of scale from the beginning.

If the idea of joint facilities – nothing new in London or the midlands – was broached by ABC when starting operations in the north, no record remains of Granada’s response. Quay Street remained a Granada-exclusive centre, and ABC never operated from there.

Instead, the area west of the Pennines was scoured in order to find a premises that matched 3 criteria:

1. That it was large enough to house 3 studios;
2. It was already owned by ABPC or at least available cheaply;
3. If it was owned by ABPC, they would not feel the loss through the change of use.

Didsbury was the answer. This well-to-do suburb of Manchester was well connected by road and rail, close enough to get to the important centres of the region, far enough from the city to be quiet. Above all it contained a building that matched all three criteria, more or less – the ABC Capital Cinema.

The Capital was large enough for one main stage with audience on the ground floor, one videoing stage on the first floor, with a presentation and news studio (no more than a room) tucked away to the side of the smaller stage.

The building, obviously, was already in the family; the remaining criterion – that the parent corporation should not be put out by its loss – was fulfilled easily. The cinema operations of ABPC, while not loss making, were beginning to feel the pinch as tastes changed. The Capital wasn’t losing money – but it wasn’t making enough for ABPC to notice the loss.

To the sound of anguished disapproval from local residents, Associated British Cinemas announced the closure of the Capital, Didsbury; at the same time ABPC announced the location of their new northern studios. The two announcements concerned the same building.

The comparatively small space provided by the Capital Studios compared to the likes of Granada’s Quay Street and Associated-Rediffusion’s grand plans in Wembley were soon apparent. Space in an office block in the centre of Manchester was purchased for the advertising department – a building that to this day retains the name “Television House” and a suite of offices that now houses – of all things – the Independent Television Commission’s northern office.

ABC also went on to develop small news studios and advertising offices elsewhere in its region (the ABC cinema in Liverpool gave up an upstairs office to ABC Weekend’s news department, while ABC’s famously pushy advertising executives moved into Permanent House in Leeds, uncomfortably close to both Granada and Associated-Rediffusion’s own northern sales departments).

But for all this, the towns of Didsbury, Aston and Teddington were to be forever linked in the minds of viewers to ABC Weekend TV.

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When ABC Weekend TV upped-sticks and moved to London to become Thames Television, the famous studios at Didsbury were consigned to history.

Ironically, the last productions to be made at Didsbury were made by ABC on behalf of Yorkshire Television, who were had begun broadcasting from Leeds, reflecting the new geographical (as opposed to chronological) split in the north.

After production finally ceased at Didsbury – YTV having completed its Kirkstall Road studios – the building eventually ended up under control of a university, who used it for cinema and television studies.

All things end, and so it was with the Capitol Studios, pulled down to make room for senior citizens accommodation. One is left wondering if the new inhabitants are aware that they are sleeping, eating and socialising in the same space that once rang with the sound of Hughie Green offering opportunity a knock at someone’s door, Steed delivering a blow to an assailant, or even a man in a booth saying “ABC, your weekend television in the north”

Photos courtesy of Kif Bowden-Smith, Tim Disney and Hector Hill

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