THE heart of the World of Sport doesn’t beat. It ticks relentlessly.

Tick-tick. It’s the first sound heard by three typists, four sub-editors, two pools advisers, eight results men, three editorial executives, 40 sound, lighting, camera, studio, props and make-up staff when they arrive at Teddington Studios at 8.30 every Saturday morning.

Tick-tick, tick-tick. That’s the sound of the enemy – the small black clock with white figures on the studio wall. It reaches a pounding, panic-stricken peak at around 4.40 p.m. And stops at 5.15 p.m.

But for eight hours 45 minutes every Saturday, that clock is the god of World of Sport.

Morning. Staff arrive quickly, without fuss. No time to chat. There’s equipment to check. Telepronters, soon to chatter their frantic messages; scripts to recheck; schedules to go over.

First tea of the day. Steaming. Good. One tea lady makes 25 gallons [~114 litres – Ed] of tea every Saturday for the World of Sport team.

Control room. One long desk. Six monitor sets.

Sports editor John Bromley, tall, rather pale, intense, sits in the middle seat. Assistants Ian Marshall and Olympic runner Adrian Metcalfe flank him. Already they’re checking on outside broadcast teams. John Rickman at horse racing… Freddie Trueman on a roving commission… Bill Fallowfield at Rugby League… Kent Walton at wrestling.

Late instructions for all of them. Last minute link with cricket correspondent Ian Wooldridge in South Africa.

The line’s faulty. Needs attention. Are the telephonists on the switchboard happy? Everything OK with the 16-man O.B. teams?

No troubles. Not at the moment. Anchor-man Eamonn Andrews arrives.

Teleprinters start tapping mid-morning messages. A game off here… a team change somewhere else. Each message carefully scrutinised; weighed up for news potential and rushed to Andrews.

No time for lunch. Just tea. It’s nearing zero hour. 12.50 p.m.— when World of Sport booms across your screens.

Strangely, no outward excitement. A sense of calm. Of expectancy. Of relief. Who was it that said waiting was the worst part of war? Countdown … three, two, one … IN. Perfectly synchronised. The face of Eamonn Andrews appears on the two centre monitors in the Control Boom.

Tick-tick, tick-tick, bang on 12.50 p.m. The war is on. The enemy is the clock.

First film report. Bromley waves his hands in the air as the flashover from studio to film seems to be seconds out. Sighs with immense relief as it flicks on in perfect time.

Pictures from Catterick racing appear on the two monitors on the right. John Rickman tuning in. Teleprinters going. Everyone has a job. News flashes from Bloemfontein to Birmingham are plonking into the in-tray.

Over to Catterick. First race. John Rickman selects his tip. Editorial racing man Ian Marshall duly notes. Eamonn Andrews, off screen, gets a few facial flicks with a powder puff from a make-up girl.

In comes the result of the first race. Jubilation in the Control Room. John Rickman tipped the winner. Eamonn does a double-handed “thumbs up” across the studio floor. Tick-tick. Everything going fine.

The soccer programme has kicked off. Flash. Denis Law has scored. That’s quick. And worth a mention. Skilfully, Eamonn’s voice is superimposed over snooker with the news. Another quick score message. Passed to Eamonn.

Panic, panic, panic. That last score … it was a Combination League score, not first team stuff. Frantic waving of arms in the Control Room, trying to attract Eamonn’s attention through the window. A messenger boy gallops away at full throttle with the correction.

“Now steady down, lads,” shouts Bromley. But is he just reassuring himself?

Executive producer Geoffrey Gilbert sails into the scene from his studio control box in the gallery. Declares that things are going smoothly.

Back again comes racing. John Rickman back on the screen, weighing up the next race’s prospects. “Tell ’em about your first race winner, Rickers,” implores John Bromley. (Nicknames are rife: Rickers, Bromers, Matters. I swiftly became Lanners!)

“OK, OK, Eamonn can do it,” said Geoffrey Gilbert. “Not to worry, lad. It’ll all work out.”

Tick-tick, tick-tick. Trouble. The 2.45 p.m. race starts 13 minutes late. Big trouble. Timing thrown out. The odd minute is allowed for. Thirteen minutes is a lifetime.

Schedule running late. Urgent readjustments. Cut Jimmy Hill interview. Get back snooker.

Soccer results coming in. Results “king” Dave Richmond collates the mass of teleprinter messages thumping on to his desk. All around a cacophony of clattering, typing, shouting. This is full stretch.

Yet on the studio floor, complete calm.

Wrestling over. Eamonn Andrews sums up the headlines. Into result sequence. Result reader Martin Locke is allowed exactly four minutes 40 seconds to cover all six leagues. He takes his time, standing casually before a mike, reading from a monitor in the studio. Ian Marshall does the same for the racing round-up.

All eyes on the clock. Tick-tick. tick-tick. No longer a menace. Eamonn signs off. Bang, theme music. Bang, advert for toothpaste.

John Bromley strides out of the Control Room, thanking everyone loudly. The clattering has stopped; plenty of chatter. Eamonn Andrews sits back, pours himself coffee from a couple of thermos jugs.

The news room is tidied and emptied within five minutes. One Saturday’s war is over. Next Saturday’s starts at 5.31 p.m. that same evening.

But at least you don’t hear the tick of the clock any more.

The post What makes World of Sport tick? appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

THE news has leaked out. The dreadful truth is known. The boys of Battersea Grammar School in South London have at last learned that their 29-year-old schoolmaster, A.B.C. TV announcer John Edmunds, wears a GREEN suit during his evening transmissions.

The boys show do mercy on him. They call him “Le Beau” – and who wouldn’t after seeing his magnificent suit.

It is of Lovat green [a yellowish-green or bluish-green mixture named after Lovat in Inverness-shire, according to the Collins English Dictionary – Ed] with dark bottle green lapels. His bow-tie is also bottle green and his shirt is stone coloured.

This oddly-coloured get-up was specially made for John because the small, fixed-position TV camera in front of his announcer’s desk makes a better picture from greens and off-white mon from the violently contrasting black and white of conventional evening dress.

John was hoping that the boys of Battersea Grammar School, where he teaches from Monday to Friday, would never get to hear about his suit. And there was a sporting chance that they wouldn’t have done so, for his TV appearances are seen only in the Midlands and the North.

But — poor fellow – the secret is out.

While correcting an English composition the other day. he opened a youngster’s exercise book and there, slipped between the pages, found these verses, headed “The Beau”:

Lovat green, it is his shade;
Lovat green, with shoes of suede.
His fans are numbered by the score
Waiting patiently at the door
His fame is spreading far and wide
This fact I won’t attempt to hide,
But!
If your fans knew what he’s like at school
Lashing about with his cane and rule,
You wouldn’t cry “Oh Hero Mine”
Or fill your hearts with love divine.
You’d stop and think of the Battersea Band
Who suffer and squirm ‘neath his iron hand.

Poor John! They’re much kinder to him at the TV studio at Birmingham where he’s known as “Smiler” and at Leicester where he’s the favourite of many a housewife.

The post John Edmunds (poor chap) is now ‘Le Beau’ appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

A BISHOP and a Member of Parliament discussing marriage; the history of a pre-Conquest church; information about pilgrimages to Lourdes. These are some of the things viewers will see in ABC’s religious programme, Living Your Life, during the next few weeks.

A wide diversity of subjects to include under the heading religion. But this will be an informal, informative, hard-hitting and sometimes controversial TV programme. It reaches a greater public; it brings religion into the lives of non-churchgoers.

Man behind the programme is 31-year-old Tom Singleton. His qualification for producing this series is that he studied theology at school, was active in the Methodist church and a member of the YMCA.

He has, however, no doctrinaire outlook. “I think that is perhaps a good thing,” he said, explaining that subjects were chosen to appeal to every denomination.

Certainly Tom Singleton is not biased. He has had programmes devoted to Roman Catholic interests — Douglas Hyde, ex Communist turned Roman Catholic, was interviewed. He gave extra time to a Methodist programme when German pastor Martin Niemoller was speaking in Manchester.

On another programme he got four young Church of England clerics to discuss their training. He has gone outside the Church to discuss moral problems of young people in industry.

Tom Singleton is a man with a fund of new ideas, inquisitive about religion and sympathetic towards human problems. These, allied to his knowledge of television, are the reasons why he handles his programmes in such an interesting way. He was born in Old Trafford, Manchester, near the famous cricket ground. At 18 he joined the Army. Broadcasting came into his life when, with the Indian Army, he began taking part in Forces programmes.

Five years later he was demobilised – but be carried on Forces broadcasting as a civil servant. Later he joined the British Forces Network in Germany, after which he was appointed Programmes Officer for the Forces Network in the Middle East.

Lively, broadminded Singleton left this post to join ABC just before the Midlands opening. Living Your Life is not his only work for the company — he is also Head of Presentation.

He is married and has two young children. He writes books and plays. He wrote The Gloves, a play which starred Dennis Price and Betty McDowall on television.

One of his plans is to show the changing face of church architecture. This begins on February 9 when, in the first programme about the parish church, ABC cameras go to Wootton Wawen, between Birmingham and Stratford-on-Avon, to study the pre-Conquest church of St Peter’s. The earliest record goes back to AD 723.

The late George Gilbert Scott described St Peter’s as “an epitome in stone of the English Church and Nation.”

Tom Singleton told me: “We will not concentrate on individual churches after this programme, but will describe different facets in the architecture of other beautiful churches in the North and Midlands.”

The post New plans for ‘Living Your Life’ appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

LET’S start with an indisputable fact. The play, be it live, filmed or telerecorded, is among the most popular items on the television agenda.

Let’s take the second fact, deemed indisputable by many an expert — that with ITV’s expansion and the increase in transmission hours, the supply of first-rate TV drama must eventually dry up.

That’s why the situation isn’t being left to look after itself. All the programme companies are on the look-out for new writers of talent and promise. And one of the biggest pieces of bait to tempt professional writers to write especially for television comes from ABC TV.

They announce a competition for plays, promise big money prizes for three winning plays, production, if the standard of the work is high enough, and possible contracts for some of the entrants.

There is no shortage of submitted plays. Something like 150 arrive at ABC TV every week. Mainly they are the work of enthusiastic amateurs. Drama Supervisor Dennis Vance admits:

“Many of them are unreadable. Then we get oldies that have been going the rounds for years — some I recognise from my BBC days. Not more than 20 a week come from professional writers. Not more than 10 a week are good enough to be read by me.”

Read by Vance — that means good enough to get through a couple of readings by the script department, for Vance could never cope with all the scripts, and supervise the non-stop activities of the drama department. And produce plays himself.

Drama is Vance’s life blood. And it’s the speciality of the company he works for. They want writers; they have signed producers — “Best production team in the country,” claims Vance. They are building a stable of young actors, and they have planned a big programme for the “Armchair Theatre” series in the near future.

Ann Todd is to star in The Lady of the Camellias in February. The same month Eugene O’Neill’s classic, Emperor Jones, with an all-coloured cast, vies with offerings from Italy, A Gust of Wind by Forzano, and Australia, The Night of the Ding Dong by Ralph Peterson, for Sunday night attention.

Raymond Massey comes from America in March to star in his own play, The Hanging Judge. The She-Wolves, by French authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (of The Fiends fame), is down for production the same month.

Beautiful American Kim Stanley arrived in London a few weeks back, to star in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She made her name with a TV play written by Horton Foote, The Travelling Lady. And it’s that “namemaker” that ABC have offered her for her first TV appearance in England.

But before we get to these, on January 26 there’s Tragedy in a Temporary Town, which was written by Reginald Rose and stars Janet Munro. Rose, like his contemporary Paddy Chayevsky, made headlines when his TV plays were turned into film hits, so any new play by him is something of an event.

The use of young players like Janet Munro is part and parcel of Vance’s starbuilding policy. So is the offer of exclusive contracts to a selected few artists.

Blonde, lovely Mary Peach, who has the female lead in The Master Builder on Sunday (January 19) got the first. Canadian Neil McCallum the second. Four more are still unclaimed, waiting for the right artists.

What qualities are needed? “Personal magnetism that is transmittable; talent; pleasant and attractive appearance,” says Vance. For them, as for McCallum and Peach, there will be seven-year contracts; plays especially written; release for stage and film work that ABC believes will further their careers and which they wish to do.

The reason for the offer? The company wishes to ensure a supply of stars, as well as new plays — which leads right back to the competition.

Plays may be submitted by any professional writer — with the emphasis on the word professional — who has not yet had work produced on TV. A short list will be prepared for a panel consisting of critics, a famous TV playwright and a leading TV actor and actress, from which the winning three entries will be chosen.

The settings must be contemporary, certainly not straying before the post-war period. And what is being sought is not necessarily a man with a good TV technique but one who can produce a good story.

“If we find the right writers,” Vance adds a parting titbit, “we would be prepared to offer five-year contracts for a play a year.”

The post Prizes for playwrights, contracts for players appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

WELL-KNOWN music-hall figures will get equal prominence with youngsters who have only just burst into the world of entertainment in ABC’s new fortnightly variety series, which starts next Saturday.

Say ABC: “We are out to provide variety — in the true sense of the word. And that means bringing along artists capable of satisfying the demands of all age groups.”

“The ‘pop’ music fans will be well looked after; but at the same time we shall balance the bill by introducing some of the older stars about whom there is a nostalgic appeal for many of our viewers.”

There will be a good example of this determination to cater for varying tastes in the second programmes of the series, on October 5.

George Formby, who has been drawing in record seaside crowds during his summer tour of the coast, will be making one of his rare TV appearances.

And in direct contrast will be the Charles McDevitt skiffle group, which in the last few months has had a swift rise to top billing in a successful provincial tour.

An interesting point about this show is that the McDevitt group will use it as an opportunity to introduce their new singer, recruited to replace Nancy Whisky, who is now a star in her own right.

To meet the demands of teenage viewers ABC is arranging to include skiffle groups or “pop” singers in every programme in the new series. Among skifflers booked are Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan and Terry Dene.

Shirley Abicair and her zither will be in the first programme, and other singers lined up include Edna Savage, Eve Boswell, Michael Holliday, Jimmy Young and Garry Miller.

On the laughter side there are some popular comedians to follow Albert Modley (who is in the first show) and George Formby. Ted Lune, the lanky lad with the thin face and wide, staring eyes is one. Then there is pudgy Reg Dixon and that ever-young veteran of show business, Jimmy Clitheroe.

This is the first time ABC has originated its own professional variety show, although the company has presented many semi-professional acts in its long-running Bid for Fame.

To launch the series, ABC have signed up Arthur Lane, an experienced light entertainment producer.

The shows will come from the Manchester studios, where they will be able to take advantage of such aids to unorthodox presentation as a revolving stage with a 30ft diameter, and a giant bow fronted lift, 46ft long and 12ft wide, which can sink 4ft 6in below the studio floor.

Another unorthodox feature will be the way in which artists will be introduced. None of the shows will have the usual type of compere.

Instead, a novel substitute has been devised about which Arthur Lane and his team are keeping a discreet silence.

All I can say is that a group of dancers — four men, but only one girl — are this week rehearsing some unusual routines by which they hope to weave a thread of continuity between the acts.

Or, as ABC put it: “As far as presentation is concerned we are trying out a new and completely individual style.”

The post And now – star variety from ABC appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Sunday’s Communion service, from Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral will be ITV’s most ambitious church broadcast. Two ABC outside broadcast units will televise the service, and special equipment never before used will illuminate the vast cathedral. Seven cameras will take viewers round the cathedral, the origins of which are described by the man who has made it his life’s work

I DON’T think I realised when I decided to enter for the competition to design Liverpool Cathedral in 1901 that it would affect my whole life. It was a small beginning, just a blank sheet of paper, a well-sharpened pencil, and the need a vision for what I knew I wanted to do.

I was living with my family in a flat overlooking London’s Battersea Park. My father, an architect, had died while I was still at school, and I was articled to a church architect, Mr Temple Moore.

The terms of my articles said I must not undertake any outside work without permission so I sought the permission of Mr Moore. “It will be good experience you, my boy.” he said. A truer word was never spoken. I have been working on the cathedral ever since, and I shall never see it finished.

Architects, of course, employ different techniques. Broadly speaking. I like to try several lines before I make my choice. But once I have an idea I like on my blank sheet of paper, the task becomes a joy.

That is, just how it was with Liverpool Cathedral. The only hardship for me, once I had got started, was going to bed.

When I was doing my drawings for the competition, I used to leave the office on the early side and get there in the morning a little late. I went to bed around 1 am.

After I had won the competition — I was then 22 – Mr Moore asked: “However did you find the time to do such wonderful drawings?” I told him about my late and early finish at the office. I don’t think he minded.

Now I am 78 and there is nearly another quarter of the cathedral to be completed. Since winning the competition, I have never looked back. I never had to struggle with “early beginnings.” The cathedral gave me a flying start in life.

Because of my youth and inexperience on the business side, the executive committee responsible for building the cathedral appointed me a joint architect with Mr G. F. Bodley, one of their advisory architects.

The design went through three stages: the first was my competition design; the second was that design much modified by Bodley; and the third came after 1907, when Mr Bodley died and I was left in sole charge of the building. I then redesigned it.

At that time we did not have what is called now “contemporary architecture.” We used past styles. There was the Gothic style, which emphasises the perpendicular lines of a building, and the classic, such as St Paul’s, which emphasises the horizontal.

I preferred the Gothic because its vertical lines appear to disappear into the skies where we believe, I never can quite understand why, Heaven lies. Hell is down below. I felt that for a church, this vertical style has much more of a religious inspiration than the classic.

Drawing the plans in small scale was only a part of my work for the cathedral. It is no good saying to the builders, stonemasons and other craftsmen: “There are the plans Get on with it.”

I have drawn in full scale every line of that cathedral. I have had the drawing paper on my office floor, crawling over it, drawing mouldings to full scale. I have done plans of every piece of intricate masonry.

Sometimes I have expected the craftsmen to come back to me with scores of questions. But they have not done so, and am delighted to record my admiration for the craftsmen who have worked on the cathedral.

They are the finest in the world. I am sometimes astounded how they have done such intricate work so that everything falls perfectly into line.

Naturally, Liverpool Cathedral is my own child. I love it all, for I have watched it grow, stone by stone. And I think my favourite interior view is looking up at the central vault from the central space.

It was in the central space that I once met a woman sightseer who, not knowing who I was, murmured: “I do think it extraordinary that the architect of this building could have so big a thing in so small a brain.” In a quiet way I was rather flattered.

During the war. when mercifully the cathedral was spared any serious structural damage, we had some old stonemasons continuing with the work.

In my life I have designed hundreds of buildings: Waterloo Bridge, Battersea Power Station, the re-building of the House of Commons, the restoration of London’s Guildhall … and the public telephone kiosk – though I didn’t choose its beastly red colour.

As an old but nevertheless active and practising architect, I am just a little sad that I shall never see my greatest work, Liverpool Cathedral, finished. But I have every hope that my son and partner, Richard Gilbert Scott, will.

• The cathedral was completed in 1978, but not to the additional plans drawn up by Richard Gilbert Scott – Ed

The post My vision in stone appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

IN Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London the hunt goes on. The hunt for talent. It’s all part of ABC’s plan to present the best possible entertainers in Bid For Fame.

Auditions are given to everyone who applies. And to meet the demand, for 12 hours every day someone, somewhere, is conducting auditions.

With more than 2,000 applications before the series began, entries are still rolling in. Two hundred people are seen every week.

I went to an audition in a Birmingham hotel. Throughout the week, George Stanford, ABC senior studio manager, had patiently considered all the applicants. Out of the 200 acts he had seen, 20 had been asked to return on Friday evening to give a second performance before the critical eye of producer Eddie Kebbell.

I asked George Stanford, weary, and yet still urbane under the bright, naked light of the audition room, how he felt after so much entertainment.

He smiled, lit the umpteenth cigarette and replied: “If these people are willing to go through the ordeal of an audition, then it’s up to me to see them through. Each thinks he or she may have that indefinable something which could make him or her tomorrow’s ‘top of the bill’ star.

“Six in 100 of these acts will eventually be seen in the show. So even if they don’t come in the final placings, they’ll know they’ve enough talent to be seen by millions of viewers.”

Kebbell, who made the final choice, admitted that this was tough. He hates saying ‘No’ to youthful hopes.

“Many acts need a lot more training; lots more confidence. We tell them so. It may be hard to take, but we don’t hold out false hopes.

“This isn’t just another amateur talent show. Anyone can apply for an audition — whether semi-professional or professional. All we want is a slick, entertaining show. If a television appearance brings success to the performer, then they are happy — and so are we.”

Birmingham’s Bob Hatch, the comedian who won the finals of the last Bid For Fame series, came along to give encouragement to some of the local artists who were friends of his. He told me that his TV success had meant success in other spheres, such as sound radio.

Good comedians are hard to find. Most acts consist of singers and instrumentalists. There are “pop” singers by the score — and they all sing the hit song of the moment.

“There is a shortage of comedians and solo dancers,” said Kebbell. Two singers who did please him were Jimmy Grant and Pat Howard. They hadn’t applied for an audition but were discovered singing at a church concert on the outskirts of Birmingham. George Stanford had asked them to come along to give an audition for Kebbell.

Newcastle-born Jimmy Grant, who sang Granada in the best Mario Lanza fashion, is a carpenter. He was delighted at the thought of appearing in the show and couldn’t believe that he had been “discovered.”

Pat Howard, a housewife with an eight-month-old daughter, has a powerful voice — “She could be a second Anne Shelton,” said Kebbell.

Brenda Vickers of Loughborough and John Padbury of Oxford are clerks. They have been dancing together for only a few months.

“I’m going to suggest them for the Windmill Theatre,” said Kebbell. If he thinks there is scope for an artist in any other sphere, he is ready to pass on a recommendation.

Twenty-one-year-old Sylvia Cooper had travelled 50 miles from Nottingham. I shan’t be home until two in the morning,” she said, “but it was well worth it now I know I’ve passed my audition.”

It was nearly midnight. The week of auditions was over. For the many disappointments, there were just a few successes.

And for these happy people, the long road towards success is open.

The post Auditions – the ‘telescope’ that finds new stars appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

IN this turbulent world it is not unusual for people to be puzzled, perplexed and bewildered by many of the things that go on around them.

Information and explanation are not always easy to come by. In local and national affairs there is a growing tendency to conduct matters of public importance behind closed doors.

How often do we read of hush-hush meetings, of confidential memoranda, of documents stamped TOP SECRET, STRICTLY PRIVATE, NOT FOR PUBLICATON? It is because it believes that the public is being needlessly kept in ignorance about many things in which they may be vitally concerned that ABC has decided to sink a lot of money into a fortnightly 45-minute programme that has one aim: to take viewers behind the scenes and find out exactly what is going on.

ABC Investigates is something new to television. Nothing like so complicated a technical set-up has been devised before. Each of these programmes will require the services of something like 150 people, for each in effect, is four different productions rolled into one.

The resources of three different studios — in Manchester, Birmingham and London — will combine with a complete outside broadcast unit, which might be located anywhere in Britain.

But ABC is confident it will be money well spent. As a new development in the use of television as a means of information, the opportunity to pioneer in this field has been enthusiastically welcomed.

A particularly strong team has been set up. Simon Kester, who made his name with brilliant cross-examinations in State Your Case, gets the star job of investigator-in-chief. As programme editor, ABC has brought in George Scott, Editor of Truth. From the world of films has come ace documentary director John Rowdon, who undertakes his first ITV job as producer of the programme. Under him are four directors.

There is also a team of journalists whose job it is to comb the country and ferret out the facts that will form the basis of these programmes.

Recently, I spent a day with them, and later I went out with Simon Kester and his OB team when ABC Investigates went on the air for the first time.

Although this was a full-scale effort, however, it was not seen by home viewers. The pictures and arguments were purely an experiment to see how the programme could be presented and to test the complicated technical details.

I think viewers will like Simon Kester in his new role. As the programme got under way, I found him still as sharp and pungent, if not quite as aggressive, as we knew him in State Your Case.

His task is a formidable one. As an interrogator, he has to bring out, in the most forceful way, the opinions of people he introduces to the experts. Then he tackles the panel on behalf of the people he has been interviewing, and conducts a free-for-all in an effort to thrash out the problem down to the smallest detail.

It is in this part of the programme, when Kester has the opportunity of standing up to the experts himself, that he returns to the punchy, incisive questioning that in State Your Case earned him the tag of “most hated man on TV.”

I talked to the programme’s “Big Three” in the Manchester studios afterwards. Said John Rowdon: “I like to think of the programme as a round Britain electronic conference in which we can attack those aspects of English life which, in our opinion, are not wholly democratic. We shall be out to expose things which some people would much rather keep quiet.”

Added George Scott: “Editing the programme as it goes along is a fascinating opportunity for any journalist. But then, this programme will itself be like a newspaper. We shall be following the news, and the way we treat our subjects depends on the latest news.

“The subjects themselves? Things like inflation, or the common market. Do they sound dull? No subject need be dull if you treat it the right way, if you feel the air of excitement in what you are doing.

I reminded him what John Rowdon had said about exposing matters which people in authority would rather keep quiet. How would he get such people to appear in the programme if they knew they were going to be attacked?

“We shall give them an opportunity to say their piece, and, if they refuse, we shall say it for them,” said Scott. “In that case, I think they will prefer to come along and say it for themselves.”

Simon Kester left me in no doubt about his feelings on his new job. “I think it has immense possibilities,” he said, “because of the way it brings members of the public face-to-face with so-called experts and authorities.

“Why ‘so-called’ experts,” I asked.

Replied Kester: “Often a man sets himself up to be an expert, but when he’s subject to cross-examination you find he’s not so much of an expert after all.

“This is where I come in. My purpose is to interpret the questions in the minds of the public and put them to these ‘experts’ in a challenging way. They will go through a tough cross-examination.

“I feel that I shall be doing a service for the public. This is the sort of job that would give any serious-minded citizen a great thrill. In probing public affairs, I shall not be as a compere who has learnt his script but as an ordinary, inquisitive human being.”

The post ABC INVESTIGATES – with the gloves off appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

LIGHTS dim in ABC’s Didsbury studios. The electric clock points to after midnight. The stars, the extras and most of the cameramen and technicians have gone home.

One man walks alone through the main glass doors and says “Goodnight” to the red-coated commissionaire.

The Rev Eric Geddes’ Sunday has begun.

For 15 months Mr Geddes has been giving Epilogues at the end of the ABC Saturday and Sunday programmes — five minute talks on living with God’s help. His are words that have brought comfort to many viewers.

Speaking before the cameras means more work for Mr Geddes, for his task does not end when he removes his make-up. Viewers write him many letters; some to thank him for his words, others to ask for advice. Many want to see him, saying they would prefer to discuss a problem with him — a friendly stranger — than with their local priest.

But they seldom call on a Sunday. Like other pastors. Mr Geddes conducts four services at his own church — St Marks, Gorton … the church whose football club became Manchester United.

This extra television work does not mean that Mr Geddes neglects his parish or parishioners. He is always “at home” to them; he visits and helps them. Television means he works harder, longer hours than the average priest. But he does not begrudge a moment.

When Mr Geddes leaves the studio in the early hours of Sunday morning he takes with him a recording of his Epilogue, which he plays back in the book-lined drawing-room of his home. Then he gets four or five hours’ sleep before he is up again to take the early morning service at his church, five minutes’ walk from his home.

Outside, it is not a beautiful church. But the interior is pleasing. It stands among rows of tiny, grimy houses in which live, says Mr Geddes, some of the best people he has met. The area is a change for him and his wife. They moved to Manchester from a Norfolk village.

After the early service Mr Geddes goes home for a short break before Matins. He does not write his sermon; he thinks of his subject and when he reaches the pulpit he speaks from the heart.

There are usually four or five baptisms before he leaves for lunch. Then there is a children’s afternoon service to conduct before he can read the day’s news. He does this because he likes his television Epilogues to be topical. They are not scripted. Mr Geddes speaks off the cuff.

At one time he had to arrive at Didsbury early in the evening to rehearse his talk. “As I wasn’t working from a script I used to find that difficult,” he told me. “I could never be quite sure whether 1 had said something at the beginning of my talk or during the rehearsal.”

So now it is several hours after Sunday evening service that Mr Geddes makes his way to Didsbury — arriving an hour before he is due to appear, to give him time for make-up.

It is again after midnight when Mr Geddes leaves the studio after his Sunday night telecast. He has a busy week before him. I asked him whether he was nervous in front of the cameras and how he managed to think of something new and interesting to say each time. “I’m not nervous,” he replied. “And many of the things I say are related to personal experiences … the stories one can tell most vividly are of things that happen to oneself.”

The post There’s so much behind that five-minute Epilogue appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

LEICESTER’S 70-year-old Mrs. Stella Sharman has had the greatest thrill of her life. Visiting the A.B.C. television studio at Aston, Birmingham, last Sunday, she spent the whole afternoon with her favourite TV personality, the 29-year-old announcer, John Edmunds.

The visit, specially arranged for her by the “Illustrated Chronicle,” was a great success, ending with Mrs. Sharman and John kissing each other as they said goodbye

Mrs. Sharman made the happy discovery that John, who works a seven-day week, five as a schoolmaster, two as an announcer, was even nicer than she expected. And. believe me, she had expected a great deal!

John has the knack of putting people at ease, says Mrs. Sharman. “If you had a trouble he would be the sort of person you would like to meet,” she says.

At her home, 8, Bradbourne Road, Mrs. Sharman had waited excitedly for the red letter day. Keyed up with happy anticipation, she and her husband, 68-year-old Mr. Robert Sharman, were taken by car to a luxury hotel in Birmingham, where they lunched with John Edmunds.

ARM IN ARM

Mrs. Sharman and John were like mother and son in no time. Later, at the studio. John walked arm in arm with her. Nothing was too much trouble for him. Everything he did quickly confirmed Mrs Sharman in her belief that his “gentle, kindly manner’ on TV was far from being skin deep.

She was sure he made an excellent schoolmaster. If her grown-up daughter and sons were children he would be just the kind of teacher she would like them to have.

TINY STUDIO

First thing John showed Mrs. Sharman was the tiny studio from which he made his announcements. She sat at his announcer’s desk, saw herself in his monitor screen, and examined his control switches.

Mrs. Sharman also saw the small fixed-position TV camera a few feet in front of John’s desk. This camera is similar to those used for televising programme titles.

She was particularly interested in John’s green dinner jacket and cream-coloured shirt, which he wears when announcing in the evening. “This camera does not like strong contrasts.” he says. Viewers see the green as black and the cream as white.

Later, John took Mrs. Sharman and her husband to the make-up room and the other studios, introducing her to the seemingly chaotic, overpopulated world of TV in the making.

Mrs. Sharman watched a rehearsal and had tea with John. He signed her autograph book as a souvenir of a very pleasant afternoon.

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THE eyebrows shot up. “Me? Square?” Producer Jack Good spluttered indignantly at the idea. Then he added: “Well, perhaps physically. But that’s as far as it goes.”

Jack, the man who looks more like the Oxford undergraduate he once was than the TV producer he is now, was talking about ABC’s Boy Meets Girls.

He beamed and said: “You might say the show’s gone square though. Comparatively, that is.”

Comparatively, because this 28-year-old veteran of two teenage rock ‘n’ roll TV successes has a reputation for blasting the viewers almost out of their seats.

But that’s finished. The bounce of Jack’s last series, Oh Boy!, has been toned down. So much so, that some are saying that Jack is going square.

Jack explained: “It’s not true, of course. Rock ‘n’ roll is not as overwhelming as it was. But there is nothing sudden about the change.

“Popular music is tending to become more melodic and less frantic. The arrangements are sweeter and the whole atmosphere is different – like the new show.

“Oh Boy! taught me that there is no substitute for personality in entertainment. The high spots always came when an artist got something of himself across.

The attack can become just as boring as the slow, dragging pace. We shall us an occasional ‘wild’ number, but the accent is on friendliness and the programme is aimed at a wider audience.

“We are out to capture the elder brothers and sisters of the teenagers. And the mums and dads, too.

“I have never been a rock ‘n’ roll producer. I have been a producer of excitement. It’s not the music that counts, it the thrill.”

Giving viewers the thrills and excitement are some of the old favourites from Oh Boy! Among them is petite South African organist Cherry Wainer and her cousin, drummer Don Storer; sax star Red Price; the Vernons Girls from Liverpool; and Marty Wilde, the show’s compere.

Twenty-four-year-old Cherry is not worried about the soft-pedal technique “It’s quite a change of course,” she said “but I like all kinds of music and I’m enjoying every minute of it.”

Said cousin Don: “This quieter atmos phere gives us a better chance to get a number over.”

Don and Cherry – they were last in South Africa almost two years ago – both love England. “Apart from the weather,” said 30-year-old Don. “I know you are all blowing your tops about this summer you’ve just had, but really it was no better than are many winters in Durban.” Producer Good is bringing into the programme guest artists and new stars from America and the Continent.

On a recent two-and-a-half month tour of Europe he found Little Tony and His Brothers. They will be making their second in the show appearance tomorrow (September 26).

Little Tony is 18. He sings in English but he does not yet speak it fluently.

His guitar-playing brothers, Enrico, 16, and Alberto, 21, are also up against the language difficulty. But when I met them, all three were talking excitedly to British rock ‘n’ roller Terry Dene. He speaks no Italian, but he discovered that the language of rock ‘n’ roll is international.

Little Tony took to rock ‘n’ rolling a year ago and already has many discs to his credit. He has won top prizes in rock ‘n’ roll festivals, too.

When he became interested in it he took English rock ‘n’ roll records to an elderly English language teacher to learn them parrot-fashion. It has paid off handsomely.

Many people think he is Italian. But though he lives in Rome he comes from the tiny, mountain-top Republic of San Marino.

And he proudly produces his Roman identity card, which describes him as a “foreigner,” to prove it.

The friendly, family atmosphere of the show is being exploited in a glamorous way – with the 16 Vernons Girls.

The group – all are aged between 17 and 25 – has two understudies. They attend rehearsals and learn the routines so that if a girl falls ill or leaves to get married there is always a replacement available.

“The Vernons are the first group who have not been presented as girls who look alike and dress alike,” said Jack Good.

“They are a nice bunch of kids; there is nothing of the stainless-steel glitter of the ordinary show girl about them. They are happy and friendly.

“After Oh Boy! we decided that if the public knew more about them they would go for them in a big way.”

Jack has in mind chiefly viewing mothers and their sons. He would like the mothers to regard the girls as their daughters and the sons to regard them as their sisters.

Dance director Leslie Cooper said: “The girls are being featured more in the new show than they were in Oh Boy! and we think it will serve to increase their popularity.”

The girls get plenty of fan mail. And 23-year-old Margaret Stredder, who wears spectacles, gets more than any of them.

Silver-blonde Margaret has seven pairs of glasses (one for each day of the week) and a regular boy-friend.

But the boy the girls “dig” the most is 19-year-old Marty Wilde, star of the show. He has a taste for fast cars as well as fast music.

Marty, owner of a sports car, told me: “I don’t get much time for motoring these days. I’m far too busy.”

The new role of compere? Marty thinks it’s terrific. “I’m very excited about it. It’s the biggest break for me so far and I hope this new show is going to be a great success.”

Marty is not worried that the general tone-down will lose him some of his fans. “I think I shall gain 10 new fans for every one I may lose. This treatment of the programme is just what teenagers want.”

Twenty-year-old Terry Dene, who shares Marty’s interest in speed (he has a motor-cycle), agreed.

“I have been doing more ballads than rock ‘n’ roll numbers and I have found that they have gone down better,” said Terry. “I don’t think people want to be knocked out of their seats any more.

“I wouldn’t say that rock is dying, but there is a swing towards the quieter numbers.”

Quiet, sweet, friendly. That’s Boy Meets Girls. It’s not the mixture as before, but it’s the formula that should give Jack Good his hat-trick of TV hits.

The post Boy Meets Girls appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

SIR PHILIP WARTER, chairman of ABPC [Associated British Picture Corporation], announced last week plans and policy for the corporation’s commercial television subsidiary company which will operate as programme contractors for week-end programmes from the Midlands and North.

The capital is increased to £500,000 [£10.5m today, allowing for inflation – Ed] and the ITA has been told that ABPC is prepared to put in further loan capital of the same amount from its own resources. Allowance has been made for up to 10 per cent. of the first half-million to be put up by leading provincial newspapers.

“We do not believe that TV is in any way going to replace the kinema,” said Sir Philip. “We are entering the television field because we believe that 28 years of catering for the public fit us for fulfilling the function of programme contractors in the new medium.”

He added that the corporation regarded the television venture as a regional and not a London operation. It was not concerned, he said, with making a profit in the first year, but was concerned that the prestige won as the result of 28 years of presenting entertainment to the public should be continued in its television programmes.

“The whole of our kinema operation is based on family business, and TV is essentially a form of family entertainment,” he said.

‘No Feature Film’

Sir Philip said he would encourage programmes of the “Current Release” type run by the BBC. There was not, however, any thought of televising feature pictures. The arrangements would not affect those the corporation has with CEA [Cinema Exhibitors’ Association].

When dealing with films programmes as contractors, said Sir Philip, ABPC films would not be favoured. Playing time would be open to all the film industry.

As reported in Kine, last week, Mr. Howard Thomas was named as managing director of the new television company. His colleagues on the board are the same directors as those of ABPC.

Mr. Thomas said operations would begin from Pathé House, and the London Pathé studios would be used for programmes which would have to originate in London.

Although no staff had yet been signed up, the plan would be to draw the best available men from journalism, advertising and other professions – but there would be no poaching from the BBC.

The company’s first programmes will be early next year from the Lichfield transmitter. The Manchester station is expected to open in summer, and Yorkshire at the end of the year.

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Chorussed the fans –

“We love you Beatles,

Oh! yes we do.

Wherever you go,

We’ll follow you.

When you are not near us

We are blue.

Oh! Beatles, we love you”.

Within twenty-four hours of The Beatles’ triumphant return from America, the four undisputed kings of the pop-world were at Teddington rehearsing for their first ‘home again’ TV show – ABC’s “Big Night Out”.

George, Paul, John and Ringo had landed at London Airport in the cold, grey hours of Saturday morning to be greeted by the screams of 10,000 eager and delighted fans. And no less tumultuous a welcome awaited the Liverpool group when they arrived at the studios to keep their date with ABC.

Fans Gather Overnight
Beatles fans began to gather outside the studio gates hours in advance of the planned arrival of the four boys. Many hundreds of youngsters had made their way to Teddington straight after a long vigil at the airport the day before and had camped out all night in the hope of catching yet another fleeting glimpse of their idols.

“They’re Coming Up by Boat!”
ABC officials, concerned for the safety of their much mobbed star guests, had worked out an elaborate plan to dodge the mad, wild, scrambling crowd gathered around the gates. From a secret rendezvous the Beatles were taken by car to the river and transferred to a police launch for the rest of the journey to Teddington. But somehow the secret leaked out and word quickly spread among the fans, “They’re coming up by boat.”

Riverside Pandemonium
For a time then it was pandemonium. Crush barriers and commissionaires were swept aside as thousands of Beatlemaniacs rushed to throng the river bank. Harrassed [sic] but good natured ABC security guards finally managed to restore some semblance of order. But not before several over-eager teenagers had fallen into the water and been dragged back on the bank again, soaked to the skin.

By the time the police launch drew alongside the landing stage shortly after 11.00 a.m., excitement was at fever pitch. The Beatles, standing in the cockpit and smiling broadly, acknowledged a roar of greeting, stepped ashore, paused for a moment for the photographers and then, with a final wave to their fans, made a dash for the safety of Studio 1.

Half-an-hour later the rehearsals for “Big Night Out” were under way and, as the boys went through their paces with programme hosts Mike and Bernie Winters, other TV cameras were recording the scene for inclusion in another ABC scoop, “The Beatles Are Back!” – a 30 minute documentary covering the first 48 hours of their return to Britain.

Split Second Timing
Produced by Lloyd Shirley and directed by Tom Clegg, “The Beatles are Back!”, which was transmitted over the National Network on Sunday night, was, in itself, a major achievement in television programming and split second timing. Researchers, writers, cameramen and production staff had worked around the clock from early on Saturday morning evolving a format, shooting material on film or video tape, marrying the two together and getting the programme on the air in time to live up to ABC’s reputation for spot-on technicality.

Said producer Lloyd Shirley, “It was a race against time and there were moments when it looked as though we couldn’t possibly make it on schedule. But we had a great team and the Beatles couldn’t have been more helpful so everything worked fine.”

It was not until hours after “The Beatles Are Back!!” had gone out over the air that George, Paul, John and Ringo finally left Teddington, their recording stint over and “Big Night Out” safely on the shelf. It had been another long and tiring day. And outside in the darkness the patient fans were still waiting.

The Beatles and all the other top Mersey groups are heading for Montreux. Not in person but on videotape – to the festival of world TV light entertainment in April.

Official Entry
ABC TV learnt this week that their special Lucky Stars show ‘The Merseybeats’ which was transmitted on the ITV Network last December, has been selected as the official Independent Television entry for the Montreux Golden Rose Award.

Golden Rose
Another accolade for the Mersey groups, Thank Your Lucky Stars, producer Philip Jones and ABC TV who are hoping to add the Golden Rose to the two Melody Maker awards for the top pop-music show won by Lucky Stars over the last two years.

ABC TV plan to give viewers across the National Network more exciting light entertainment shows, with Sunday night series ‘Blackpool – Night Out’ in the summer.

Top Performers
Starting on July 5th and continuing for 10 weeks in the Sunday Palladium slot, this will be a one-hour variety show transmitted live from ABC’s new theatre at Blackpool. As well as featuring much of the comedy and musical talent that abounds in the North today, the show will star all the top-line performers in Blackpool for the summer season.

‘Blackpool – Night Out’ will be the best evening of entertainment that ABC TV has brought viewers yet.

With the story of ABC TV’s Beatles scoop comes more news of the Company’s success in the light entertainment field. ‘Big Night Out’ – the popular variety show which viewers in the rest of the country see on Saturday nights – is to be screened on the London ITV channel on Tuesdays by Associated-Rediffusion, the weekday contractor. First London screening will be The Beatles’ home-coming show on March 3rd at 8.0 p.m.

When they heard about the deal, Mike and Bernie Winters – regular hosts and comedians on ‘Big Night Out’ – said “We are excited at the news, it’s great that the London audience will get to see the show – now everybody in the country will see The Beatles and see us too”.

Programme Tribute
A-R’s decision to take ‘Big Night Out’ is the crowning tribute to a show which has been building a great reputation for itself amongst ABC TV’s own weekend audience in the North and Midlands. The programme was devised in June 1962 with a strong regional flavour, and billing a lot of the tremendous variety talent that exists in ABC TV’s area. Today the show has won national acclaim – and even international recognition when it was sold to Australia last summer. ABC TV has even bigger plans for maintaining the show’s success – and viewers across the whole country can look forward to some very exciting Big Nights Out in the near future.

ABC’s candid cameramen capture more moments from the Great Day at Teddington. The four boys seconds before they stepped ashore, Paul McCartney smiling a greeting to his excited fans, and George Harrison and John Lennon in conversation during a break in the ‘Big Night Out’ rehearsals.

On January 19th 1963, four hesitant, rather young lads turned up nervously at the main entrance to ABC’s Teddington studios, to appear for the first time on TV in ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’. No one took any notice of them arriving. The commissionaire had their names, but to the rest of the world they were virtually unknown. On the scripts in their hands, their names appeared way down the bill.

Back in Style
Today – only a little over a year later – those same four boys returned in triumph to Teddington Studios. But this time it was through the back way, by river, because their entry to the front of the studios was barred by thousands of screaming and struggling girls who had waited, many of them all night, to catch a glimpse of their idols and the biggest rave Britain (and now the States) has known since the war . . . The Beatles.

First Producer
Waiting to welcome the boys was producer Philip Jones, who directed their debut on ABC TV last year. Phil – who has made a big name for himself in TV light entertainment with Lucky Stars, Big Night Out and ABC spectaculars starring Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee – will be directing the Beatles again tonight on their first British TV show since their return from America.

The post Beatles big TV scoop!! appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

ABC-TV

THE DEPARTMENT OF
OUTSIDE BROADCASTS PRODUCTIONS
PRESENTS

‘HOLIDAY TOWN PARADE’

1962

WITH £4,000 CASH PRIZES

FEATURING TWO FABULOUS CONTESTS!

✻ TELEVISION BATHING BEAUTY QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN
✻ TELEVISION FASHION QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN

PRODUCED BY DAVID SOUTHWOOD
Compere Keith Fordyce – Interviewer Peter Lloyd

ENTRY FORM Application to participate in the 1962 contests of

ABC-TV’s ‘HOLIDAY TOWN PARADE’

I …………………………………………………….(full name) wish to be considered for inclusion in the TELEVISION CONTEST:

✻ BATHING BEAUTY QUEEN of GREAT BRITAIN
✻ FASHION QUEEN of GREAT BRITAIN

(Strike out the Contest not applicable)
(Note: If you wish to enter two contests please fill in additional entry form.)

and hereby agree that if accepted as a competitor I will abide by the undermentioned conditions:

1. I am a British subject over sixteen years of age.
2. I accept the decision of the ABC Television officials (or anybody appointed by them) as final.
3. I undertake that if accepted as a competitor and selected to enter the Resort Finals or Grand Finals of the contests I will appear on the dates required at the place chosen by ABC Television Ltd.
4. I will report for the Heat before the advertised time of starting and know that any competitor arriving after that time will be disqualified.
5. I agree to be photographed either before, during or after the Heats and or , and allow that such photographs may be used without payment with or without my name appended for any purposes desired by ABC Television Ltd.
6. If I win a Resort Final I shall not enter any heat for a subsequent Resort Final.
7. If I am selected to appear on television I shall not enter again for a period of at least ten , but I understand that this rule will be waived for the last week of the series.
8. I accept whatever method of judging shall be decided upon by the officials of ABC , who cannot enter into any correspondence on the subject.
9. In the event of the competition being of the Bathing Beauty , I agree that artificial aids will not be worn.
10. I agree that ABC Television have the right to televise me at any time during the competition and to repeat or record any such television transmission should they so desire it.
11. ABC Television shall be entitled at any time or times without prior notice to any contestant and without giving any reason therefor to cancel all or any of the heats, Resort Finals and the Grand Finals of the Contest and to refrain from televising the same or any of them. In such event I shall have no claim whatsoever against ABC other than for any prize money to which I may have become entitled in the Contest up to the date of any such cancellation.
12. I understand that I shall have no claim against ABC Television Ltd. in respect of any personal injury incurred during the course of my participation in the competition.
13. I know that no winner of any previous Grand Finals of “Holiday Town Parade” can take part.
14. I have not been employed professionally to appear on television in the United Kingdom during the past twelve months. I recognise that if at the time of the Heat or Final I have been employed professionally to appear on television in the United Kingdom Twill be disqualified.
15. I certify that I am not under contract to any organisation or person who could prevent me from appearing or attach any conditions to my appearance in the “Holiday Town Parade” programme either in a Heat or Resort Final or Grand Finals.
16. I shall at all times be responsible for any and all expenses of whatsoever nature incurred by me in connection with the Contest.
17. No Judges of this or previous Holiday Town Contests will be allowed to compete.

✻ IMPORTANT

Those selected at the qualifying heats on the Friday must be able to appear in the Television Show on the Saturday and to attend the rehearsals. If you cannot do so then do not enter.

TWO GREAT CONTESTS!

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO APPEAR ON TELEVISION!

✻ TELEVISION BATHING BEAUTY QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN

Girls will be selected at the qualifying heats every Friday afternoon for twelve weeks, beginning with effect from June 29th. These successful competitors will appear on the ABC Television Network in “Holiday Town Parade” for the Resort Finals for which the weekly prizes are: 1st—£25, 2nd—£20, 3rd—£15 with £10 for each runner up.

Twelve girls will qualify for the GRAND FINAL on Saturday, September 22nd for which the prizes are:

FIRST PRIZE
£1000

SECOND PRIZE
£250

THIRD PRIZE
£100

✻ TELEVISION FASHION QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN

Open to all ladies over sixteen.

Ladies will be selected at the qualifying heats every Friday afternoon for the Resort Finals which are in the ABC Television Show “Holiday Town Parade” for which the weekly prizes are: 1st—£25, 2nd—£20, 3rd—£15 with £10 for each runner up.

Twelve ladies will qualify for the GRAND FINAL on Saturday, September 22nd for which the prizes are:

FIRST PRIZE
£250

SECOND PRIZE
£150

THIRD PRIZE
£100

Either bring the completed form with you, or preferably send it in advance to the Publicity Office of the resort at which you intend to compete, from which full details of locations, times, etc. can be obtained.

Follow the fun of ABC – TV!

David Southwood
presents
the seventh year of Television Contests
in the 1962 series of
the wonderfully successful

‘HOLIDAY TOWN PARADE’

from these twelve
popular Resorts
throughout the
summer

JUNE 29th and 30th –– MORECAMBE
JULY 6th and 7th –– BLACKPOOL
JULY 13th and 14th –– PRESTATYN
JULY 20th and 21st –– COLWYN BAY
JULY 27th and 28th –– PWLLHELI
AUG. 3rd and 4th –– SOUTHPORT
AUG. 10th and 11th –– SKEGNESS
AUG. 17th and 18th –– GREAT YARMOUTH (Gorleston-on-Sea)
AUG. 24th and 25th –– FILEY
AUG. 31st and SEPT 1st –– BRIDLINGTON
SEPT. 7th and 8th –– FLEETWOOD
SEPT. 14th and 15th –– SCARBOROUGH

★ GRAND FINAL TELEVISED on SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22nd
Location to be announced later

★ RESORT QUALIFYING HEATS each FRIDAY AFTERNOON at 3-0 p.m.
(For details of location apply at Local Information Bureau)

★ RESORT FINALS TELEVISED each SATURDAY

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During the course of his visit, more than 200 acts were auditioned. The pictures on this page show some of the artistes who may well be on their way to fame and fortune.

The post Opportunity Knocks appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The Press Conference was arranged by Mr. Arthur Jones, Yorkshire Press Executive, and Mr. Barry Wynne, Head of Press and Publicity.

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Most TV hopefuls want to be an ANNOUNCER.

What is it that makes an announcer’s job look so glamorous. A job which means 100 per cent concentration for 12 hours non-stop each day? Perhaps it’s because the announcer must be a friendly man, acceptable in every one of over two million households.

The announcer is the permanent link between home and studio. Programmes and performers may change by the hour, but the announcer is present the whole time, making anything up to 40 or more appearances every day. These frequent appearances make a firm impact on the mind of the viewer.

The announcer becomes easily recognisable in the the street, on the bus, or in the pub, and he cannot walk across the road without being spotted. Heads will turn and he will overhear the remarks – “Ooh, look, that’s John Edmunds. You know, the announcer on the telly.”

Perhaps it is that little bit of egoism present in every human being that tempts young people to hanker after the announcer’s job.

“For, believe me, life ceases to become normal once you are an announcer,” says John. Sometimes, he has to slip away from a side door in the studio to escape the attentions of fans, some of whom can be quite fanatical, at times.

Not for him the hotel rooms in the city centre – he would be an obvious target for the fans on each week end lie in wait inside Birmingham hotels, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourites and to get their autographs. John spends his week-ends in very homely and comfortable digs in Erdington, with “the most charming landlady imaginable.”

You see, John is a friendly and sociable chap who likes to meet people away from the glare of the studio lights. He is a homely type – and that is one of the most essential qualities of an announcer. If the station announcer is not a friendly visitor to the viewers’ home, then the station is switched off.

What other qualifications? A pleasant voice? Naturally – but not necessarily a donnish voice, and certainly not an affected one. It must be a voice acceptable to the Black Country, to Shropshire, to the happy, homely Lancastrian and the shrewd and dour Yorkshireman.

What language qualifications are desirable? Well, French is most useful (John Edmunds was a French master before joining ABC Television); Italian is handy, and so is German. If you know a little Greek, Polish, Swahili or Urdu, so much the better.

Does acting experience help? Definitely. Although the announcer must, at all times be of a friendly and happy disposition, there are occasions where acting ability can help him. John Edmunds was recently suffering from extremely painful tooth abcess [sic]. All of the dentists were closed and he faced a ten-hour stint of duty on Sunday. Make-up department, with their pots of magic creams, smoothed out the ‘pain lines’ in his wrinkled forehead, softened down the swelling lump on his face, and brought some colour to his ashen cheeks, but only his acting ability could produce the smiling, happy, trouble free announcer that Sunday.

The announcer must be prepared to speak ad lib at a moment’s notice. There may be a few minutes – or just a few seconds – in hand before the next programme comes on. He must be prepared to speak intelligently and unharried without a script, to millions of viewers, making making up his words as he goes along. His announcement must finish dead on the second, and it must be conclusive.

He cannot break off in the middle of a sentence because the merciless studio clock has beaten him to it. All this he must assess as he goes along – and that’s not easy, particularly when the controller has called him up on the studio ‘talk back’ and told him that he has ‘one minute thirteen seconds to fill, starting in five seconds time!’

Butterflies In The Stomach

What is it like to sit in the announcer’s chair? Very, very lonely. At the other end of that camera facing him are millions of viewers – his friends, but in the studio he is all alone with nobody at his side, not even a cameraman, for the camera is operated by remote control in the adjoining control room.

Once he embarks on his announcements, he is out on his own, speaking in a small studio, with a cluster of monitor sets, clock, cue lights, microphones and cameras just three feet away from him and facing into the glare of the studio lights. And he knows that seven million people are listening, he hopes, to his every word.

“Butterflies?” says John, “my stomach breeds them at the beginning of each working day. But as you go through that day, hour by hour, there comes a time soon when those butterflies have settled down to sleep, and you become completely relaxed. Up to this point you have been acting with all the ability at your command, to appear relaxed, comfortable and easy.”

So there is is. Our announcer must be pleasant looking and have a pleasant speaking voice. He must have a friendly approach to the job. He must be a linguist, and preferably have had acting experience. Oh, and he must be able to control breeding butterflies.

The time – 15.18.09, or nine seconds past eighteen minutes past three. John Edmunds prepares to read an announcement, coming up in 12 seconds time. On the left is the studio monitor which he can switch on to see the actual programme, or himself as the camera sees him. On the front of his desk are his cue lights, red on the left, green on the right. The red light flashing means stand by, and “steady green” means go ahead. The studio clock, known unpopularly [sic] as “That Thing” is surmounted by the small, but all important Announcer’s Camera, which can be moved up and down or sideways by remote control from the COntrol Room, the windows of which can be seen in this picture. On the right of his desk by the arm of his chair can be seen the switch controls for the picture monitor and his microphone, which he switches on and off himself. All this equipment is within three feet of him as he makes his announcements.

Commentary

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“I want to learn all I can about every aspect of show business,” she told me. “Perhaps one day my singing lessons might pay dividends.”

This year, too, 23-year-old Ann passed her driving test; was the subject of an oil painting which an admirer painted using an ordinary photograph as a guide; and was voted by technicians at the Alpha Studios in Birmingham as “The Girl I’d Most Like To Take Home To Mother.”

“It’s a flattering title,” said Ann, “but I wonder what their mothers would say?”

Probably mothers would be overjoyed, for Ann is a typical English beauty—fair, with a peaches and cream complexion, tall and elegantly dressed, quietly spoken yet with a gay personality.

Behind the charm lies an inquiring mind that has definite views about most things in life. At present its main object is set in furthering the career of Ann Taylor. And it has decided views on pin-ups.

“I have never liked posing for pin-up pictures,” said Ann (whose vital statistics are 36-23-37). “Now, I don’t pose at all.”

Other dislikes are “hypocrites, malicious gossip, intolerance, people who are cruel to animals and children, Brazil nuts and the sound of someone scratching nylons or silk.” Her likes include sunsets, outdoor life, beautiful scenery arid animals.

She likes housework, too. and shares this with the friend who lives with her in their London flat. Housework often keeps her up late at night—the best time of all for Ann.

“I get a kick out of staying up late, particularly when I don’t have to be up early next morning. It’s a sort of I’m-my-own-boss complex, yet in reality everybody is my boss.

“The great thing is that I work with such nice people. All the big stars I’ve met have all been most helpful, particularly the boys in The Army Game.“

Before she became well-known on television. Ann Taylor was a member of a TV dancing team. Then came cabaret work in the London West End and the urge to branch out on her own. She was engaged as the NAAFI girl in The Army Game, and this spot led to film work.

She was born in Stafford, and is the daughter of an architect. She was 13 when she went to a stage school in Hertfordshire. While studying there she made her professional stage debut in the pantomime The Sleeping Beauty at Salisbury. When she left four years later, she appeared in a summer show at Folkestone.

Earlier this year. Ann did a season of repertory at Cheltenham. She played in typical English comedies. “I was aching for a chance to play a bad girl, but they just didn’t think I was the type.”

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On a visit to Birmingham, she was offered the piano for £12. She bought it.

Then came the problem of what to do with it. Her third-floor flat has stairs too narrow for even the slimmest upright piano.

“I moved into my flat two months ago,” she said. “But I have made up my mind to move out again. Now I shall hunt for an unfurnished flat. I don’t mind where it is — providing it is big enough for my piano.

“I know that as soon as I can have it moved in I shall be wanting to play it all day long.

“Whenever I see a piano I go all goofy and have to walk over and play a few notes. 1 can’t help it.

“I am often a pest. When a well-known pianist comes along to The Sunday Break I have to ask him to play his favourite piece — and then stand beside him to watch how he does it.”

Julie, whose 23rd birthday was last Sunday, has a quality common to young people appearing in the programme — a desire for knowledge.

Tactfully, she refused to say which visitor she has enjoyed meeting most in the past year. But she did talk of some memorable discussions she had had.

Such as talking politics with former Labour MP Elaine Burton. “I questioned her all lunchtime about her Party’s manifesto and about Governmental responsibilities towards teenagers.”

Talking clothes with singer and dancer Millicent Martin. “What a personality she is, bubbling over with original ideas. I picked up a lot of useful tips.”

Talking sport with former Test cricketer the Rev David Sheppard. “I thought cricket was a confusing game, but he was patient and explained all the points I did not understand. He made it sound really interesting.”

Talking about fame with band-leader Ted Heath. “He is a man of few words — until you mention his band. Then there is no stopping him. I wanted to find out what it was that had made him such a success.”

Talking home-making with rock ‘n’ roll singer Marty Wilde. “I met him first just before his wedding and he told me about his plans for the future and the furniture he and his wife-to-be, Joyce, were buying together.”

Talking theatre with actor and producer Bernard Braden. “We spent hours chattering about plays and people and his backstage practical jokes. He tells wonderful stories.”

Talking jazz with Methodist Minister Dr Donald Soper. “He was the last man I expected to know anything about modern music. But he told us he had played jazz and I found him very knowledgeable about modern musical trends.”

And just talking with poet John Betjeman. “Well, it’s impossible to talk to him about anything. You have to sit back and let him do the talking. He is a fascinating man with a tremendous sense of fun.”

And what about the club members themselves?

Said Julie: “Oh, they talk, talk, talk about anything and everything. The marvellous thing is that they are willing to go on television and discuss any subject. And they cannot check up on it beforehand because they are not told what it is going to be until the club opens on the day of the programme.

“They come from all parts of the country and different walks of life. They may not have always the ability to put into words exactly what they think, but they are not afraid to talk and give the rest of us the benefit of their own experiences.

“They are a vital part of The Sunday Break. Without them we might just as well shut down.”

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An august bunch they were and the most venerable of them said to me afterwards: “You did it wrongly. You stirred anti-clock-wise. You should always stir clockwise. I was taught that.”

“But why?” I asked. “What happens if you stir anti-clockwise?”

“It curdles.”

If this new series of mine — 13 lessons called “The Grammar of Cookery” — succeeds in releasing the craft of cooking from the bonds of voodoo, mumbo-jumbo, witchcraft and black magic, it will not have been in vain.

In cooking, things happen for the physical reasons that make them happen — and it is those reasons that I am analysing in “The Grammar of Cookery”. That is why we are using such things as microscopes, integral calculus, parabolic graphs and slide rules.

At the same time I hope that no one will get the idea that in order to be a cook you need to be a mathematician or a colloid chemist, nor that in order to make mayonnaise you need a microscope.

No, the whole idea is to show how and why things happen in cookery. It is all basic bed-rock stuff. I wanted it that way and Executive Producer Lloyd Shirley wanted it that way too. A welcome change for me. In the past I have had to fight off attempts to wish on me every conceivable gimmick — practically dancing girls and gypsy violins.

This series will contain no new recipes. To begin with there are no really new recipes. It has all been done before. The Book of Ecclesiastes is right. Actually I think that there are far too many recipes already. Cooking skill is what matters.

Yes cooking skill. And that means love of good food. What becomes of cooking skill when you have the deep-freeze and instant-everything? Isn’t it killed?

Well, has the theatre been killed by television, musicianship by gramophone records, painting by colour printing? Not so as you would notice!

I am not the best cook in the world, not by a long chalk. There are many far better practitioners than me (including you, for all I know). I am just the chap who decided to find out what makes cooking tick and to try and pass on that knowledge.

It is one thing to work out the rules — the “Grammar.” But behind the rules, in every art, there lies the active genius that mocks at rules.

If you are a great cook, madam, you are a singer of songs, a poet, an actress, a painter, a pianist. You are Callas, you are Cilia Black, Vanessa Redgrave, Laura Knight, all rolled into one. And the world is at your feet.

Or it should be.

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So those preconceived ideas of a producer in a hurry were scrapped. He had to veer off course, forget the insistence on family relationship.

“I reckoned,” he told me., “that I could find one theatrical family with two talented daughters available for a TV series. When I failed to trace them I had to act fast — a new serial was in line ready for our Northern opening and I had NO sisters to play the leads.”

The girls he had in mind would look alike and think alike — and, of course, they had to be pretty. Just look at the pictures of Dinah Lee and Jane Taylor, the two real charmers Alick Hayes found at the end of his search.

Now they are My Sister and I, ABC Television’s new Saturday serial on Channel 8 and the North’s Channel 9. For these two girls sistership has become a good thing. Life suddenly took an exciting and promising twist. Alone, and little known, and then — “sisters” seen by millions of viewers.

The two lassies have become great friends. They travel to the studios for rehearsal together, eat together, go out together and have even begun to call each other “Sis.”

For, they say: “If we’re sisters onscreen, then we’re sisters off-screen. That’s how it should be.”

Dinah Lee hails from Withington, Manchester. Jane, who is 19, is a Scarborough girl.

And this is what they told me in between dashing on and off the set during last week’s show, their first: “It’s terribly exciting,” said Jane breathlessly… back she went… into the dressing room… Then Dinah… “It sure is,” and she breathed out again. Later, I cornered them and found Jane does come from a theatrical family. “But I’m the only one of the new generation keeping up with tradition. My brother’s an architect,” she said.

“Like Dinah,” she went on, “my first stage appearance was at 12. But at 17 I had a change of heart and switched from ballet to popular dancing. I toured with Zip Goes a Million in which Charlie Chester was starring. Later I appeared in the Benny Hill Show.

“This year I had my biggest break when Mr. Hayes our producer asked me to test for this part. And here I am.”

Then Dinah told me about herself. She is very talented and has appeared many times on the BBC’s Children’s Hour and Wednesday Matinee as a pianist. And because she speaks fluent German she acted as the link in a recent song exchange between Hamburg and Manchester!

“When I was 12,” she told me, “I played Alice in a Theatre Workshop production. Later I played the same role in a Trevor Hill production. It was great fun working with such people as Jeanne de Casalis, Wilfred Pickles and Jimmy Edwards. They’re a great help to young people.”

• Alick Hayes (1908-1983) was a writer, producer and actor. His biggest role was probably as Dr Jacobs in Emmerdale Farm in the late 1970s.
• The IMDb appears to have mashed two actresses named Dinah Lee into one, making it very difficult to find anything out about her.
• Jane Taylor‘s later career was sporadic, with a number of minor roles on television.

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Or else they frankly disbelieved it — like the assistant who was fitting him for a hired morning suit. When the customer’s name had to be written in a limited space on the hire form, Voytek slowly spelt out the improbable collection of letters until there was no more room on the form. The assistant looked up, pained: “Really, sir, this is no time for joking.”

After that he became just Voytek, which is the nearest phonetic spelling of his first name.

Born in 1925, Voytek spent his teens in Warsaw. He had always drawn well and been interested in art, but under German rule he had to go to an agricultural school.

He studied architecture secretly at the “underground university.”

Small groups of students met their tutors in private houses. Says Voytek: “It was dangerous, but everyone accepted it as a calculated risk — like crossing a busy street.”

As a member of a Resistance sabotage group, Voytek drew sketches and plans of places to be destroyed when the time came to rise against the Germans. It came in the autumn of 1944 In the confused street fighting, Voytek was wounded. When he recovered he hitch-hiked south to join the Polish forces in Italy. There he took part in camp theatricals.

He recalled: “We used to make scenery out of paper, but it stretched when wet, so I used to rub dry colour powder on with my hands.”

And so to Britain and post-war resettlement. After a year spent studying art and learning English, Voytek was interviewed for the Old Vic School of Design.

“I did not appreciate I was joining one of Britain’s principal theatrical institutions,” he told me.

“The Old Vic was still bomb-damaged and I saw the director in a back room. I was quite off-hand about it. I even asked to know the result of the interview the next day, although it usually took about a fortnight.

“If I had been less ignorant I would have been overawed. But they accepted me.”

Since then, by way of repertory theatre, the Arts Theatre and, for the past two years, on TV, Voytek has been earning a reputation for distinctive and sometimes brilliant stage designs.

For ABC he is the designer of Boy Meets Girls, Counter-Attack and many “Armchair Theatre” productions.

He is happiest when he can interpret a script in an impressionist style. Then, he thinks, a designer comes into his own in creating a mood which is right for the play without being realistic. A good example is a set he designed for J. M. Barrie’s Mary Rose at Nottingham Playhouse – a misshapen door and alcove to represent the distorted lives of the characters and set the mood.

Says Voytek: “I believe the Theatre is the essence of reality rather than a mediocre copy of our environment. ‘Props’ do not have to be realistic provided you get the right style for the play.

“I have used a few woven rustic screens and pieces of wood with chicken wire stapled over the top to represent trees. If you catch the right atmosphere with a design, the imagination of both actors and audience is stimulated.”

Voytek uses his hands expressively as he speaks. He has come a long way since winging his way through an entrance examination for Dundee Art School in 1946 – a first step towards the Old Vic.

To design a television play Voytek prepares “almost a comic strip” of the various shots and scenes throughout the production. From these lightning sketches emerge the more detailed “props.”

In the “Armchair Theatre” production of Boy With a Meat Axe, the script simply set the scene in “a street.” Voytek made it a street with lots of brickwork and heavy shoring timbers propping up a high wall.

“The timbers became an integral part of the fight scene, breaking up the action and providing a series of dramatic shots, visually exciting,” he told me.

“In television we usually work in a naturalistic style that is closer to film than the stage. It seems to be thought that while people will accept abstract design in the theatre, on television they will only accept it in advertising.”

Sometimes, with a few brush strokes, a designer can create a character visually. Voytek’s quick sketch of a jealous husband for the comedy Italian Straw Hat, produced at Nottingham, shows how a designer may not only create the clothing but suggest the complete character.

It was at Nottingham in 1955 that Voytek met his wife, actress Renate Brent. They were married the following year and now live near ABC’s Teddington studios with their children, two-and-a-half-year-old Stefan, and Julie, aged nine months.

Voytek used to “run away from the theatre” ever so often and do something else. He once went to Wales and painted pictures for a few months. Another time he became a decorator in a Mayfair hotel – and painted walls.

He is less Bohemian now. He no longer “runs away.” Instead, with a wife who has an interest in his work, the distinction of a single name may become his signature instead of a necessity.

• Wojciech Roman Pawel Jerzy Szendzikowski, MC (1925-2014) continued to work in theatre and television into the 1990s. His marriage to Renee produced a further child, Joe, but ended in divorce in 1971. His second marriage, to Fionnuala Kenny, also ended in divorce. They had one child, Taya. At the time of his death he had six grandchildren.

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As producer of one of ABC TV’s top shows, State Your Case, Janice looks forward to February 17. On that date this new and novel programme is networked for the first time.

“It will be a tremendous thrill for me,” said Janice. “My friends in the South at last will be able to see the show I have been telling them about for weeks past.”

With a huge weekly postbag, Janice expects this to assume even greater proportions with the addition of southern viewers. A great part of her working week is occupied reading hundreds of letters from viewers who all want to state their case in the hope of winning £100 [£2,380 in 2018 allowing for inflation].

Postcards, too, sent by viewer-judges roll in by the thousand. The first programme produced 1,000 replies. This has grown steadily each week until one programme last month brought in 12,000.

“I can’t get through all the correspondence during office hours,” said Janice. “It means I have to carry sheafs of letters everywhere.

“I read every letter thoroughly. After the first paragraph I just have to carry on. Many of them are moving human documents.”

In the short history of State Your Case every conceivable kind of claim has been put forward. Parents have applied to win money to visit their children abroad. Young married couples need deposits for houses and all sorts of would-be financiers want the £100 to float business ventures.

“Of course,” said the young producer, “we have naturally had a few people ‘trying it on.’ Probably the biggest example was the convincing letter from an ex-convict.

“He told us his house and furniture were being taken away from him because of non-payment of instalments. But we investigated and found that the man, although he had been in prison, wasn’t married and wanted the money to start a street bookmaking business.”

It is less than a year since Janice began producing.

Her yearning for the entertainment profession began when she was 12. She applied to Emile Littler for a dancing audition. She was successful, but her headmistress was against any of her “young ladies” going on the stage.

It was a very sorry Janice who was then persuaded to give up the idea. But, continuing her drama and music studies, she took a secretarial course and joined the BBC.

She became secretary to Michael Barrie, head of BBC TV drama, and eventually joined Dennis Vance as his personal assistant. When Vance left the BBC, so did Janice.

Before joining ABC TV early in 1956, she worked with Vance at Highbury Studios on such shows as Theatre Royal and TV Playhouse.

At ABC TV Janice worked as production assistant on Moment of Fame and on various children’s programmes. After Vance had joined the company she helped him to organise ABC’s drama department, before being launched as a producer in her own right.

Janice has quickly steered State Your Case into a top show. She finds it exciting and stimulating.

After all, what other programmes produce the kind of request she received from a man who wanted £100 to help him build a rocket ship to fly into outer space?

Resources:

• UK: National Domestic Violence Freephone Helpline 0808 2000 247
• US: National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
• CA: Varies by province. Visit Ending Violence Canada for more information
• AU: 1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732
• NZ: Are You OK? – 0800 456 450
• SA: People Opposed to Woman Abuse – 011 642 434/6

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Or seeing Henry sheathing his steel after a decisive ploy at Agincourt.

“English cooking,” said Philip Harben, bristling and bustling as he lovingly laid his carving knife away, “is the best in the world. The only problem is convincing the English that it is.”

The tone quite obviously brooked no argument upon the subject. Mr. Harben had no time to spare for anyone who didn’t believe as passionately in English cooking as he did.

He amplified the point in short, sharp bursts of information as he buzzed around his kitchen, cleaning up after the elaborate meal he had just prepared.

“With French cooking, you can get away with so much. It’s complex. But if you stick by the book, you’re pretty safe.

“English cooking has classical simplicity. It calls for perfection of basic materials. And that means that everything you cook must be absolutely right.”

On Sunday afternoon Philip Harben will show us how to improve our cooking in another infectiously enthusiastic edition of ABC’s “The Grammar Of Cookery.”

It’s a crusade that began in the Twenties over the stove of his parents’ home in London.

His mother was Mary Jerrold, a well-known actress. “But she taught me nothing about cooking. I’m afraid,” he said. “She was an abominable cook.

“I remember she used to think she could make bread. It was dreadful. So all that I ever learned about cooking I found out for myself by trial and error.”

The errors?

“I prefer not to remember them,” said Philip.

After leaving school he worked as assistant stage-manager in the theatre, as a cameraman and assistant director in a film studio, and as a commercial photographer. But the call of the kitchen became increasingly irresistible. So in 1938 he took up catering professionally.

Since then he has established himself as one of the country’s most popular television cookery experts. He has made several films.

He has published a number of books on the subject. And he now owns his own industrial catering firm.

But although cooking has proved to be a profitable commercial enterprise, he will always regard the preparation of good food as an art form.

“The French have one great advantage over us in this field.” said Philip. “As a nation they are passionately interested in cooking. And many English people still seem rather to despise it.

“When I go into a restaurant I react to the food I get. If I don’t like it, I say so. If I do like it I send the chef my compliments and invite him to have a glass of wine with me.

“It pays dividends.

“Standards of English restaurants are rising rapidly nowadays. And the standards of French restaurants are falling slightly.

“The day isn’t so far off when Frenchmen will be coming over here and going into ecstasies about the marvellous restaurant they have just discovered in Ashton-under-Lyne.”

Mr. Harben was struck by an afterthought.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I know two marvellous restaurants in Ashton-under-Lyne, already.”

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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.

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The TVTimes tells us what’s on ABC on Sunday 28 July 1968. Things worth noting include:

• After 640+ weekends, this is ABC’s last day on air.
• Yesterday, all but one programme came from ABC themselves. Today is the exact opposite, being mostly handed over to ATV except for the Weekend Sport, the film and the final ‘goodbye’ programme.
• They come on air an hour earlier than usual, in order to catch Communion from the Lambeth Conference rather than going to a provincial church near to where Saturday’s football match had been played.
• As usual, after the Morning Service ends, the station – and the transmitters – go off air, allowing all involved to nip home (or to the pub) for Sunday lunch.

• We’re back on air for 2.10pm for adult education – barely – before heading off to Weekend Sport. In the winter this programme was called World of Soccer and, unsurprisingly, concentrated on football. There’s no football in July at this point in history, but the programme continues with a different name and different sports.
• Hours of broadcasting were limited by law at this point, but there were a couple of exceptions to this: religion, adult education and outside broadcasts (the latter restricted to 300 hours a year to stop the exception being misused for general entertainment). This means that the clock only starts ticking today at 3.20pm, despite around three hours of programmes already having been broadcast.
• Quite a catch for The Golden Shot to have got Sammy Davis Jr on one of his visits to the UK, helped by his London agents being The Grade Organisation.
• The final religious ‘closed period’ of ITV 1.0 is kicked off at 6.15pm with the Tree House Family. This is the same programme as the Tinga and Tucker Club but with Christianity hammered into it. For viewers in the Midlands, Tinga and Tucker was therefore a six-days-a-week programme for kids with Jean Morton. For viewers outside of ATVLand, the Tree House Family was a once-a-week religious programme for kids with Jean Morton. The result was confusion whenever Midlanders and outsiders talk about the programme.
• A scoop for ATV at 6.35pm as Brian Connell gets to interview Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in amongst the 500 bishops, archbishops and metropolitans (there’s a joke there somewhere) at the Lambeth Conference.
• More from ATV at 8.25pm with the summertime replacement for the Palladium Show. A classic ATV variety bill here: a presenter who is big in the States but almost unknown in the UK introduces a cast of second-string and past-prime European stars singing and dancing on stage for an hour.
• The film at 9.25 and 10.25pm is the classic The Man Who Watched Trains Go By from 1952. Quite why ABC are promoting it as – shock horror – For Adults Only is an open question, as it was rated ‘A’ in 1952 and on its DVD release in 2008 got the modern equivalent rating: PG. The TVTimes says it’s “a nightmare of violence, desire and murder”. Nope, not even in 1952, let alone in 1968 or 2018.

• Braden… on the Box at 11.10 is undersold in the northern editions of the TVTimes. In London, it functions as ATV London’s last programme, a goodbye to weekends in the region that ATV have provided since 24 September 1955 and thus an analysis of the disappearance of ITV 1.0 and the beginning of ITV 2.0. In the north it’s billed merely as a return to TV for Braden that happens to be discussing television, with the only clue that it’s focussed on the changeover being the last sentence, left over in the editing from the London description.
• We close with Goodbye from ABC at 11.55. David Hamilton and Keith Martin are in the continuity studio in Didsbury. Down in Aston, Phillip Elsmore and Sheila Kennedy are reading roughly the same script for Midlands viewers.
• TVTimes gives a big billing to this programme; TVWorld in the Midlands, 50% owned by ABC, doesn’t, giving it all of three lines and leaving the changeover itself largely unremarked across the magazine. In TVTimes regions with contract changes, they had splashed big on the new companies and formats – Granada, Yorkshire and Thames/LWT.
• The programme itself shamelessly wallows in ABC nostalgia, majoring heavily on ABC’s early years. They show clips from many obscure programmes and happily show stills where said programmes have already been lost.
• John Benson is absent from the northern version, despite being chief announcer, as he was already in London assisting Geoffrey Lugg with setting up the new presentation department of Thames.
• Also absent was John Edmunds, who had recently departed to join the BBC, but he was acknowledged as he had been a staff announcer for ABC for almost the whole life of the company.
• The northern edition talked of the Didsbury studios closing; in the Midlands, Alpha Television was continuing until nearer the launch of colour, under ATV management, so Elsmore and Kennedy thank the staff of the jointly owned facilities.
• The programme was prerecorded earlier in the evening on videotape, for the ease of providing the video and film clips and the stills, presumably, coming back live to the respective announcers for them to say a final goodbye at the end.

• Both programmes made a point of mentioning that ABC was becoming Thames and thus wasn’t disappearing completely: the same people would be making similar programmes in future. Two weeks before, John Benson had even popped up in the north to do some in-vision announcing with the new Thames Television backdrop behind him. ABC clearly saw Thames as their continuing presence in ITV!

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The TVTimes tells us what’s on ABC on Saturday 27 July 1968. Things worth noting include:

• With one exception – Rediffusion’s The Gamblers at 9.05pm – everything today is coming from ABC. No other company gets a look-in except for outside broadcast items in ABC’s own World of Sport.

• ABC opens at 1.15pm for 50 minutes of pretty heavyweight adult education programmes.
  • The last in the series of The Middle Years presented by Ludovic Kennedy. The splendidly named Hilde Himmelweit, the ever brilliant Richard Hoggart and Polly’s father Philip Toynbee discuss how it feels to be middle-aged.
  • Fit for Life at 1.40pm is also sociology on the television – the 1960s being the peak of scientific sociology being seen as a potential cure-all. The GP and the psychiatrist talking to John Pett go unnamed because of the British Medical Association’s then-rule that practicing doctors where not allowed to advertise, and appearing on TV was in itself an advertisement.
• ABC produces the last World of Sport before handing it over to London Weekend from next week. The programme started in January 1965 and was presented by Eamonn Andrews with Richard (Dickie) Davies as his deputy. With Andrews off to Thames to host their daily magazine programme Today, Davies gets a promotion, with LWT promoting Fred Dinenage to the deputy spot.
  • The sports on offer today were diving from ATV, horse racing from ABC, athletics from Harlech, motor racing from ABC and wrestling from ATV, with the whole programme billed as an Independent Television Production. It was made at Teddington.

• The repeat of Life with Cooper marks the end of Tommy’s long association with ABC. However, Tommy and the series moved to Thames and Tuesday nights, renamed Cooper King-Size, as David Hamilton points out on air.

• The TVTimes in the North makes a big deal of Opportunity Knocks! being a special devoted to the closure of ABC at Didsbury – although Yorkshire Television would make some of its programmes there whilst they waited for their own studios in Kirkstall Road to be completed. In other TVTimes regions, the magazine would simply refer to this being a special edition to mark the closure of ITV’s Didsbury studios, with ABC’s name left out of it.
  • This special edition of OpNox! had no new talent in it, instead inviting back former contestants who had gone on to bigger things and showing the television audience around the backstage areas of the studio. The special, like much of OpNox! at ABC and at Thames, was produced by Royston Mayoh.
• The Horne a’Plenty sketch show at 8.35pm was another survivor into the new Thames, lasting one more series before the death of the brilliant Kenneth Horne brought it to a premature close.
• It was not unusual for Granada and Rediffusion programmes to turn up at the weekend – and ABC programmes to pop up on weekdays – across the major contractors as well as the minors. ABC and ATV’s petty bickering over the Sunday schedules had led to ABC pointedly selling The Avengers to Rediffusion and squeezing both ATVs out of one of the most popular programmes on British television. In return, ABC picked up several Rediffusion dramas, amongst them being The Gamblers at 9.05pm, which in turn squeezed blameless Granada out of some big hitters.
  • All this created a bonanza for the schedulers at the minor ITV companies, allowing them to pick and choose which networking of The Avengers and The Gamblers and the like to show according to what they felt their region would prefer rather than just going with the usual flow.

• At 10.15pm, it’s the final ABC Armchair Theatre, it losing the ‘ABC’ in the process of moving to Thames and a less comfortable weekday slot (other regions already didn’t mention the ‘ABC’ bit either). By happy coincidence, this is the 400th edition of the strand – which viewers in London miss, as ATV London dropped the programme in favour of a repeat of Gideon’s Way, which can’t help but feel like a small bit of spite from Sir Lew.
  • In typical Armchair Theatre style, the description of ‘The Ballad of the Artificial Mash’ sounds pretty sexist until the last sentence, which hints at a slightly more feminist outcome to the plot. We may never know, as the episode is missing from the archives.
• Sunday night had no epilogue, allowing the station to make a clean break as they went off air for the last time. So 11.15pm (approximately) sees the last ever religious talk at closedown in the North – Granada had never done them and Yorkshire launched continuing that policy.
  • This epilogue is by ABC’s religious adviser, and although it doesn’t survive in the archives, take my word for it that it was truly surreal. Ian Meckenzie opened with the most bizarre and tortured metaphor in the history of late night sermons, solemnly telling viewers that “Jesus was like the Independent Television Authority” and going on to note that the “disciples are like the [ITV] contractors”. It was ludicrous.

The post Tonight’s ABC Weekend TV… in 1968 appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

One of the least-known success stories of television is the constantly-growing interest in ITV’s religious programmes. During the last 12 months the Sunday night programmes between 6.15 and 7.25 have increased their audience by 40 per cent. Now they are regularly watched In 2,500,000 homes. One man who has played a leading part in developing religious television is

PENRY JONES

for six-and-a-half years religious advisor and producer to ABC Television and the creator of The Sunday Break, which returns to your screen on July 5. Another programme he writes about here is About Religion, screened at 7 p.m. on Sunday. Now Religious Programmes Officer of the Independent Television Authority, he writes here about the purpose of religious television—and its future

I KNEW that The Sunday Break had “arrived” the moment I saw the cartoon in a big circulation daily newspaper. It showed a TV repair man looking at a set while the lady of the house said: “There must be something wrong. I keep getting The Sunday Break on Mondays.”

Religious programmes have been going for a long time — About Religion for nearly nine years and The Sunday Break for nearly seven — and this is quite an achievement. Yet you wouldn’t at first sight call them popular programmes — after all they are neither horse operas nor soap operas.

They have included some first-rate — and deservedly popular — items. I shall always remember “Christ In Jeans” and “Image of Majesty” produced by Michael Redington for the About Religion series.

Then there was the award-winning film about the preparation of a nun called “Love’s Calling”.

My own work has been mainly with editions of Sunday Break and Living Your Life, and exciting work it has been.

You may recall earlier The Sunday Break with traditional jazz and discussions. I shall certainly never forget the long arguments before each programme with the crowds of teenagers, or the series on the various churches with Dr. Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Bishop of Woolwich standing up to tough questions from young agnostics.

Or the superbly moving passion play “A Man Dies” performed by Bristol teenagers.

It is remarkable that as the number of possible viewers has increased, year after year these religious programmes have maintained a sizeable audience. I couldn’t pretend to tell you why.

In one sense I couldn’t care less about the “ratings”. You see, we have never devised religious programmes with the sole object of getting good ratings.

We have never said “Let’s put a little sex in The Sunday Break or a little sadism in About Religion just to get the viewers.” Anyway I hope that by now viewers can distinguish between the honest programme and the programme that is just a botch-up of spicy ingredients designed to entice viewers.

This doesn’t mean that religious TV should be dull. We have tried to be lively and interesting without sacrificing our basic concern with Christianity. In another sense I would be mad to say I didn’t care about the ratings. I’m delighted that more people are watching them. I’d like everyone to watch them — provided we didn’t have to drop the serious purposes.

Religion ought not to be a hole in the corner affair. Some people, including some church people, make it seem like that — as if it were some Sabbattarian segment cut off from the rest of life.

Religion may be like that, but Christianity is about the whole of living. That is why our programmes try to relate to everything in life.

Any man (most children, too) worthy of the name asks himself certain important questions:

“Is there a being or a mind behind things?” “Why and how am I different from an animal?” “Why do I worry about justice (or at least injustice against me)?” “Why is the world a bit of a muck-up?” “Is it worth doing the right thing?” “What is the right thing anyway?” “Do I live on after death?”

Basic questions — the kind the Book of Genesis asks and the Bible sets out to answer. Basic that is, not just to churchgoers but to all men. That is why I am interested in the ratings — if high ratings mean that religious programmes are not just hole-in-the-corner affairs for churchgoers only. I’d be interested to know whether this increase means that many people are helped by the way we discuss these basic questions.

But television does not stand still. It is always in ferment and neither producers nor viewers should get settled down, hardened or congealed into a permanent groove.

The TV producer — religious or otherwise — who does not see the sands of time running out on his favourite format is a dull, safe, unimaginative man indeed. The ratings may be good, but there must be new ways of doing things, of touching men’s minds and hearts.

Religious television must try to do several kinds of jobs. One is to provide quite literally, a service for people who would normally go to church. The regular morning services are not intended as a substitute for going to church, since clearly nothing can replace actually joining in worship with other people.

But there are many people ill in hospital, too old to go out regularly or looking after young children who are prevented from going out. For them the televised church service is a great value.

One of the by-products of church services on television is that people can see Anglican, Free Church and Roman Catholic services, and I believe that this has contributed to a greater tolerance and a more genuine understanding of our different ways of worshipping God.

Other religious programmes should try to state as clearly and lucidly as possible what Christians believe — give a Christian viewpoint on our common life and above all provide for the great debate about the meaning of things.

I would expect some changes therefore — experiments in style — in About Religion and The Sunday Break. I hope they will provide an opportunity for new young writers. It would be good to have a children’s programme on Sundays which adults could also enjoy.

Whatever we do in the future, I hope the rise in ratings means that people have realised that these programmes are not just a kind of religious propaganda — but honest programmes on things that really matter to everyone.

The post Sunday success story appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

And it’s not surprising, really, when you recall that for the past 15 years or so Hughie has devoted most of his time to giving Britain’s youngsters the sort of chance they’ve dreamed of.

He is, in fact, rather like a one-man Arts Council in the field of light entertainment.

“It incenses me,” he said — and he meant it — “to see enormous amounts of money being spent promoting all this ‘long haired’ stuff which has virtually no public appeal, and nothing being done for music, theatre and music hall.

“For, let’s be honest, music hall is the very backbone of this nation. It has produced some of the greatest entertainers of all time.”

What I particularly wanted to know when I met Hughie during rehearsals for one of the Saturday Opportunity Knocks! shows, was how he had come to be Britain’s top amateur talent seeker.

A mischievous smile appeared, he settled back in his chair and said: “For the answer to that, we have to go back a long way.

“Before the war we did a show called ‘Hughie Green and His Gang.’

“That was a talent show really because we used kids in it, and we were always on the lookout for those with talent which was a bit out of the ordinary.

“After that, I had the good fortune to go to America and work in a show called ‘Meet the People.’ It was a sort of Theatre Workshop.

“We all got paid 40 dollars a week and there were no stars. But there was certainly no shortage of talent.

“In fact, the whole idea was to get hold of people who had talent but no real stage presence or ability, and knock them into shape. It was a first-class training ground. Everybody criticised everybody else.

“It was terrific. I did an act on my own, danced in the chorus and took part in the sketches.”

Afterwards, Hughie spent five years with the Royal Canadian Air Force, did some more work in the United States, and finally returned to this country in 1948.

But let him continue the story in his own words: “One day I ran across radio producer Harry Pepper. Would I, he wanted to know, be willing to put on an amateur talent show called “Opportunity Knocks!”

“I jumped at it. You see, it meant that once again I would be in a position to give genuine talent the chance it deserved. And that was something I wanted to do more than anything else.

“That show began on radio in the summer of 1949 and went on until the spring of 1950. And, since then, it has had eight years on commercial radio and, in 1956, made its first appearance on ITV.”

In the current series, Hughie has introduced what one might call a new look—repeated appearances instead of a final prize. What had he to say about this?

“1 think it’s far better. It allows one week’s winner to compete the following week and, if successful in that programme, go forward again — and so on.”

Why? Because I’m convinced that repeated appearances in front of the public do far more good for an up-and-coming young artist with real talent than any major prize.”

And then, to allay any suspicions that this might be a way of doing the show on the cheap, he added: “Nobody, by the way, appears ‘for free.’ Everyone gets paid either the Equity or Musicians’ Union rate.”

If Hughie needs any encouragement in his never-ending search — though I should imagine that’s most unlikely — two things surely provide it.

The first is that his “spotting” has produced artists of the calibre of David Whitfield; the second, that the best of his current discoveries are to be auditioned for the famous Ed Sullivan Show, in America.

The post King of the talent seekers appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

THERE are tricks in every trade — and writing is no exception. I have tried to master a few, but there is one I have never licked, and that is to write about something I have already written. As I am trying to do now — to write about this series called Our House.

It’s a problem. If I write a modest bit of self-effacement I’m suspect, because so many people know me as an egoist: if I beat the big drum and confidently forecast weekly nationwide enthusiasm from Sunday onwards, I would (quite rightly) meet resistance from viewers.

The only way out is to tell about the show and its characters as straightforwardly as I can.

Our House is a series of comedy (I think!) plays about nine people who only have one thing in common — and yet have to live together under one roof. They meet by chance in that modern dreamland — an estate agent’s office — all looking urgently for somewhere to live. Individually, they pale and tremble at the prices asked: collectively, in a sudden flash of optimism, they realise that together, pooling their resources, they can solve the housing problem — by purchasing one big house between them.

The idea is sound common-sense. But people are people, and when they are ill-assorted people, necessity is the mother of their mortgage. I took it from there, and have some hundreds of pages of script and a dustbinful of dog-ends to prove it.

These are the folk I hope you’ll get to know — and like:

GEORGINA RUDDY (Hattie Jacques): Works in a public library, but hates quiet! Has just got to have a place of her own because, noisy at home, she’s running out of bed sitting-rooms to be slung out of.

SIMON WILLOW (Charles Hawtrey): A pillar of the local council’s rating department. Blithe, friendly, but lonely — another victim of bed-sitter life; and nursing a secret ambition far removed from matters municipal.

DAISY BURKE (Joan Sims): A trial to the labour exchange. Will she never settle in one job for more than a week?

CAPTAIN and MRS ILIFFE (Frank Pettingell and Ina de la Haye): A Yorkshireman, former merchant navy captain, and a retired French violinist; a healthy and explosive marital mixture.

STEPHEN and MARCIA HATTON (Trader Faulkner and Leigh Madison): Newlyweds. He’s a freelance artist, and insists on fighting the world; but she’s always in his corner.

GORDON BRENT (Norman Rossington): A law student who hasn’t yet learned one law of life — that a man should do what he wants to do, not what his father thinks he ought to do. Our House helps him to learn this lesson.

HERBERT KEENE (Frederick Peisley): Bank clerk, bachelor to an extreme, meek, easy meat for landladies, a great organiser.

I can’t explain how the characters suggested themselves, I only know that, once they did, they were real to me

The post Fool House! appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

From Television Stars 1966, published by Purnell

Like many young men of school-leaving age, John did not have the slightest idea what he wanted to do for a living. Then one day, this son of a lorry-driver took a job as a porter at a fruit-market on the suggestion of a friend.

“For three months,” he said, “I slogged away between four in the morning and two in the afternoon doing jobs like piling sacks of potatoes one on top of another.”

After getting rather bored and tired doing this sort of thing, he decided to become a baker’s apprentice. He stayed at this job for two months before making up his mind that he would like to become an actor.

Having an intense and keen interest in dramatics, he was encouraged by the elocution teachers with whom he was studying to further his drama work at a local youth club in Burnage, Manchester.

The next giant step he took was the trip to London and to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He confesses that his first term there was somewhat of a disaster in that he found it difficult to grasp the things that were being taught. He says he flopped in the end of term exams, and went home to Burnage feeling very unhappy. But the next term at RADA was more successful. He went on to give a prize-winning repertory season at Liverpool between July, 1960, and January, 1961.

The next step was television, when he was invited to appear in a season of Granada’s “Younger Generation” series, and in an exciting role in the TV version of “Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance”. From then on the acting career of John Thaw was never in doubt. One role followed another. He appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in “The Fire Raisers”, in the film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which starred Tom Courtenay, a former flat mate of his, at the Arts Theatre in “Women, Beware Women”, and so on.

He was chosen to understudy Sir Laurence Olivier in the West End production of “Semi-Detached”. He also played the part. Working alongside Olivier, proved an invaluable experience for him.

After this came four appearances in “Z Cars”, which was then followed by three months repertory work in Dundee, and by roles in TV plays, including one in “The Avengers”.

“It was through that role in ‘The Avengers’ — the former series, with Cathy Gale, who was involved in a plot to put her on the throne of Britain — that I was noticed by ABC, who were looking for an actor to play Sergeant Mann in ‘Redcap’.”

Just before he started work on the series John, who had married actress Sally Alexander, spent a one-week honeymoon in Corsica. After this he got down to the part which has made him popular throughout the country.

He says his greatest weakness is that he worries about everything. But one thing he need have no worries about — is his future in television.

The post John Thaw appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

With MIKE and BERNIE WINTERS once again in the hosting spot, this sixty-minute production produced by PHILIP JONES will draw its talent from the great names of the entertainment world including those who are headlining the North’s big summer shows. Already booked to appear are: THE BEATLES, FRANK IFIELD, THE BACHELORS, SOPHIE TUCKER, DIANA DORS, THE SEARCHERS and CILLA BLACK.

Other regular Blackpool Night Outers include LIONEL BLAIR and His Dancers and the ABC TELEVISION SHOW-BAND, under the baton of Musical Director BOB SHARPLES.

While BLACKPOOL NIGHT OUT has provided one of the biggest OB sound problems for the technical boys, it means the summer months by the sea for Producer PHILIP JONES and Designer BRIAN EATWELL and their families.

Others taking up residence in or around Blackpool for the run of the show include PA JEAN FENTON, Choreographer LIONEL BLAIR, dancers PATSY SPENCER and GILLIAN BOWDEN and, of course, MIKE and BERNIE WINTERS, their wives and children… Mike’s wife Cassie having successfully found a house for them all while the rest of the family worked on the last BIG NIGHT OUT series at Teddington. (Bernie’s wife SIGGI HEINE was one of the original dancers.)

Meanwhile Philip, Jean and Brian have secured office premises for the season above a cafe just across the road from the theatre – ever known a Production team not to find a built-in tea trolley?

After months of planning, technicians are now capable of running up the largest number of microphones ever – no less than 31. Under the supervision of Assistant Technical Manager, KEN PIKE, who was responsible for much of the original television installation at the theatre, a truck has been specially fitted out as a sound control room, camera platforms constructed specially for the job with built-in cabling, and talk-back systems devised whereby almost everybody can talk to everyone else.

Easing this great challenge to the Mobile Operation, of course, are the seven camera point boxes and thousands of feet of cable originally built into the theatre – 1,250 ft plus 1,050 ft vision, 6,150 ft micro and 2,700 ft of talk-back cable.

The new ABC Blackpool stands on a site associated with show business for more than sixty nine years.

The new theatre – which justifiably claims to be Europe’s most luxurious showplace – has been erected at a cost of more than £300,000, embodying all the latest facets of contemporary design with emphasis placed throughout on good taste and comfort… plus the fact that it has been wired to cater for today’s ever-increasing television audience, enabling programmes to be swiftly and easily screened direct from the North where the biggest stars are performing in their fabulous Summer Shows.

The post Blackpool Night Out appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

HE is a small, dapper man with the kind of smile you normally associate with toothpaste ads.

And from lunchtime to midnight Saturday and Sunday, brief flashes of that whiter-than-white grin belonging to David Hamilton punctuate the breaks between television programmes in the North.

On the surface the job holds not much limelight.

But over the four and a half years he has been doing it, 27-year-old Hamilton has made the scant few minutes between the commercials and big features make as much impact as anything on the programme forecast.

“When you were on, I laughed more than I did at Harry Secombe,” wrote one viewer.

He gets 150 letters like that every week. Because with his “special” goodnights and sly bits of business with any prop that immediately comes to hand he has become, in his own words, “more than just a filler-in — an anonymous face sprouting words not meant to be heard or understood.”

To David Hamilton this is important. Not for the fan mail, or for the fact that at Ken Dodd’s personal request he is acting as feed man on his new TV series, but simply for his own satisfaction.

“I started this ad-libbing as a sort of challenge,” he says.

CRAMPED

“Anybody can learn a script and recite it. A lot of announcers say “goodnight everyone” as if they were talking to a Bank Holiday crowd over a public address system.

“But there’s more to it than that. Looking at it coldly you’re there to sell the programme. The way I see it, if I can sell myself, then that takes care of the programmes as well.”

After leaving his home in Marple, Cheshire, Diddy David, as Ken Dodd referred to him on TV last night, spends most of his working life in a Manchester TV studio the size of a small broom cupboard.

“To a lot of people I suppose it sounds a bit boring sitting for hours and hours on end watching a monitor screen.

“I suppose it would be if you weren’t on edge all the time wondering if the show will run early and someone will shove a mike under your nose and say ‘Talk.'”

His feelings about his present position are mixed.

“I love this job. But at the same time it gives me satisfaction and security (he gets £60 [£1065 in 2018 allowing for inflation] for two days work) it is a millstone round my neck.

“You see, under the terms of my contract I cannot appear on any other national TV network. In the past I’ve turned down good offers to keep this job.

A CHANCE

“And that’s why I’m a bit nervous of this Ken Dodd spot. You see, if it leads to other things, I’m going to have to make a decision.

“To drop the security and take a chance. Or to go on the same way as I have been doing for the past four years — and risk being typed as just another announcer.”

If he goes on doing as he has been doing, I should say that risk is negligible.

The post So Diddy David is at the crossroads appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

We know, though, that we have to avoid slumping into a rut by merely continuing our existing programmes. The challenge is to find new ideas and programmes that will eventually replace even the most successful of our current productions. As you will know well enough from your own experience, a successful programme is rarely a flash in the pan, but generally the result of painful and painstaking work over months and sometimes years. So the task is to maintain and improve our present productions and yet simultaneously create new programmes.

The new Network Programming plan continues the situation whereby the four major companies provide the bulk of the national programmes. The change is that ABC will contribute a higher percentage of the weekend programmes and will strengthen its position on the network.

First of all we shall make more ARMCHAIR THEATRES. Instead of alternating the Sunday plays fortnightly with ATV we shall produce two out of three.

THE AVENGERS will be “rested” until the end of the year: (It is physically impossible to produce a first-class programme every week and many preparatory months have to be spent on scripts and putting a good number of shows “in the bag”). Yet we have THE AVENGERS slot to fill on the network and that means one or perhaps two new one-hour programme series to get into shape. We piloted SCANDAL, then decided not to proceed with it. Now we are launching a new series called THE PROTECTORS. Intensive work is taking place on other subjects and probably we shall be making pilots of new series ideas at Didsbury.

ABC was already well established as a force in Drama, as we were in Religion. Our latest breakthrough has been on Light Entertainment, and it is heartening to see BRIAN TESLER’s work reaping its rewards. THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS has climbed over JUKE BOX JURY to the very top and everyone will have been pleased to see this show chosen as Britain’s ITV entry for the Montreux Festival.

Then BIG NIGHT OUT has continued to improve and it was a proud night for PHILIP JONES when “B.N.O.” swarmed over the weekend barriers and became a London weekday Top Ten show. Then this summer we shall have another ABC variety show on the network, replacing the Palladium show on Sunday nights. This will be BLACKPOOL NIGHT OUT, our biggest effort yet in Light Entertainment.

TEMPO has also come up well and on page 43 of its official handbook “ITV 1964” the Authority describes this as “the major constant feature dealing specifically with the Arts.”

Our Religious programmes have brought us high prestige and we have made a good start in Adult Education.

In colour, too, ABC has pioneered the French SECAM system, and throughout Europe ABC is regarded as the leader of colour television in ITV.

This sounds a complacent piece but it is not intended to be written in such a vein. This is an assessment of where we have reached, and a reminder of how hard we shall have to work to continue the progress of the past year, our biggest year ever.

At ABC, we have the resources, the people, the ideas, the experience, the initiative — on to the 7-day week!

The post Three year diary appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

However, that’s beside the point. Kind people have said to me “How do you always manage to appear to have control over everything? It looks as though everything has been laid on specially for you.”

Of course that’s not all quite true. A lot goes on behind the scenes long before the interview takes place. To illustrate what I mean let’s take a typical example.

A film star is due at London Airport at, say, two o’clock in the afternoon. Let’s assume she’s coming from Paris (on the plane with a chicken and champagne lunch thrown in with the price of the ticket !)

With a team of five

First I have to go to the production manager and request a sound camera and my usual team to leave Wardour Street by noon. We shall lunch at the airport, and I use the shooting brake, the Mitchell sound camera, and a silent camera to cover “cut-ins” and lens changes. All those technicalities are taken care of, the men (five of them) are briefed, and we’re ready to go.

Well, sometimes it’s about a quarter-past twelve before we’re on our way — there’s often a little hitch for which one makes allowances when fixing a starting time anyway! Twelve-fifteen is quite good enough time, but we say “twelve” so that people will start trundling in by that time. Everything aboard? Off we go; out through the traffic to the Great West Road, and on to London Airport.

Arriving there I decide, with the cameramen, the best place to do the interview, bearing in mind the direction of the sun, the background we want, and the noise. The background noise mustn’t be too great for the sound people.

Fencing with the opposition

I leave them to it, and they set up, and “stand by” as they say. Because quite often, although we go down to meet someone at, say, two o’clock, frequently we’ve found that at, say, half past one, or a quarter to two, another celebrity is coming in unexpectedly, and we can often get “two for the price of one,” which is exciting, being able to go back with two stories when we set out only to get one.

Then I go to the Press Room where we exchange news and find out the latest information on the expected arrival, whether the plane is on time, if it will be coming in to such-and-such a bay on the tarmac, and where the passengers will be coming through — say “Channel 9” from the customs hall.

Then I have to think in terms of possible opposition. Opposition is always friendly but firm, for we ourselves are always opposition to others also covering the story!

So when we meet we “fence,” and by that I mean we pass on to each other just enough information to keep each other friendly, then we privately jockey round looking for possibilities of getting a slight “beat” on the other chap. It’s just the way it works.

We know we can’t get “exclusives” all the time, but we can often develop perhaps just that slight edge on the situation which enables us to take the initiative.

When the plane comes in, one cameraman with the silent camera goes on to the tarmac, and stands by waiting for the star to get off the plane. We can’t all go out there — we used to be able to, but now, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has forbidden it, so we can no longer interview on the tarmac.

I think they’re probably right because there’s so much traffic at London Airport there is the danger that someone may walk backwards into a prop and be killed.

So we “go along” with the Ministry,

Reflecting for a moment, when I say we “go along” with people, it means just that. Diplomacy is a very important part of this job, because if we tried to bulldoze a situation in our enthusiasm, tried to “ride roughshod” over people in authority, we would really be asking for trouble and they’d do nothing for us at all.

We have to gain people’s confidence, let them see that we are sincere in our consideration of their requirements as well as our own and that we are prepared to give as well as take. Those in authority and the “friendly” opposition get to know that we can be relied on, and that is the vital part of the set-up of the interviewer and his team. He himself must be known as a reliable person of integrity.

If we started any “funny business” or tried to get “beats” where it’s a general call, that is to say where everyone is entitled to a fair crack of the whip, we would really be asking for trouble.

I am ready and waiting

Well, that’s that! Now here comes our celebrity! The star gets off the plane and is photographed by the Press and filmed by our silent cameraman. Then he or she goes into the customs hall, and we wait to pounce on our victim.

Generally I park myself at the customs door, and make quite certain that I am there ready and waiting. I try to look as though I belong to everything one should belong to in authority! As the star sweeps in full glory through the customs I go forward, shake her by the hand, smile and beam all over! I become the absolute paragon of charm and well-being.

She walks along with me while our camera is busily filming what goes on. The silent camera can thus build-up that introductory story on the arrival, and then we walk out to the sound camera and I conduct the interview. Of course our good friends the “still-boys” have their session first, as their motor cycle couriers are waiting to rush the pictures to Fleet-street.

Questions to fall back on

Now the important thing about the interview is that always I go prepared with a thorough knowledge of the star’s background, why she’s come, what she’s doing here, and so on. I memorise three or four key questions which I can fall back on. If the star flags or “dries up” (a rare thing) I can rapidly bring in one of the reserve “key” questions and so the interview goes along quite smoothly.

After finishing the interview, I thank the celebrity very prettily, and away we go.

I said a lot went on behind the scenes before the interview took place. A lot goes on after it, too… processing the film, looking at it, cutting and editing it, and fitting in a commentary, to get the finished product you see on the screen.

The post Interviewing the stars appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The man behind the
TV legend – by
MOLLY SEYMOUR

You know Eamonn Andrews as a star of the television screen… the man with the well-known face and voice. But Eamonn has other loves beside audiences.

Those other loves are called Grainne and Emma — his wife and daughter.

On your television screen, he is very much in control. Smoothly efficient and never the man to get flustered. Off screen, he likes to relax in his home — for he believes a home should look lived-in.

Eamonn was born in Synge Street, the same Dublin street which bred George Bernard Shaw. He was the eldest of five sons in a desperately poor family.

He knew the difficulties of shrinking housekeeping money, of parents who were often in fear of running into debt and he ran errands and bought what bits he could to help his mother out.

One day, he used to tell himself, I shall have a home of my own. He has it now. It stands at Chiswick, and the Thames flows past the bottom of the garden. Grainne planned all the decorations, a white home, with pale yellow shutters buttoned back from windows draped with fragile curtains.

Inside, there are close-fitting saxe-blue carpets everywhere, and rose-red chairs. The lamps — empire pattern and gilded — have the same rose-red shades and there is the warmth of real friendliness about the place. There are enchanting mirror-lined niches in which the most fascinating indoor plants stand.

They both adore flowers and their garden is a picture. Grainne confesses that she used to paint flowers, and will again when she has the time. You can see, as soon as you step inside, that this house is the home of lovers.

Eamonn met Grainne at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. It was, he says, love at first sight, though it took him two years to pop tne question.

Theirs was a dream wedding, with a glorious procession of bridesmaids carrying enormous sprays of carnations — the happiest day of his life, Eamonn says.

But bad luck turns up in strange ways. Grainne was struck down with a tubercular hip, and spent nine months in hospital. For a long time no one was sure whether she would lose her leg, or spend the rest of her life on crutches, perhaps permanently lame.

Luck, and first-class medical attention were with her, and she recovered.

Because they had no child, Grainne suggested they should adopt one. Eamonn was all for it, and they set about the search.

This was perhaps the happiest time of all for them and they were so delighted with the idea that they didn’t worry whether their adopted child would be a boy or girl.

Eamonn was at work on a television show when a message came from Grainne. She simply must speak to him, she said. She had heard from the home that a baby girl was available might she fetch the little thing? The answer was: “Of course.”

This was one of the moments when Eamonn would most liked to have been with her. But duty was duty, and he had to stay. The moment the show was over. Eamonn shot down to Chiswick in his car — and has never done the trip so fast since.

Grainne must have heard him coming, for she opened the door to him, the baby in her arms. Perhaps that was one of the supreme moments in their lives.

They called her Emma. Today she is between two and three years old, a gay, fat little girl with roguish, laughing eyes. She is devoted to Quiz, the grey poodle, and he to her.

Eamonn Andrews, they say, was bom with a silver spoon in his mouth. But he has worked hard to make good.

He loves his home. He adores his friends. In an emergency he can get a meal, clean up, mind the baby — which he does remarkably well —and all this with a smile… for he is that sort of man.

RUPERT BUTLER
takes a look at the
new Sunday series

It could become the most talked about TV show of all. It is 40 minutes each Sunday of sheer unpredictability. To attempt to forecast what might happen is as pointless as trying to say when the world will end.

The central figure is Eamonn Andrews, for so long a stalwart of the BBC that one is mildly surprised he’s not still producing so-and-so’s aunt, cousin, husband, school-friend or shipmate on This Is Your Life.

Just what is The Eamonn Andrews Show? Well, here is what it is not. It is not preplanned, not pre-rehearsed, and not (except in skeleton form) pre-scripted.

For the next 26 weeks, personalities in the public eye will be brought to Teddington Studios, Middlesex and confronted by Eamonn.

He will talk to them, listen to them and maybe hear them sing, play and entertain. It all depends on who they are and just why they are on the show.

Let’s repeat — nothing is planned, nothing is rehearsed, if, for example, the show features a man who has hit the headlines by flying around the world in a flying saucer, he will meet Eamonn as a stranger and talk to him informally and “off the cuff.”

Of course, Eamonn will have done some homework on his guest — provided there was time. He will have studied a biography and looked through newspaper cuttings. But there will be no prior contact.

“Instead,” I was told, “the guest will sit outside the set sipping a drink until he’s called. He’ll be wondering what is in store for him — and so will Eamonn.”

The show will be transmitted “live.” Right up to the moment it goes on the air, there’s room to bring along topically offbeat people.

When one celebrity has been interviewed, he will remain on the set and meet the next guest whom he will be able to question or chat with.

“By the end of the show,” says Eamonn, “I could be talking about anything and everything to some six well-known people at the same time.”

Don’t get the idea, though, that The Eamonn Andrews Show is all chat. If a pop singer has made his mark, he’ll be on the scene, too. There will be a glittering late night sophistication about the whole proceedings.

Eamonn Andrews hopes to remain in control of things, but his guests will be allowed to pull any amount of tricks on him. It’s all part of the fun, all part of a desire to make The Eamonn Andrews Show a segment of late night viewing that no one will want to miss.

A programme spokesman said: “We are avoiding like the plague the ‘all pals together’ party where everyone laughs at private jokes and there’s general bonhomie.

“That sort of show looks phoney and sounds phoney. We wouldn’t hesitate to put two people on the screen who positively loathe each other. To us, controversy isn’t a dirty word.”

As far as is possible, guest celebrities for the following week will be announced by Eamonn after each show and he will invite viewers to submit questions they would like answered by the people concerned.

The post Eamonn Andrews calling… 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.

Alfred Burke, the 46-year-old actor who plays Marker, is a tall sinewy man, with a hollow face and small hard eyes which peer suspiciously at a hostile world.

There is a villainous look about him. And for the best part of his career, Burke has been cast as the third bandit from the right in countless productions.

“The reason Alfie was chosen for the part,” said Roger Marshall, the main writer on the series, “is that he doesn’t look like a private detective.

“If you saw him in a pub or a supermarket, you wouldn’t single him out for attention. He’s just another face in the crowd.”

Marker isn’t rich — or particularly handsome. His wardrobe is strictly functional. One pair of shoes and if they don’t get to the mender on time, he avoids puddles. A dirty white mac; a couple of pairs of slacks; an old sports jacket.

His favourite tie’s got an egg stain on it. And his main worry is not where to park his Aston Martin, but whether he is able to meet his income tax demands. He is a loser.

If there’s a fight — Marker’s the man who collects the punch. A syndicate turns nasty — Marker’s the first one to back down.

As a hero, he’s disappointing. But in the brutal knife and knuckle-duster world of London’s back streets, Frank Marker survives.

He sees his clients in a pokey attic office above Clapham Junction. Millionaires and taxi-drivers. Bankers and bookies. All different, but with a common bond. Trouble. They need Marker.

But he has no friends. Nobody thanks him for solving their problems; nobody sends him flowers for finding the truth. They pay him… and turn their backs.

But a man like Marker, operating in the precarious no-man’s-land between the underworld and the arm of the law, must cover his tracks. For if the thugs don’t get him, the police are sure to.

Though after six years, they haven’t yet. And they won’t — as long as he stays fast on his feet.

Marker … anonymous in a grubby mac trudging a suburban street.

Marker … alone, in an all-night do-it-yourself laundry, washing his shirts. Marker .. sitting next to you on a bus. Marker … everywhere.

Next time you hear footsteps on a dark night don’t look round. He’s right behind you.

… and a back-to-earth girl

She made her name on television travelling through time in the Dr. Who series. But it’s back to earth with a bump for 23-year-old Carole Ann Ford. In Saturday’s Public Eye she plays a missing girl in the clutches of a vice ring. “It couldn’t possibly be more different,” she said. Down-at-heel private detective, Frank Marker (Alfred Burke}, is commissioned to find the girl, who unaccountably has left her Yorkshire home and gone to live in London

The post Private detective in the Public Eye appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Associated-Rediffusion on weekdays in London was stiff and formal. ATV London on weekends was bright and friendly. The difference between the two was clear.

Granada on weekdays in the North was austere and gaunt. ABC on weekends was cosmopolitan and laid back. The difference, again, was clear.

But what to do in the Midlands? ATV’s weekday bright and friendly is not an antonym for cosmopolitan and laid back. Defining the difference between the two was much harder.

ABC Midlands worked hard on this, using different camera angles and studio layouts to that of ATV Midlands for presentation – despite the two both coming from the same room and using the same facilities at the Alpha studios in Aston.

ATV favoured putting the announcer in a fairly tight close-up, little more than head and shoulders, against a plain background with a fixed camera.

ABC had to try to be different. The presentation studio at Alpha was unusually large – not huge by any means, but bigger than the average. That allowed for some freedom for Geoffrey Lugg and the others in ABC’s presentation department. They added a full set – on casters so it could be installed on Saturday mornings and easily removed on Sunday nights – and moved the camera back to present more of the announcer’s body. A low, comfortable chair encouraged the announcer to relax and lean back into the continuity set, compared to the close-up over a desk format of ATV that forced announcers to lean forwards.

This style of presentation was sufficiently different from that of ATV Midlands to stand out – although ABC’s Howard Thomas remained frustrated that he couldn’t compete on image with his weekday rivals in Birmingham – and also different enough to be used in the north during the day until about 1960 (and on Sunday mornings until 1964) for cheaper joint continuity, without diluting the difference between Granada and ABC.

The set itself was flexible, thanks to dotting the shelves with ornaments. Seasonal differences were easy to introduce – fresh flowers in a vase in the spring, more books and fewer knick-knacks in the autumn – and easy to decorate for Christmas and other special occasions.

Of note was the unusual use of the colour version of the ABC triangle logo on the wall – ABC was gone 18 months before colour came to ITV – and, in this picture, a copy of TVWorld, the ABC-ATV jointly owned listings magazine, waiting for the announcer to use to improvise to fill time between programmes.

The post Presenting the difference appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

She is Lee Halls, head of the studio’s make-up department.

For her, those practically indistinguishable differences in makeup colours become subtle changes in black and white. With a team of four assistants, she makes up all ABC stars. Some she has made up many times.

This, I assumed, would be easy. But Lee quickly denied that: “I can’t take a note the first time I see an actress and never look at her again.”

Then Lee told me why: “Mary Peach has just come back from a holiday in Kenya. She is darker than usual. I have to counteract that with make-up.

“In one play, Patricia Heneghan may be wearing a light blouse; in a second, a blue dress. That can make a change in the make-up colour she wears.”

The lighting used for a production can make a difference. A bright, clear light beats down on Billie Whitelaw in the Time Out for Peggy series. If Billie were to appear in a dramatic play, the lighting —and also the make-up — would be different.

Even though many of the sets in this series are the same, Lee has to sit through all rehearsals, watching a monitor in the control room. By making many notes, she decides what type of make-up to give the players. Her selection is governed by the tiniest things: she will even notice what kind of background the actress stands against for one shot.

“It is surprising what a difference small things can make. Elizabeth London wore a pair of flashing earrings, during a rehearsal for Let’s Go Shopping. Half-way through she took them off, and immediately her face seemed darker and she needed a new kind of make-up,” said Lee.

A straight glamour make-up for a woman takes Lee 20 minutes. Men can he made up in less, for some need only a dab of powder. But men have given Lee some of her greatest problems.

“I usually have to make Neil McCallum look younger,” she said. “The other day, I had to make him look older and give him a beard.”

Having watched Lee working, I know that putting on a beard is not simple, but she has done things that have made me gasp at her artistry. A piece of string — hidden by sideburns — gave a handsome actor a cauliflower ear for a boxing role.

One of her most difficult jobs was to change Anton Diffring’s unlined features into the face of a 97-year-old man for The Man In Half Moon Street. Three coatings of rubber solution, gauze and wool gave him a sagging skin. It took Lee two hours.

Another Diffring problem was for The One Who Came Back when Anton had to have 16-year-old machine gun bullet scars on an arm. This was done by Lee’s 21-year-old assistant Jean Mackenzie. To help her, Edith Gibbon of the medical illustrations department of Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, spent a morning at the studios to show how it should be done.

Make-up is not confined to the studios. A girl goes out with the outside broadcast teams. Sometimes they go on location.

“That is when notes come in handy,” said Lee. Then, in continuity-girl style, she is able to make sure the make-ups for the live parts of the transmission are perfect.

Lee’s job begins long before the stars get to the studios. She gets her script at the same time as the producer. “I read it to see if special make-up is needed. For instance, if a boy and girl kiss I must remember to seal the lipstick.”

The post The girl who makes up the stars appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Most people associated with farming know farmers like to look over the fence to see what is happening on a neighbour’s farm. This is not idle curiosity. They look to learn.

Many progressive methods have been followed by farmers recently because, by looking over the fence, they have seen that they are an improvement on their own.

This has been strikingly demonstrated in the Penrith district of Cumberland. There, a young Agricultural Officer, E. J. Smith, found that he could not get advice to as many farmers as he knew could use it. So he enlisted the help of 12 farmers willing to use modern techniques provided they could be convinced of their effectiveness.

For two winters these farmers, known as Local Leaders, were given intensified training in farm management and grassland husbandry. They then began to introduce new systems on their farms — in every case most successfully.

Neighbouring farmers looked over the fence to see for themselves — and quickly adopted the ideas.

But the Cumberland experiment was confined to a small area: a neighbours fence miles away may be well worth looking over. And this is where Farming Television comes in, for it brings a farm 100 miles or more away, right into the home.

Northern and Midlands farmers are to have a series of agricultural programmes televised at an ideal time for the farmer — 3pm Sunday — one of the few times at which he usually has a little leisure and a chance to see what is happening on an other farm.

The programmes will come from farms in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwickshire and North Wales, and will cover most aspects of farming, from dairying and beef to arable cropping and hill sheep

But this is not going to be a strictly farmers’ programme. Nor is it intended to show examples of outstanding technical achievement. The idea is to present the other man’s farm (“live” as far as possible) without any frills.

Wisely, the promoters of this series are aiming at a wider public than farmers. The housewife and her husband will see for themselves the major role farming plays in their lives.

They will see — that is the operative word — that grass is something much more than the green stuff that grows in fields. Possibly they will be surprised to learn that upon the quality of the grass grown, and the efficiency of its harvesting and conservation for winter fodder, much of their own well-being depends, for grass is transformed by the cow and the sheep into the meat we eat, the milk we drink and the wool we put on our backs.

To a large extent the housewife dictates farm policy, for it is her preference for the small, lean joint, the creamy milk, or bacon with minimum fat, that causes trends in farming practice. The farmer has to sell his produce to the consumer — and consumer demand has now become a taskmaster.

A final word to the housewife: the cameras are going to look into one or two farm kitchens. This will be really worth watching. The farm kitchen is a joy, for it is a combination of working kitchen, with modern amenities, and a social meeting place where neighbours gather to talk things over. Looking in, and listening in, to these kitchens, will bring the breath of the countryside, its vitality and its true character, to the heart of industrial areas.

This should have been done long ago. I am glad ABC are doing it now.

The post Looking over the farming fence appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

They are, in fact, the offices of freelance journalists Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley, co-editors of tonight’s (Saturday) late-night current affairs programme, ABC at Large. And crusades are their business.

It might be the plight of old people living alone in Birmingham. Or an over-populated dogs’ home in Sheffield. Or a vice problem in Liverpool. Their campaigns make themselves felt everywhere — even in Westminster. “But they don’t always make us popular,” said Bottomley.

When an ABC at Large programme showed the results of a week’s probe into Liverpool’s vice problem, there were strong reactions in the city. But the file they had assembled was gratefully accepted by Mr. Anthony Greenwood, M.P. for Rossendale, Lancs., who was taking part in a national inquiry into the problem of vice.

“After the Street Offences Bill was passed in Parliament, it was felt that an investigation should be made through-out the country to find out just what effects the new Bill was having,” said Mr. Greenwood.

“This was where the Liverpool file came in useful. It gave a helpful picture of the situation in an industrial city.”

Another M.P., Mr. Ellis Smith of Stoke-on-Trent, was campaigning for years about old mill lodges, flooded pits and quarries, which were claiming young lives every year throughout the country.

So ABC at Large went into the matter — and Mr. Smith is hoping that the publicity, coupled with the questions he is putting down about it in the House of Commons, will result in official action being taken to fill in the death traps.

“The investigation by ABC at Large stimulated a lot of interest,” said Mr. Smith. “The programme is doing a good job in bringing matters of this nature to the notice of the public.”

Congratulatory correspondence always follows a campaign.

When the team used a story about two old people found dead in their home, there was a veritable snowstorm of letters.

A studio demonstration of the dangers of driving under the influence of drink — in which a human “guinea pig” drank six double whiskies and then used a reaction tester to illustrate its effect on his “driving” — produced a commendation from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

A programme about the dangers of poisons in the home brought in scores of letters demanding that the antidotes of all poisons should be included on the bottle labels — and ABC forwarded the suggestions to manufacturers.

“Reactions like these make you feel the job is really worth while,” said Brennand. “And yet, so often, it’s the little things that make the most profound impression on you.”

Little things, for instance, like the response from pensioners recently, when Tim Brinton was taken ill shortly after spending a week trying to live on an old-age pension.

“We got dozens of letters from grateful old people,” said Brennand, “thanking him for what he’d done, and offering best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

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To do it ABC will use all the many resources of this young but go-ahead company, as well as those of the powerful organisations with which it is associated.

The four-man committee responsible for this ambitious training scheme consists of ABC managing director Howard Thomas, his second-in-command Ron Rowson, senior producer S. E. Reynolds and drama supervisor Dennis Vance.

So far they have three pupils. Top of the form is a girl who has made a big name for herself since she joined ABC — Joan Edwards.

She first said “Hello” to viewers in Number Please, then created for herself a growing audience in that breakfast-time programme, Housewives Call the Tune, in which she performed such homely chores as washing dishes and darning socks between playing gramophone requests.

Next she proved how well she could sing and dance in the Joe Loss Show, and this summer she is showing another aspect of her versatility by her breezy interviews in Holiday Town.

Pupil Number Two is Bob Hatch, who got his big break in show business after thousands of viewers throughout the North and Midlands had voted him winner of the long-running Bid For Fame contest.

But even if he had not pulled off the top prize, Bob would still have been invited to join ABC’s exclusive training school.

His earlier appearances in Bid For Fame were seen by company executives who earmarked him as a boy who, given a helping hand, would go places.

Both Joan Edwards and Bob Hatch have already proved that the confidence ABC are placing in them is justified. Producer Reynolds — he has been in TV since its opening day in 1936 — told me:

“To get two artists like Joan Edwards and Bob Hatch in one year is out of all proportion.

“I have been watching Joan develop since she came into this company, and there is no greater joy for me than seeing her holding her own with more experienced artists.”

Baby of the class is 20-year-old Julie Stevens. She is another pupil who caught the eye of Howard Thomas while appearing in Bid For Fame.

“I decided to give her an audition,” he told me. “Dennis Vance and I tried everything on her. It was formidable, but she came out smiling.”

Explained Julie: “I was interviewed in front of the camera. Then they gave me a piece to announce without letting me see it first. And afterwards I was told to pretend I was telling my boss I was giving up my job — and make it sound funny.”

“The result,” said Howard Thomas, “was that we gave this unknown girl a contract. Now, to get her used to cameras, we are putting her in everywhere. She doesn’t always get a credit, but she comes bobbing up in one programme after another.”

Julie’s future is still undecided. “So far, we don’t know what she is going to do,” Mr. Thomas said, “but we believe she has the sparkle of a true TV personality. How do we make her into a personality? Well, first she has to be trained the hard way.”

To learn all she can about TV production and technique, Julie has been helping in many different programmes. She has been behind the scenes in Holiday Town, making brief appearances in crowd scenes or demonstrating in advertising magazines. One day I saw her with make-up only on her hands and arms. “That,” she said, “is all viewers will see of me today.” She was off to hold a booklet in front of a camera.

Said Reynolds: “From now on, we shall be studying Julie, Joan and Bob to see which way they ought to go, as it might take two or three years to get them on the right lines and doing the job for which they are best suited.”

The ABC training school is going to be no immediate stepping stone to fame and fortune. “As far as we are concerned,” said Reynolds, “there is going to be no star overnight business.”

But while ABC is determined to give Joan Edwards, Julie Stevens and Bob Hatch the best opportunities ever offered up-and-coming artists, they, on their part, know they will have to put in plenty of hard work to make this unique training scheme a success.

The post School for stars appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Foo Foo, the central character in this new weekly cartoon series for ABC, is the creation of Hungarian-born John Halas who, at 48, is one of Britain’s most prolific cartoon animators.

“The idea of the series arose because I had always wished to create a typically English character like Foo Foo,” he says. “And also because I felt that the best medium would be television rather than the cinema.

“So the idea was put up to Howard Thomas, Managing Director of ABC TV, and, after a lot of investigation and soul-searching into the nature and type of the character we should use, we decided to go ahead.”

Foo Foo, however, was not an overnight creation. First, Halas and his team devoted themselves to devising a new method of cartooning that would suit the requirements of television.

The technique they have created, after much trial and error, is much simpler than that used in the cinema yet retains all the qualities of full animation. One big difference is that it requires only eight stages of production instead of the 20 or 22 needed in the production of cinema cartoons.

“It is also a far more personal way of making cartoons,” says Halas. ‘The animator is doing practically the whole job himself instead of dividing the work between different departments.”

When the first of the new cartoons was completed, it was shown to Howard Thomas and other ABC TV executives. Their reaction was so favourable that a further six were made. One of them “The Cultured Ape,” won first prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

I asked Halas how he would describe Foo Foo.

“As a little man with a Chapiinesque exterior and a slightly Chaplinesque interior,” he said. “But as this is 1960 and not 1915 — when a little man could really protest against social injustice — our character is a little more benevolent and tolerant than Chaplin’s and not such a critic of society. You might say that we have retained a little of the Chaplin touch but given him a great deal more playfulness.”

The counterpart to Foo Foo is the villainous Gogo. And then there is the feminine interest, a middle-aged lady called Mimi. Halas explains: “She is a motherly feminine rather than a glamorous feminine. We hope she will be nearer to the British conception of a female—warm and more appealing to the family.” Halas calls the new Saturday afternoon programmes the largest series of British cartoons ever made for a British audience. And he adds: “We have tried to invent what I can call restrained British humour instead of the American type of humour usual in cartoons.”

A collection of Halas and Batchelor cartoons is available on Blu-ray from Network Distribution, via Amazon and other retailers.

The post Cartoon with the Chaplin touch 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.”

The post It’s a race against time appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

“I’m much too busy,” he declares. “I don’t have any romantic attachments at all.

“I’ve been combining teaching with announcing until Christmas, but now I’ve decided to concentrate on my television commitments.”

At present he is announcing from the Birmingham studios, but he hopes to go on to straight acting. He would also like to work on television for schools — he taught French at a London grammar school until he resigned to go full-time on television.

He has made such a big impact that he often has difficulty getting away from the studios. One Sunday so many girls were waiting for him he had to be smuggled out dressed as a labourer.

But one woman was more persistent. She waited each Saturday and Sunday; telephoned; wrote scores of letters. For weeks Edmunds managed to elude her.

“One day, she caught up with me,” he recalls. “It was a hurried conversation as I was rather late. But she still managed to explain her feelings for me. It was terribly embarrassing.”

Many of the letters are pathetic, but he answers them all. One came from a mother in the Midlands who told him that her daughter had been taking a more than usual interest in the announcing spots. “The fact is,” wrote the mother, “she hasn’t a clue what you’ve said when I ask her afterwards.”

“I did answer this letter,” says Edmunds, “but not as the mother would have wished. She wanted me to write and say that I was happily married with three children!”

When Edmunds was still teaching and announcing “it was a case of scowling during weekdays and smiling at weekends,” he laughed.

“My pupils knew nothing of my double life. Strange to think that millions of viewers in the Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire had seen me but none of my pupils knew what I did with my week-ends.”

A Welshman, Edmunds was educated at Aberystwyth and went to the university there, where he took a first class honours degree in modern languages. He had a strong leaning towards the stage in those days, and during university vacations spent several seasons in repertory and two summer seasons at a holiday camp.

One of his enterprises was his own student repertory company called “The Adventurers.”

A great lover of Shakespeare, he toured French schools and universities with his own production of Twelfth Night.

“After I had obtained my degree, the Royal Navy decided it was time to teach me something about seamanship. I was called up, and served for three years and three weeks.

“But the strange part is,” he recalls, “for three years I studied at a university on a special Russian language course. The odd three weeks? I spent those swabbing decks.”

When he isn’t in Birmingham, Edmunds shares a flat in London with Richard Baker, a BBC TV news reader. In his spare time he enjoys reading Shakespeare, playgoing and cooking.

“Working in Birmingham these past few months has made me into a really good cook,” he admits. “I’ve watched Philip Harben at work, and obtained quite a few tips from the master.

“Every Monday I try out a new recipe at home – probably that’s the reason why my friend Dick Baker always stays out on a Monday!”

But good cook or not, girls are out. Though Edmunds does admit that Jayne Mansfield is his idea of a perfect film actress.

The post John Edmunds is too busy for romance appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The post Supporting actors appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

That is the way Teddington’s Property Master TONY O’TOOLE describes his first day at ABC. Like most Irishmen, Tony is a loquacious talker with a lively turn of wit, delivered in a broad lilting Dublin accent. Getting him to talk about himself presented no great difficulties. The snag was that the stories he insisted on telling would take up more space than this column could afford, so a heavy edit brought forth the following facts, and I only wish they could be written with the accent in which they were delivered.

Tony, christened Michael Anthony, was born in Dublin a short while after the revolution… “which, I might hasten to add, I had absolutely nothing to do with, in spite of what Devalera might have said.

“In spite of the fact that my father was in the Irish Resistance movement, my uncles in the British Army and Navy respectively, and that my grandfather fought in the American Civil War, I meself am a peace lovin’ man and I’ll break the arm of any **** who says I’m not, any time”.

EMIGRATES TO ENGLAND

Before coming to England in 1943, Tony, in company with two others, purchased a canal barge, with the idea of ferrying peat, but… “unfortunately, on the maiden voyage, so to speak, the horse dropped dead. He may have broken his neck going under a bridge, I dunno, anyway, he was a gonner… so the Irish Emigration list to England had three more names added to it, and arrived in England at the ripe old age of 15.

“Ireland was neutral of course, so I made the great decision to contribute to the war effort by joining Moss Empires. There wasn’t a place on the board straight away, so they made me a page boy with about fifty thousand brass buttons”.

From there Tony worked his way slowly through the varied jobs that show business has to offer… callboy, props, electrics, ASM, Production Manager and Property Master… and so to ABC.

SOME EXPLOSION…

Tony has always been interested in special effects and explosions, and it was one such episode that led, almost directly, to Tony’s change of employers.

“We was on location making the war film V1, y’see, and there was this great big building. Bert and I rigged the explosion in the front to blow one of the windows out. ‘Is it OK?’ they shouted. We stuck our heads out and replied ‘ready when you are’ – and with that the whole building went up! I got blown into the water tank and BERT AKEHURST (he’s still with me I’m glad to say) lost some of his clothes. We had a spell of inactivity after that little one…”

Tony’s store has come a long way from those early days. It now comprises two floors and houses over three thousand items, from 15 feet high cacti to complete suites of furniture.

Apart from the stock of property items, the hired props coming into the studios to be used on productions can also prove a headache. Tony has had to deal with vultures, a lion, penguins, and donkeys in his time, but the show which provided him with the most headaches – and incidentally, the most enjoyment – was “After Hours”.

“You had to be a bit touched to be connected with that show… it helped tremendously! I remember wanting to ask Promotion’s RON WALSBY something – he was stage manager then and was also rehearsing a Cossack dance – so I had to join in, bobbing up and down while talking.

“I also remember in the early days, I went shopping in Kingston for Ad-mag kitchen dressings with a woman driver of a hire car service we used in those days. To my amusement – but not the driver’s – an old saleslady came up with the following advice: ‘For two young people starting out in the world I’d buy something a little more expensive…'”

Tony lives in Brighton with his wife and 11-year-old electronics-mad son, and nine-year-old Jacqueline who desperately wants to be his secretary. Tony ‘digs’ locally and goes home weekends, where he relaxes when necessary by interior decorating. One of his favourite interests – and least talked about -is raising funds for a Thames Ditton orphanage.

Looking back, reminiscing, Tony is pleased with life at ABC. “That French Resistance series when we went to France was the thing. I was in charge of explosions and things. We stayed in San Viatre, and what a night we had celebrating my birthday with the locals, with sou’westers and rubber boots filled to overflowing with champagne. They got the town band to play when we left. If I had stayed for a couple of more weeks I could have been Mayor, I tell you. Me and my explosions – I was the biggest noise they’d ever heard!

“Ah well, that’s how it goes . . .”

The post Man of property appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

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.

Police Surgeon, a new half-hour TV series starting Saturday, starring Ian Hendry as Dr Geoffrey Brent, will lift the curtain.

Julian Bond, who wrote several of the Probation Officer scripts, is writing most of the episodes for the new series, in collaboration with J. J. Bernard, the pseudonym of a London police surgeon who suggested that the work would be an ideal theme for a TV series.

The young, idealistic Dr Brent cannot resist taking a personal interest in the cases to which he is called, for at heart he is a philosopher.

First of the 13 stories, many based on fact, is titled “Easy Money.” In it Dr Brent deals with a young thief, played by 18-year-old Michael Crawford. The second episode, “Under the Influence,” deals with a motorist, played by Bernard Archard, accused of drunken driving.

Other early episodes star Harry H. Corbett as a man who beats up a club hostess in “Lag on the Run” and Jean Anderson in “Sunday Morning Story,” which deals with a refugee girl’s suicide.

Appearing in several episodes with Ian Hendry is John Warwick, playing Inspector Landon, of the Bayswater area police station, to which Dr Brent is attached. Another artist who will be seen in several episodes is Ingrid Hafner, the surgeon’s receptionist.

The theme music has the appropriate title ‘The Big Knife.” The first four episodes of Police Surgeon are being produced by Julian Bond and the rest by Leonard White. Bond, 29 years old, has been writing for TV since 1957. Before that he was writing and directing documentary films. He is married and has three children.

Ian Hendry is the same age as Bond. He made his TV debut some years ago stooging for the famous clown Coco. The clown tried to persuade Ian to use his talent for knockabout comedy in the circus, but his gift for acting led him to the stage.

Bond chose Ian to star in his new series after watching his progress for three years following an impressive performance in Anouilh’s Dinner with the Family, which brought him to London with the Oxford Playhouse company.

At school at Culford, Suffolk, Ian’s main interest was sport. During National Service with the 32nd Medium Regiment, RA, he paced Chris Chataway and organised his own motor-cycle stunt team.

Ian went from the Central School of Speech and Drama into repertory. About the same time he was cast in Emergency — Ward 10, and established a following as Chris Stone, a polio patient. Film parts followed in Room at the Top, Sink the Bismarck and In the Nick.

Last spring he was back in TV as the young pilot whose error caused the death of a friend in Inside Story, and since then he has had further TV successes in Probation Officer, Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon and Flight from Treason.

To celebrate this series Ian and his wife Jo, who teaches film and television make-up, have moved to a new home aboard a converted naval pinnace on the Thames at Chiswick.

The post Dr Brent – Police Surgeon appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

“And all in all, I suppose. I’m tolerant of their ways. One has to be, with these two.”

“These two” are Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee, stars of The Avengers.

Hendry plays Dr. David Keel, the tough but kindly character who uses his medical knowledge to fight crime.

He is aided by the cynical under-cover man John Steed, played by Macnee — a character with a stately home background and a taste for good living.

Keeping the balance between them is Dr. Keel’s glamorous nurse-receptionist Carol Wilson, played by Ingrid.

I asked Ingrid at her London flat what she really thought about her two leading men.

Do they resemble the characters they play?

“The answer is no,” said Ingrid “In real life, in fact, their roles are somewhat reversed.

“Take Ian first. He is intelligent and hard-working—and easily upset when things go wrong.

“But on the surface he’s a great clown, not a bit like Keel. He loves practical jokes — which is not surprising.

“You see he started in show business in a circus — as private secretary and stooge to Coco the clown.

“I don’t think he has ever forgotten Coco’s advice to take up clowning.”

Ingrid recalled Hendry’s antics one day during rehearsals.

“Things were held up for something or other,” she said. “The set was an old furniture shop and the place was cluttered up with great pieces of ancient furniture.

“Suddenly, there was a great rumpus among the props. And there was Ian crashing through a huge picture frame with a ridiculous Victorian fireman’s helmet on his head, and a false moustache.

“Another time, we had a hairdressing salon set and there he was mincing around in a filthy old overall brandishing a pair of scissors and a comb.”

Ingrid added: “Practical jokers, men especially, can be a bit wearing. But really you have to laugh with this character. He’s a harmless soul, bless him.”

She huddled closer to the fire. She had just returned from a visit to Ireland, she explained, and the flat had been unheated for a few days.

“Every time I come back from Ireland I talk with an Irish accent,” said Ingrid.

“This amuses Pat Macnee, since I’m actually half Scots.

“Pat is a more mature person than Ian in many ways. Unlike Steed, Pat has a quiet personality. He is controlled, modest and easy going.

“He adopts an amusing fatherly attitude towards his co-star. In the middle of some crazy interlude he’ll say, ‘Now come along Hendry, that’s enough for one day.

“‘Get your script like a good boy and let’s get a move on. I’m getting hungry’.”

Pat and Ian don’t, as it happens, snipe at each other as they often do in the series.

“I’m grateful for that,” said Ingrid. “I couldn’t bear that.

“Pat is a bit of a dreamer. He’ll tell you this himself. I think he secretly wishes he was a character like Steed.

“At rehearsals if he’s not busy poring over his script or holding incredibly intense conversations with the director, he will be tucked away in a remote comer of the room reading masses of magazines.” Ingrid gazed at the ceiling. “You get to know people pretty well, working with them every day, don’t you?

“My leading men are not without faults. But, to be honest, they’re two of the sweetest men I know.”

The post Avengers? They’re the sweetest men I know appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Andrew stretched himself into an easy chair in his Mayfair flat and stroked his generous brown beard.

“It was touch and go with the beard at one stage. There was the feeling that it didn’t fit into the picture of a ‘goodie’ in London’s underworld,” he said.

“Now Ian Souter, of the firm of Souter and Shoesmith Ltd., Specialists in Security, is firmly bearded.”

The Souter outfit operates from a mahogany-respectable office in Marylebone. It is a high-powered unit geared to fight crooks and prevent crime in the twilight borderland between the underworld and the policeman’s beat.

Heather Keys (Ann Morrish) is receptionist-secretary-confidante. She’s worked for a firm of art auctioneers and has a quick eye for art fakes and forgeries.

Souter contributes all-round know-how, gleaned from seven years experience investigating for a firm of Loss Adjusters, and a strong sense of moral justice.

“I shall enjoy playing the part,” said Andrew. “There’s plenty of fighting. I don’t think there’s any danger of getting ‘typed’ — I’m not typically anything.”

Andrew grew his beard four years ago to take the part of a general in the film “Antony and Cleopatra.” Since then he has appeared in The Verdict is Yours, and played in Armchair Theatre’s The Higher they Fly and Realm of Error.

He made his name originally with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon Avon, where he played for three seasons, the last one in 1956.

Andrew mixes his acting with a political career. He is the adopted Labour candidate for Stratford-upon-Avon. Between acting engagements he lives in a Regency house at Stratford with his red haired wife Bunty and their 17-year-old daughter Susanne. She is a student at the Central School of Dramatic Art.

“She’s probably imbibing political ideas all the time. I was politically conscious long before I took up acting,” said Andrew.

“As a child of 13, I went to live, while my parents were abroad, with the Rev. Doctor Hector MacPherson, a wonderful old man, in Edinburgh.

“He was musician, clergyman. astronomer, philosopher, historian. Each morning at breakfast I would listen to him talk. He expounded politics with passionate interests—and exploded violently about the antics of an obscure little man in Germany called Hitler. That was in 1935.

“No one could have remained uninspired. At the age of 14, I even attempted a biography of Gladstone.”

Talking about his political ambitions Andrew said: “I know people seem to regard it as fantastic that an actor should entertain the notion of being a politician. In the past, I think, the public has been suspicious of actors. They regarded them as layabouts. I suppose. But an actor is as likely to be politically minded as anyone else.”

Andrew is 41 this month. His parents were Scottish missionaries, and he was born in Tanganyika.

“Those African children made a tremendous impression on me,” he said. “They were running around naked, diseased and blighted. I was plump, well clothed and healthy — except when I was bitten by a snake at the age of four.

“An African medicine man, believe it or not, cured me by chewing up a root and spitting the pulp on my head.”

Andrew’s interest in acting began at a Stirling High School performance of “HMS Pinafore,” in which he played Dick Deadeye. There followed parts in undergraduate productions at Glasgow University. Then in 1946, Shakespeare at Stratford.

Since then, filming has taken him to Kenya, Libya, Singapore, Canary Islands, Spain, Italy, Paris and Hollywood.

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t successfully combine the roles of actor and politician,” he said. “I believe, as Renaissance man did, that people do not tackle enough jobs. We can all do more than we think we can.”

Though his weekends are taken up with political work. Andrew still has time for hobbies. He collects English medieval and Tudor pottery, political mugs and busts of English politicians.

“I’ve got about 30 mugs now — including a couple of Joseph Chamberlain, one Disraeli and a Stanley Baldwin,” he said. “The busts I look for are the ones that give a popular image of the politician – nothing particularly artistic.”

Ian Souter, private investigator, has all the energy of the actor-politician. He comes from somewhere north of Stirlingshire, went to school at Gordonstoun and in the latter part of World War II, was commissioned into the Black Watch.

The post Introducing Ian Souter of… The Protectors appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Once was in the film “The Seventh Veil” (where he sorted out the mixed emotions of Ann Todd enabling her to live happily ever after with James Mason), and the other was in the TV series The Human Jungle. Both times with great success.

“The Seventh Veil” was one of the best films of the postwar years. While The Human Jungle, where Herbert played the part of Dr. Roger Corder, brought him in a fan mail of 2,000 letters a week — mainly from women who saw him as the small screen’s answer to their human problems.

His success can be measured by the fact that Lom has played every part from the heaviest of villains (he’s just finished Simon Legree in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) to the lightest of comedians (with Peter Sellers in “A Shot In The Dark”).

Mr. Lom has carved a definite niche for himself in screen history. His versatile talent shines through whatever the role he’s playing.

Sometimes he’s the kind-hearted friend of the heroine, providing a clean white handkerchief and a sturdy shoulder for her to cry on. But seldom, if ever, does he get the girl.

Mr. Lom is no swashbuckler. He doesn’t look dashing or even romantic. But he does look intelligent. And the appeal he undoubtedly has for women has little to do with sex-appeal.

Herbert Lom’s attraction is definitely of the mind—intellectual and not physical.

If the Lom charm is based on brain-power rather than looks, it has certainly served to his advantage. He came to this country as a drama student from Prague 25 years ago and his services as an actor are still very much in demand.

He can talk of many things — the arts, the sciences, politics, history, travel, philosophy. But as we sat in his London home — a Victorian villa in Kensington in which, nevertheless, he houses his collection of madly modern paintings — we talked about Christmas trees.

Mr. Lom has two away-from-it-all pursuits. He paints, and he grows Christmas trees on his farm in Kent. “When I was looking for a farm some years ago, I couldn’t see myself breeding animals, and the Christmas trees which came with the farm seemed a nice idea.

“I make a little money out of them and I’m very interested in forestry as a result. I am inclined to get involved in whatever I’m doing because an actor just can’t help doing so. Surely, the whole business of acting is to get behind the character you’re playing, so that for a time you become that person.

“When I played Napoleon I read everything I could lay my hands on about him and his campaigns.”

“And when you play a psychiatrist?” I asked.

“Ah yes. When I played my first psychiatrist I happened to be deeply interested in the subject of psycho-analysis because I had a friend who had recently taken such treatment, and I really wanted to be able to be of some help. Besides which. I’ve always had a latent feeling for the mysteries of the subconscious.

“I even got a doctor friend to teach me how to hypnotise myself — all medical-students are taught hypnosis, you know. I had the rather selfish notion that by self-hypnosis I could cut down the time I usually took to learn a part from two to three weeks to two to three days.

“And for quite a few of the parts I played I did use hypnosis. So perhaps I do understand Dr. Corder’s motives a little more than I might be expected to. “Not that I would attempt – even if I had the time — to try to solve the problems of the women who write to me. I send them a sympathetic letter pointing out that I am an actor, not a qualified doctor and suggest that they seek professional advice. I can only hope that, in such cases, every little word of understanding helps.”

There was one other thing. In his middle years, after nearly 20 years of marriage and two growing sons, did he think — this most understanding of men – that his wife understood him?

“About half of the time, I would say,” he said. “Of course, the other half, I don’t want to be understood!”

A galaxy of guest stars

Dr. Roger Corder, the sympathetic psychiatrist with the mischievous teenage daughter, is back. He returns this week in a new 13-part series, exploring The Human Jungle.

Herbert Lom (Corder) and Sally Smith (Jennifer) resume their father-daughter relationship; Michael Johnson (Dr. Jimmy Davis) is again Corder’s assistant. Mary Yeomans (Nancy Hamilton) is his secretary.

A galaxy of film and theatre stars will make guest appearances.

Joan Collins, Sylvia Syms, Margaret Lock-wood, Flora Robson, Richard Johnson, Rita Tushingham, Peggy Cummins, Sonia Dresdel… are some of them.

Corder is faced with a wide variety of strange human jig-saw puzzles during the series. Among them are:

Why should an ageing, lonely schoolmistress receive menacing blackmail threats? … what is the story behind the long list of street accidents that keep happening to a young girl? … who is responsible for the mysterious fire in the home of a wealthy young couple? All the stories originate from real-life cases. To ensure accuracy a 35-year-old psychiatrist from Manchester has watched the series being made. He told me: “It has been my job to ensure that the stories have not been ‘over-dramatised’.”

The first episode in the new series, “Struggle for a Mind,” has Joan Collins as guest star, with Margaret Whiting, Kay Walsh and Clifford Evans in support.

Joan Collins (in her first acting appearance on British TV) plays a young woman who tries to commit suicide.

Corder’s plan to lead her back to sanity conflicts with the ideas of Dr. Tate, who is in charge of the case. But both have reckoned without the girl’s warped and hostile family.

The post In the ‘jungle’ of human emotions appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

He claps his hands and is surrounded by some of the best-dressed women ever to grace a seaside promenade.

He is Jeffrey Piddock — senior floor manager of ABC Outside Broadcasts. But he is better known in Northern seaside resorts as ringmaster, major domo and general factotum of Holiday Town Parade.

The smooth running of this touring television show owes much to Piddock’s knack of being in the right place at the right time.

He is on duty from the moment the programme team arrives in the resort until all the equipment is packed and on its way to the next port of call.

Piddock is an ex-song-and-dance man. His show business career started after he graduated from dancing school. He joined a ballerina for a double act in a London amusement arcade.

Later, he worked with comics like Arthur Askey, Jimmy Wheeler and Vic Oliver. He understudied George Form by in Zip Goes a Million, and played the star role for two weeks when Formby fell ill.

He moved into ITV, and has been behind the scenes of Holiday Town Parade since the first programme.

Viewers never see Piddock. But he is known to the thousands of holidaymakers who go to preliminary heats for contests at different resorts every Friday afternoon.

Usually at local swimming pools, more than 100 bathing beauties, fashion girls and muscle-men parade before judges who choose those to appear in the programme next day.

Piddock says: “It’s thought generally that the same girls go round all the bathing beauty shows. But we often have newcomers and then I have to teach them how to parade to best advantage.”

As well as helping to organise the parades, Piddock often acts as compere.

And while the compere on Saturdays, McDonald Hobley, chants his “Don’t be late. Make a date, for Holiday Town Parade.” Piddock is thinking of the problems next week’s show will bring.

The post 60 girls have their eye on this man appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

‘Undeniably the Pilkington Committee has been brutal in its criticisms, so brutal in fact that the Government, sensing that the BBC could not be so white nor ITV so black as Pilkington asserted, had rejected its main recommendations.’

Only a few weeks before Lord Hill took up office the Postmaster-General had declared his intention of opening a second Independent Television service:

‘If all goes well and there are suitable companies willing to offer their services to the ITA, the Government would certainly hope during the autumn of 1965 to authorise the physical build-up of the second programme, starting in the areas of big population.’

On this premise, the Authority extended its programme contracts by another three years, until 1967. Beyond that, said Lord Hill significantly, ‘Present companies and new companies are to apply for any area they choose. All bets are off and there will be a fair field for all.’

On their tenth birthday the ITV contractors were given a package which was unwelcome but not unexpected; the imposition of a Government levy on advertisement revenue, to curb the excessively high profits the companies had been enjoying. But there was also a consolation prize from the Prime Minister; at the celebration dinner in the Guildhall, when he recalled the controversy which had surrounded the inauguration of Independent Television, Mr Wilson paid this tribute:

‘Today, ten years later, on one thing all of us here tonight can agree. Independent Television has become part of our national anatomy. More than that, it has become part of our social system and part of our national way of life.’

By this time ITV was indeed a fixture, with an audience of fifteen million homes, reaching eighty-one per cent of the population.

The companies were paying the Authority £8,000,000 annually in rentals and £22,000,000 in levy out of a net income of £75,000,000. Within ABPC, ABC Television had grown taller in stature than its parent.

In spite of forebodings in the boardroom, ABC Television in its first full financial year had made a small profit for its owners. Thereafter it had contributed increasingly to the total profits, rapidly overtaking then passing the combined earnings of the cinemas, studios, productions, catering, and bowling centres. The trading profits of the group in 1963 totalled £4,035,987, of which ABC Television contributed £2,622,562. A year later ABC Television’s profits had grown to £3,337,185 and the Corporation’s profit had swollen to £5,246,439, while profits from the cinema side had shrunk to £1,982,256. Rewards came to us all in time and at the end of 1964 I was at last elected to the parent board of ABPC. The only financial effect of this was that I was invited to buy 730 shares in the company, at the market price.

The overall scene was changing. Val Parnell, in his seventies, had retired to the South of France. Lew Grade was the undisputed king in full control of the ATV empire. Lance-Bombardier Louis Grade, Royal Signal Corps, as the identity bracelet on his wrist proclaimed; dancer and Charleston champion; theatrical agent and Deputy Managing Director of ATV, had reached the summit and was now at his tycoon peak. ATV had become a one-man concern, even with its 1,700 staff and electronic studio in Elstree and skyscraper in Birmingham. Though there was a succession of personal assistants, assistant managing directors and deputy managing directors, the job of number two at ATV never seemed to be a permanent one.

As Lew expanded his activities, with tremendous energy and courage, developing his other business of providing popular filmed series for the American market, taking over Pye records and assuming control of the theatre side of the business, he took on the tasks of three men. Now he had the big office high in Cumberland House to himself, sitting in the corner where Val Parnell used to be, backed by the handsome bookcase with the English classics in beautiful bindings (though the ones I occasionally took out contained no pages). Lew installed his own king-size desk, full of locked drawers crammed with costing sheets and contracts. In one drawer he kept a wad of unpaid invoices with which he would confront me and I would claim we were being overcharged. In the middle of the desk between us would be a large old-fashioned hand telephone; my occasional assertion that this was bugged was a guaranteed way of making Lew lose his temper. There were times when I thought he was going to explode with anger or excitement, but I learned how to calm him down. His method of pacifying me was to offer me one of those titan cigars, which I never accepted, although if I had kept them all I could have opened a cigar kiosk at the Hilton. Usually we met at the beginning of the day and Lew’s secretary would produce a steaming bowl of coffee with sweet biscuits, which was the boss’s breakfast. A light eater and a teetotaller Lew still had trouble with his chubby waistline and when he did lose some weight he liked to demonstrate that his trousers were getting too slack for him. Tea was another of his social occasions and once he said to me on the telephone with delight: ‘Who do you think is coming to tea with me? Bette Davis!’ The eternal theatrical agent, he was still bedazzled by star names, glittering or otherwise. Our conversations were mostly arguments about money and the buying or selling of programmes. His repertoire was as varied as a cinema organist’s, and he could pull out all the stops – sentimental, threatening, pleading, admiring. His best act was when he would go down on his knees and fling out his arms, one hand still gripping the cigar.

Lew’s birthday was on Christmas Day, and in fact most of the family had their birthdays on noteworthy days of the calendar. Lew’s brother, Bernard Delfont (now Lord Delfont), once explained to me the reason for this. When the family emigrated from Russia and came to East London there was some confusion about their birth certificates. Their mother, Mrs Isaac Winogradsky, could remember only the years when her boys were borm but not the actual dates, because of the Gregorian calendar, and this left them scope to select their own birthday. As the firstborn. Lew exercised his option to choose December 25.

In the agency business Lew and Leslie Grade were in direct competition with Bernard but any real rivalries must have dissolved when they all met at week-ends in the matriarchal home in Wimbledon. Illness reduced Leslie’s activities but there were many healthy differences of opinion between Lew and Bernard. Lew became essentially a television man and Bernard a man of the theatre, but they both had burning ambitions to get into the film business. When EMI finally absorbed the Grade and Delfont agencies Bernard became Chairman of the group’s film production and theatre interests and therefore got in first. Some years later, when Lew became disenchanted with the declining profits of Independent Television he, too, went into feature films, with a blast of trumpets and lavish press receptions. Lew, to me, had always been ITV’s Sam Goldwyn and now he was following exactly in the steps of the film mogul. I used to say that at his television press conferences Lew usually doubled the figure he first thought of; but when he went into films his multiples grew more expansive and we began to read about budgets of fifty million dollars.

In some ways, too, Lord Grade probably was missing the early triumphs and setbacks of ITV, which never ceased to be a stimulant. We still worked in close collaboration on industrial affairs, and always sat together at the monthly meetings with the other companies and with the Authority. As we both gradually hannded over the direct control of programmes to our own able executives and as we yielded our seats of power at the Independent Television Companies’ Association Council meetings and the Standing Consultative Committee gatherings at Brompton Road, some of the zest for television probably faded in both of us.

Even while he had still been concentrating on television, Lew as a one-man operator diversified his activities with his regular trips to the United States to sell programmes, as well as controlling the other ATV activities. This lessening of attention to the ATV franchise in Birmingham and London gave us our chance to move in and ABC Television was able to concentrate on its single objective of improving our strength within the network.

As we analysed our strengths and weaknesses we tried to see ourselves as the Authority saw us. We wanted to prove that we had the potential for a bigger contract and for weekday television. We had the staff, the executives and the programmes, as well as the studios, notably Teddington, which had become the most advanced television engineering centre in Britain outside the BBC. The experiments with colour in the studio had given the staff exceptional experience, well in advance of the Government giving the signal for ITV and BBC to transmit colour.

The era of black and white television was coming to an end. So was the original pattern of ITV. Changes were on the way and new pieces had to be fitted in to the jigsaw.

Lord Hill was now put in command of the Authority. No longer was the Director-General totally in control, gently guiding his Chairman. Those of us who had worked at the BBC knew well how the course of the Corporation had fluctuated over the years as the controls changed hands between Directors-General and Chairmen. Now, after more than a decade of subtle steersmanship there was a new and powerful hand at the ITV wheel: by joining all the committees (although not always in the capacity of Chairman) and spending four mornings of every week with the Authority at Brompton Road, Lord Hill became as fully informed as his Director-General.

The companies all realised that changes were in progress and we speculated as to where the axe might fall. It was obvious that the deadline for announcing any changes in contractors would have to be decided before the Authority’s year ended in July, 1967. Therefore no-one was surprised when Lord Hill chose the end of February to reveal his hand. He explained that a fifth major networking company would be introduced, in Yorkshire, and would be allocated a seven-day week as well as the existing Lancashire and Midlands stations. London could continue to be split, but on a slightly different basis, with the lucrative Friday evening added to the Saturday-Sunday contract. The London weekday contract would thus be reduced by its most remunerative evening of the week. This new arrangement, a genuine attempt to divide the three central areas fairly and evenly between five companies would eliminate the North and Midlands weekend contract.

Applications were invited for all the fifteen contracts and we were reminded of Lord Hill’s statement in 1963 – ‘a fair field for all’. Now, in 1967, the Authority intended ‘to select companies for the award of new contracts, and not merely to consider the renewal of contracts’. This, I knew, was ABC Television’s opportunity to become a London programme contractor. We would apply for the London Weekend contract, bringing with it the additional Friday evening revenue which would help to subsidise our expansion into weekday programming. We had the least to lose, perhaps the most to gain.

The post Contracts and criticism appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Ten years ago [1967], the economics of one-hour drama series was that the production cost per episode of a series on videotape like The Avengers or Callan, with two weeks in rehearsal followed by two days in the television studios, was £10,000 ‘above the line’ plus another £10,000 for studio costs and overheads. ‘Above-the-line’ means the actual cash expenditure on actors, writers, sets and costumes. In television, artists’ and writers’ fees are based on a single performance in the United Kingdom, with additional payments for repeats and for overseas sales.

A similar script, produced in a film studio at the normal average series rate of five minutes a day, would take two weeks of full studio usage, plus the consequent cost of editing and dubbing music and sound effects. Such film costs averaged £40,000 for a one-hour episode, but this included world rights on actors’ performances and writers’ scripts. The ITV network would pay £20,000 for two transmissions of these films, so the producer would still need to collect another £20,000 from world sales to recover his costs. Earnings on this scale were almost impossible to achieve unless the series was sold to America, either through a network or syndicated to a few hundred individual stations. Only ATV and ABC ever succeeded in breaking into the American networks, although years later the BBC managed to get one or two of its costume play series and documentaries transmitted. Partly because of my contention that a filmed series of The Avengers would bring a year’s work to Elstree studio stages the Board of ABPC finally agreed to let me spend the million pounds on twenty-six one-hour programmes in black-and-white film.

Julian Wintle was a feature film producer with a reputation for producing consistent films of quality on a commercial basis, and we had already gone through a trial run in making The Human Jungle, a series he brought to ABC. Wintle’s particular skill was in the editing of film and his post-production touches could provide the gloss and glamour The Avengers demanded. I put all the elements of a successful television series at his disposal; producers, directors, script editors, writers, designers, and cast, and to all this he added his own skills, aided by his production supervisor Albert Fennell.

Honor Blackman seemed almost irreplaceable until we came across another actress who was both beautiful and accomplished. Having lost our Cathy Gale to James Bond the script editors invented a new character, Emma Peel. The name was coined by a press officer on the ABC series, Marie Donaldson, based on: ‘Man appeal – m. appeal – Emma Peel! See?’

Wintle and I scrutinised all the rushes and the rough cuts of the first three episodes. They were depressing. The actress was not right for the part. The three episodes were not good enough. I had to make a bitter decision. At a cost of the £120,000 already spent, I had to halt production and find a replacement.

Everyone connected with The Avengers and Drama Department came up with suggestions for a new ‘Emma Peel’ and we made screen tests of a dozen young actresses. Many were promising, yet not sufficiently outstanding. Then Dodo Watts, our casting director, asked me to look at an actress she had cast for an Armchair Theatre comedy. The play had just been recorded but not transmitted, and we played it back on closed circuit. The actress was a member of Peter Hall’s Royal Shakespeare Company and she was attractive, intelligent, combative and had a fine sense of comedy. She came to Elstree studios for a film test and (for this was vital) to play a scene opposite Pat Macnee. The chemistry worked – they were perfectly partnered. Diana Rigg was signed up on a long-term contract to play the part.

Our overseas sales were then being handled by Bob Norris, a Californian who, as a consequence of marrying an English girl, settled in Britain. Although interest had been aroused in the States, in spite of the rather fuzzy telerecordings of earlier videotaped episodes, there was no sign of a sale to any of the three major US networks. With half the filmed series completed, and half a million pounds spent, the situation began to look desperate. Norris and I flew to New York to tackle the network bosses.

It was the worst week of my television life. Every day we would set forth from the Gotham Hotel with our cans of film, our charts and statistics, and plod around Manhattan, talking to executives and screening episodes to potential buyers. Every evening we would slump back into our chairs in the hotel and hope for the telephone to ring.

Both NBC and CBS continued to show interest but we encountered the inbuilt antipathy to British accents and lack of pace which the British film industry has rarely been able to overcome. Again, we discovered, the programme buyers in top jobs at the network were cautious and unadventurous, because their livelihood depends upon successful decisions and they were judged by results at the end of every season. The “mortality-rate’ of such American network executives has always been alarming.

Then I had a stroke of good fortune. I had known for many years the president of the ABC network, Leonard Goldenson, who had come into television from the film world of Paramount and on several occasions he had visited our company, ABPC, in London. An anglophile, he appreciated the quality of British production in films, theatre and television, and he was most helpful and encouraging. However, sometimes nothing can be more fatal than a boost from the boss, and a recommendation or even an instruction from the front office can be the kiss of death to a hopeful performer or producer. Luckily, Tom Moore, the ABC programme executive, had screened several episodes of The Avengers with increasing interest, and this confirmation of his own judgment proved to be timely.

By Friday morning, our last day in New York, Norris and I found ourselves with two final hurdles to overcome. The films were in black-and-white and the networks were insisting that all series should now be filmed in colour. We talked our way out of this on the thin excuse that The Avengers would have the distinction of being the last TV series sold to America in monochrome. One remaining hope had been to get the series into the network schedule during the summer months, when the regular programme series were off the air. Otherwise the only chance was that our series could be a replacement for one of the other new series which collapsed in the early months of a new season.
ABC said they might be willing to take the first thirteen programmes on this basis in black-and-white. If by some miracle the series succeeded and they wanted more, then we would have to go into colour for the second thirteen. The other difficulty was the ‘unknown’ girl who was starring in the series. Now that a sale was within sight flocks of ABC executives came to screenings of the episodes to inspect the product they might be handling in their respective departments. They all thought her very good, but she was completely unknown. They had never heard of her. She was not even a British star! What the series needed, they were certain, was a bright young American starlet in the part of Emma Peel.

I refused. The essence of The Avengers was its Englishness. That was the quality which basically appealed to them and I insisted it would also be a reason for winning a new audience; something totally unlike any American series. We held on, and Diana Rigg stayed in, to become a television star in the United States as well as throughout the world. Long after, Diana was besieged by all three American networks to appear in a series of her own, built around her, at her own price. Ultimately the vehicle designed for her followed a typical American pattern and could indeed have been played by an American actress, but it failed to be a series of which Diana Rigg could be proud.

Back we came to London, with thirteen episodes sold, to try to convert the remaining episodes to colour, even though we would have to go above budget. Weeks of waiting went by, until the first Nielsen Research audience ratings were telephoned to us. Then came the cable when ABC took up the options for the second thirteen and, with the series already leaping into popularity, an option for another twenty-six in colour. The Avengers developed into a cult in the United States and even today when I go to New York repeats are still running in the small hours.

A happy moment was when the contracts were signed and we announced the sale to the United States, forecasting how many millions of dollars the series was going to bring to Britain. The Evening Standard headlined this as the biggest television deal ever made with the United States. Within an hour of publication a furious Lew Grade was on the telephone to me yelling that it wasn’t the biggest deal. His were always the biggest deals! In fact The Avengers ultimately earned ten million dollars overseas and revenue is still coming in.

The most pleasing aspect to me was that we had produced the series to British standards and not to American requirements. This has always been the difference in attitudes towards overseas sales between Lew Grade and myself. He has always preferred to run two business operations: his ATV franchise in the Midlands, and then his other output of programmes designed specifically for the American market. Sometimes I have jokingly reminded him that he should be concentrating on Birmingham, England, rather than Birmingham, Alabama. My policy for the two companies I started was, first, to satisfy the British audience. If in accomplishing that we could achieve international standards of quality we should be able to sell such programmes overseas. This seems to be the BBC policy, as well, and I think that our moderate success in the United States with programmes of quality has done much to maintain the high reputation of British drama and documentaries in America. Our policy has certainly been justified in the important market of Australia where British television programmes, primarily BBC and our own, have overtaken American products.

The American networks remain a difficult target and at the time of writing Sir Lew appears to have given them up, too, and instead has turned to producing feature films for the cinemas. The gamble of making television film series for the American market has become enormous. The production cost of The Avengers (and I presume The Saint too) rose from £40,000 to £60,000 per episode. Today [1977] it would cost more than £80,000 to produce an Avengers of comparative quality. To make the required minimum series of twenty-six would cost two million pounds, a venture few would contemplate with optimism. Series like The World at War were not accepted by the American networks, mainly because there is no room in their schedules for series of twenty-six one-hour documentaries; but by slogging away around the United States, city by city, our distributors sold this series to 64 individual stations in the principal cities and earned $1,500,000. The remaining outlet is the Public Broadcasting System, to which sponsors donate programmes. Payments are low but prestige is high, and it is here that American viewers have seen and acclaimed British drama series like Upstairs, Downstairs, and Thames’ Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill.

The post ‘M’ appeal appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Brian Tesler was appointed Programme Controller of ABC in October, 1962. Before the year was out Sydney Newman had resigned and joined the BBC as their head of Drama, the first ITV executive to be given such a key job in the Corporation. I was satisfied that Brian Tesler possessed executive qualities beyond his existing job, and his skilful interpretation of programme research had qualified him thoroughly for the arguments ahead with the other programme controllers in ITV’s battle against the BBC. Hugh Carleton Greene, as Director-General of the BBC, was now fighting back, determined to regain a half-share of the viewing audience. Greene’s emissary to make the approach to Newman was Kenneth Adam, who had returned to the BBC from Picture Post to succeed Cecil McGivern as Controller of Programmes. Sydney Newman told the press that the Director-General’s brief was to bring the Armchair Theatre playwrights like Alun Owen, Bill Naughton, Clive Exton and Harold Pinter into the BBC fold. Blunt as ever, Newman told the newspapermen that the BBC Drama Department was too big: ‘I want to see how we can bring it down into much tighter groups.’ With him he took some of our staff, including his script editors; others who joined him included Verity Lambert. Her first BBC assignment for Newman was to produce Dr Who; but such is the small world of television that the day came when she returned to Thames (which incorporated ABC), taking over Sydney Newman’s old job and becoming Controller of Drama.

During Sydney Newman’s four and a half years with ABC, Armchair Theatre reached the heights of British television drama although sometimes it also touched the depths of depression. The Daily Mail headlined his move with ‘BBC Signs TV “Dustbin” Man’. This was unfairly sensational but undoubtedly a play series which mirrored life at the end of the nineteen-fifties provided Sydney’s dramatists with plenty of depressing subjects.

As the percentage of realistic and gloomy plays increased I suggested to Newman that our drama schedules needed balancing with something more light-hearted and sophisticated. I reminded him of the days when MGM produced sparkling comedies tailored for their contract stars like Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy and Norma Shearer, elegantly dressed and in fashionable settings. Why couldn’t we make a series based, for instance, on The Thin Man, with characters like those made famous by William Powell and Myrna Loy? This suggestion appealed to the ever-receptive Sydney and he came back quickly with a proposal. Seeking popular new series he had coined a title, Police Surgeon, which seemed to have the elements of box office appeal. In spite of the performance of a compelling young actor, Ian Hendry, the first episodes had made little impact. We looked at a newly completed episode in which Ian Hendry acted with Patrick Macnee, an actor who had recently returned to Britain after a few years in Hollywood. In the episode Macnee’s girl friend had been murdered and the two men vowed to avenge her death.

Sydney Newman’s proposal was that we should team the two actors, Hendry again as a doctor and Macnee as a man-about-town agent. A girl was needed to match them and as we could not decide upon the most suitable of two actresses we alternated Julie Stevens, a young contract actress ABC had found in Manchester, with a former Rank starlet who had matured into an accomplished actress, Honor Blackman.

The first series of The Avengers began in January 1961. ATV’s refusal to network it gave the programme an unexpected opportunity for what could be called a provincial try-out, the method by which Charles B. Cochran used to polish his revues in Manchester before bringing them to London to confront West End critics and audiences. The first year’s run was interrupted by a long Equity strike and it was not until May 1962 that we were able to launch the series in what became the familiar format. Ian Hendry had decided that he had no wish to be type-cast in a regular series and he dropped out, although he continued to appear often for ABC in important plays. Honor Blackman’s stylish authority was exactly right for the part of Cathy Gale. Julie Stevens went off in the opposite direction, to become one of the regular presenters in a BBC children’s programme.

The Avengers unit quickly became a dedicated team, with an eager young scot, John Bryce, as producer working closely with Richard Bates as story editor. Patrick Macnee was dandified in Edwardian style, wearing braided suits and embroidered waistcoats, plus a curly bowler hat and an umbrella-swordstick. Macnee did not carry a gun but was always ready to use un-gentlemanly tactics in dealing with rough customers. Michael Whittaker and Frederick Starke designed clothes for Honor Blackman, and her man-tailored suits, high boots, leather jerkins and cat suits started fashion trends which became a trade-mark of the programme. Richard Bates (a son of the author H.E. Bates) had dozens of writers at one time or another working on the series, but the main scripts he selected came from Roger Marshall, Brian Clemens, Eric Paice and Malcolm Hulke.

Produced on videotape at Teddington studios, The Avengers became a national hit once ATV gave in and we were allotted air time in London. Overseas interest was considerable and our film company’s distributors in the United States were optimistic of its chances there. The handicap was that there was no satisfactory electronic method of transferring British 405-line television videotapes to the American standard.

The success of The Avengers was due to its appeal on two levels, first as a fast-moving thriller and, secondly, its tongue-in-cheek impudence and way-out situations which captured the more selective viewers. I tried to stimulate our Elstree film people to make a feature film of The Avengers or, at least, to put Honor Blackman under contract because of her obvious feature film appeal, but without response. Instead Harry Saltzman stepped in and signed up Honor for his James Bond series and she made an instant hit as Pussy Galore.

The post Dramas of one kind or another appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Three clocks, in fact. Geoffrey describes the clock face, telling us about the hands, the numerals and the mechanism – but he mentions no logo on the clock. From his description, this is the clock in question.

That clock coincides with Kif and Alan’s memories of the clock itself, with the proviso that neither of them can remember if the grey was at the top or the bottom – Geoffrey doesn’t specify. But what Kif and Alan both remember is the ABC shield to one side of the clock face. This isn’t described by Geoffrey, but then he’s answering a question (“will you describe the first ABC clock?”) literally: it didn’t occur to us to ask if he could describe the frame the clock was set in!

Combining Geoffrey’s clock face with Kif and Alan’s logo recollection produces this clock.

But here Alan has a conflicting memory: he is sure he saw the same clock but without the words “ABC Television” written in the shield device. Kif also has a vague memory of this. What they couldn’t explain was why this would happen, and both therefore doubted the result. Here’s that clock.

Transdiffusion has done further research into this to try to track down why two clocks would exist with such a strange difference. The answer turns out to be “Clock Spots”.

Advertising on early ITV was expensive: there was little room for it – six minutes in each hour, with a mere 7 hours on air each day – creating a supply and demand imbalance. The Independent Television Authority (ITA) and the government, via the General Post Office, were keen that local businesses, regional brands (very common at the time) and medium-sized companies should get access to the airwaves at a price they could afford.

One solution was “admags”, regular 15 minute programmes with a presenter looking at products and services available in the region, sometimes chatting with the manufacturer or shopkeeper themselves, which cut the expense of producing an advertisement to almost nothing and allowed local companies in.

But what about the regional brands and medium-sized businesses? They could afford an advert but not a slot to show it; or the slot but not the advert. Their products and services were often hard to advertise in an admag, with little to be said other than to show the thing to the camera and be done with it.

These potential advertisers were covered by “Clock Spots” – seven seconds of advertising slotted into the presentation of the station, treated as a separate item rather than a full advert. The station could cut to the clock – important in the days before it was common to have an accurate timepiece in most homes – at around 20 seconds to the hour, let the clock tick for 5 seconds, then cut to a 7 second advert (or spend 7 seconds with the announcer reading the copy over the clock ticking). Coming back from the advert left 8 seconds – enough for a namecheck for the station and an announcement into the next programme. This was a television version of what Radio Eirann and Radio Luxembourg did with their timechecks – Luxembourg’s “The time now by my H Samuel Everite watch is… [jingle]…you’re right on time with Everite!” becoming famous in its own right.

But this presented the ITA with a problem: these “Clock Spots” looked like the product in question was sponsoring the station as a whole, or perhaps the next programme. This practice was illegal under the Television Act 1954 that set up ITV, and while it wasn’t happening, that it looked like it might be was damning in the ITA’s eyes.

The fix to this problem was to debrand the clock before the “Clock Spot” – that way, the clock was being sponsored, not the station. This may seem like a strange set of hoops to jump through, but Independent Television was new and unsure of its feet; opposition from the Labour party to the entire concept of commercial television, which would persist into the 1960s, threatened the abolition of ITV should Labour come to power in any forthcoming election – antagonising opposition backbenchers by even seeming to break the spirit of the Act could be the ITA signing its own death warrant.

“Clock Spots” did not last long, with the ITA and the programme companies finding they broke the flow of presentation and damaged what we would now call the “branding” of the station; additionally, the price of “Clock Spots” rose as demand grew, until they were close to the cost of a 7-second ‘voice to slide’ advert (nicknamed “chipshop corner”) in an ordinary break anyway. Admags would disappear in 1963, abolished on the orders of the Postmaster General at the time of the Pilkington Report.

The post It’s about time 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.

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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.

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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.

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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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He has already made plans. “I’d like to let you in on some of them,” he said. “I think you’d find them as exciting as I do. But … we are not the only ones in this tough field, you know!”

What we do know is that Philip Jones was first to feature a catchy tune that was later named Sidesaddle. It made pianist Russ Conway famous. And that among the winners Philip Jones has given viewers are Thank Your Lucky Stars, Spot the Tune, Melody Ranch, The Alan Young Show and Make Up Your Mind.

He views programme planning this way: “Skimping on the preparation of a show can reduce a possible smash hit to a merely passable half-hour. That’s shocking. You’ve got to be ruthlessly attentive to detail in the fiercely competitive work of small-screen technique.”

With TV expanding so fast, Philip Jones sees one of his great hopes being realised before long. The aim will be to put selected stars in a financial position that enables them to live largely on their TV income. This, he feels, will be a bargain buy in the long run.

His own connection with TV began with the birth of Granada. He had previously spent six years with Radio Luxembourg (comparative unknowns with him then included Teddy Johnson, Peter Murray and Keith Fordyce).

Article source: TVWorld magazine issue 1, covering Saturday 26 September to Friday 2 October 1964

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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.

When the ABC ‘shield’ changed to the ‘triangle’ in 1959, a new startup tune was introduced: Busy Batchelor, by Associated-Rediffusion’s Redvers Kyle, who composed music as a hobby (he did not compose this tune for A-R).

It was used until Perpetuum Mobile, as also used later by Thames, was introduced in 1962.

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ABC opens on Christmas Eve 1967 with a piece of James Last (there was no requirement to display a tuning signal or other technical matter over Christmas and Easter)

ABC North’s Christmas-adorned clock in 1967. For this start-up sequence, they switched from the ident to the clock over the last verse of the James Last music

Special occasions saw ABC North using two continuity announcers – here, David Hamilton and John Duncanson. Behind them, the usual cyclorama studio wall is covered in viewer Christmas cards

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11.55pm on 28 July 1968: Goodbye from ABC. After twelve years as the Weekend Independent Television Programme Company in the North ABC Television is closing down tonight for good. David Hamilton and Keith Martin who, as station hosts, are the personalities most often seen by our viewers over these years, look back at past programmes and personal memories from our studios in Manchester, switch off the Didsbury lights and put out the studio cat for the very last time.

Produced by the Presentation Department, ABC Television.

(Editor’s note: a Midlands version of this programme, with substantially the same script, was aired at the same time from the Alpha Studios in Aston, Birmingham, presented by Sheila Kennedy and Philip Elsmore)

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That is why, at least once a week, Benson visits a London studio for voice training from Jonathan Tremayne, an operatic bass. There he sings in a pleasing bass-baritone such typically English songs as Alice Where Art Thou? and Linden Lea.

“I don’t think I shall ever sing on television,” he admits, “but I want to go on talking on TV for a long time to come. This is one way of keeping my voice in trim. After all, a footballer has to train to keep fit for his job, so why shouldn’t I do the same?”

Sometimes, John Benson wishes he could sing to viewers when there is a gap to be filled. Recently, he had to ad-lib for one-and-a-half minutes. His worst-ever experience occurred when a film trailer appeared upside down during a promotion announcement. He had to talk for three minutes until it was corrected.

“This is a real testing time for an announcer,” he says. “I usually talk about programmes to come, and try to look as relaxed as possible.”

Benson is 28. His wife, Rita, and baby daughter, Sandra Jane, have also appeared in TV commercials. The whole family was used recently in an advertisement. Benson, who says his ambition is to become a successful TV compere, was in repertory before becoming an announcer.

Unlike Benson, Michell Raper had no repertory background. At Oxford University, he was a contemporary of Tony Richardson, the producer, and Robin Day, and decided to take up a career in show business. He worked on radio and films before joining television.

Apart from announcing, Raper writes poetry and plays. One of his plays has been broadcast on radio, and a children’s play has been televised. He is now working on his third play.

Four years ago, Mich Raper acquired a large and imposing flat on London’s Chelsea Embankment. A prized companion is Lulu, his Siamese cat.

Raper is unmarried. The lady of his choice must not mind “sharing me with my typewriter and Lulu.” She must also share his love of the theatre, literature and good music; his taste for old prints and modern originals. She must not complain if he spends the whole night working, or brings home friends, like last Christmas when he invited several Hungarian refugees to the flat for a party.

Other pointers in the Raper marriage dossier: “She must not be over-possessive; must not wear curlers at night; and she would need to have a sense of humour.”

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Video of John Benson announcing at the start of The Eamonn Andrews Show courtesy of TvTimes1966 on YouTube

John Benson makes the ABC North authority announcement between Perpetuum Mobile and the ABC March, used 1959-1968

The announcer’s announcer, the “herald of them all” according to Southern’s Christopher Robbie as he prepared to close that station for the final time, was John Benson. His voice was to become famous nationally thanks to its rich tones working wonderfully in a range of television quiz shows – it’s him saying “And now, from Norwich, it’s the quiz of the week!” at the start of Sale of the Century. He was ABC North’s chief announcer for many years, going freelance upon the establishment of Thames, where he was paid by the second to announce, and made a good living from it. He died in 1995.

Video of the titles of Sale of the Century courtesy of allenjeremy on YouTube

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The ITA did not specify the same level of local news coverage for ABC as for Granada and ATV Midlands. But this was more due to the UK broadcasting tradition, dating back to the pre-war BBC Regional Service on the radio. The tradition had it that there was no local news at weekends other than sports. It was assumed that a good Friday evening local bulletin would take care of the subject until the Monday.

Late afternoon in the newsroom of ABC At Large, ABC’s weekly round-up of the region’s news and affairs. The news staff are preparing bulletins for the evening’s programme while David Mahlowe, who introduces it, rehearses in front of the cameras.

The newsroom at ABC’s Manchester Studios is the nerve centre of this programme. Into it are fed pictures from the studio, film from telecine or live outside broadcast coverage of stories in the North and Midlands.

ABC At Large has been the first to highlight many problems in these areas, and has won a large audience for its liveliness and integrity.

The weekend ITV companies, ABC and ATV London could easily cover sports results, weather and traffic information as part of their continuity effort. This was okay as far as it went, but ABC in particular did not want to be seen as “less substantial” than ATV Midlands or Granada. ABC, of its own accord, chose to produce a level of regional news coverage in excess of the ITA’s weekend requirements.

Another choice was the type of regional ‘news’ that would be covered by ABC. It would not be local in the sense that we use today, but would look at issues of concern to the region as a whole. It had a proto-northern and -midland ‘cultural’ slant, in a time before devolution was thought of. It was more ‘middle class’ in tone than Granada ever managed – the sort of local news provided by Granada, with warehouses on fire in Salford, was not of interest to ABC.

It would not be economical to set up an ABC northern or midland newsroom, just to duplicate Granada’s five-day effort for ABC’s two days. Taking news from an “off the air” Granada or ATV Midlands, like LWT with Thames in the 1980s, or even paying their rival newsrooms to provide copy at weekends was unthinkable. ABC took the decision to go for stories on ‘northern and midland life’ in terms of lifestyle, music, culture, ‘events’ and sports. This had the effect of showcasing the north and midlands for their ‘non-London’ strengths.

With programmes at best two days a week, a review format was the obvious choice and making use of ABC’s luxurious outside broadcast fleet, the largest in the network, was a must. Apart from a Saturday evening roundup of sports results, and coverage of any major regional stories, ABC would concentrate on ‘looking over their area’ at the end of the week.

An early programmes developed for this purpose was ABC at Large, the programme title after which this website is named. The weekly show, initially late on Saturday evenings, though later moved to Sunday afternoons, had filmed reports as a staple. The programme was introduced for several years by David Mahlowe, who was later to become one of the ‘stalwart’ voices reading the clips on Granada’s What the Papers Say. He was also known for presenting ABC’s upmarket arts magazine Tempo, which was the South Bank Show of its time. Tim Brinton, and the young and relatively unknown Desmond Wilcox, ably assisted him.

The show would open with a roundup of local news, read by one of the continuity announcers brought specially to a main studio in Didsbury. It was a joint programme for north and midlands, although it came from Manchester, and no attempt was ever made at separate editions for ABC’s two regions.

What this meant in effect was that for the weekend only, these two Independent Television regions became one, and a tall map on the wall behind the ‘newsreader’ showed the ABC ‘region’ as white within a shaded England, the north and midlands ‘as one’. This gave the surreal impression that the part of the country that mattered was that part north of Watford, and south of that point was some rather parochial place called ‘London’ that “need not concern us at ABC”.

This extraordinary state of affairs struck one as surreal, even as a child. After a few minutes of carefully selected regional stories (upbeat, cultural, pan regional and never a warehouse fire in sight) the announcer would hand back to the main presenter, who would introduce a series of filmed features, usually prepared earlier in the week about aspects of northern and midland life.

If anything the show was a topical magazine, with a strong regional perspective, rather than a news bulletin. The programme won awards, including one for an edition in which Tim Brinton lived with a pensioner, on that pensioner’s normal budget, for a week – a new idea then. Desmond Wilcox got his first taste for social issues on the show. ABC at Large was seasonal, and ran from March to October each year from the late fifties to the mid-sixties. By then the formula required refreshing, and in 1964 ABC at Large was supplemented by ABC Weekend, taking over the vacated Saturday night slot.

This programme was more discussion orientated, but specialised in ‘provocative’ studio debate, reports and occasional controversies. In an era before ‘vox pops’, it was the journalists participating who said the provocative things to each other, then a new idea. The programme was introduced by Barry Westwood, Gillian Reynolds and Mary Griffiths, but as before the show opened with a regional news round-up, usually read by John Benson or John Edmunds in front of the surreal map of an alternative England without the south-east.

Desmond Wilcox was in evidence again, and interviewed Harold Wilson at some length on the show in 1966, with Wilson appearing in his alternative capacity as a ‘northern constituency MP’ rather than Prime Minister. Again the show was seasonal and typically ran for six or seven months of the year, though the winter months as opposed to ABC at Large in the summer. ABC Weekend ran from 1964 to 1968, but was dropped about six months before ABC closed, the team going off to London to adapt the poor Rediffusion local output into the exemplary Thames Today.

Another controversial series, The National Stakes, ran late at nights for several years in the mid-sixties. Again it specialised in strong debate, and tackled subjects then in the news and thought to be controversial, like divorce, abortion and capital punishment. It is remarkable how ABC at Large, ABC Weekend, The National Stakes and Fighting Talk are forgotten today when they were popular and award winning in their time. They were seen as topical magazines dealing in ‘issues’ rather than parochial incidents and were the direct ancestors of the ‘issue’ shows that make up much of Channel Four’s topical output today.

One early edition of ABC at Large was censured by the ITA for ‘a reckless lack of restraint’ on a social campaigning issue of the time. Howard Thomas, the MD of ABC was said to be delighted. It showed that ABC was lively, attention seeking, and dynamic – as always, a trailblazer. It was always company policy to stand out from the dour Granada or the lighter ATV Midlands. “Be as daring as you wish,” he told the producers, “it all gets us noticed.”

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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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During his time in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, he worked first with ABC before moving across to the BBC in 1962, holding the role of Head of Drama with both organisations. During this phase of his career, he was responsible for initiating two hugely popular television programmes, the spy-fi series The Avengers and the science-fiction series Doctor Who, as well as overseeing the production of groundbreaking social realist drama series such as Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Newman as “the most significant agent in the development of British television drama.” His obituary in The Guardian declared that “For ten brief but glorious years, Sydney Newman … was the most important impresario in Britain … His death marks not just the end of an era but the laying to rest of a whole philosophy of popular art.”

Early life

Born in Toronto, Newman was the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant father who ran a shoe shop. After studying at Ogden Public School, which he left at the age of thirteen, he later enrolled in the Central Technical School, studying art and design subjects. He initially attempted to follow a career as a stills photographer and an artist, specialising in drawing film posters. However, he found it so difficult to earn enough money to make a living from this profession that instead, he switched to working in the film industry itself. In 1938, he travelled to Hollywood, where he was offered a role with the Walt Disney Company on the strength of his graphic design work. However, he was unable to take the job due to a failure to secure a work permit. Returning to his native country, in 1941, he gained a job as a film editor at the National Film Board of Canada. He was eventually to work on over 350 films while an editor for the NFB.

During the Second World War the head of the NFB, John Grierson, promoted Newman to film producer, working on documentaries and propaganda films, including Fighting Norway, which he directed. In 1944 he was made executive producer of Canada Carries On, a long-running series of such films. In 1949 Grierson again assisted Newman’s career, entering him into television, then a new industry, on a one-year attachment to NBC in New York City. His assignment there was to compile reports for the Canadian government on American television techniques, focusing on dramas, documentaries and outside broadcasts.

The CBC

One of Newman’s reports on outside broadcasting was seen and admired by executives at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and in 1952 he joined the Corporation as their Supervising Director of Features, Documentaries and Outside Broadcasts. There he was involved in producing not only some of the earliest television editions of Hockey Night in Canada, but also the first Canadian Football League game to be shown on television. After his experience of seeing the production of television plays in New York, he was eager to work in drama despite, by his own admission, “knowing nothing about drama.” He was nonetheless able to persuade his superiors at CBC to make him Supervisor of Drama Production in 1954. In this position he encouraged a new wave of young writers and directors, including Ted Kotcheff and Arthur Hailey, and oversaw shows such as the popular General Motors Theatre.

Writing in 1990, the journalist Paul Rutherford felt that during his time at the CBC in the 1950s, Newman had been a “great champion of both realistic and Canadian drama.” He felt that Newman “came to fulfil the role of the drama impresario with the vision to push people to develop a high-quality and popular style of drama.”

Several of the General Motors Theatre plays, including Hailey’s Flight into Danger, were purchased for screening by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The productions impressed Howard Thomas, who was the managing director of ABC, the franchise holder for the rival ITV network in the English Midlands and the North at weekends. Thomas offered Newman a job with ABC as a producer of his own Saturday night thriller series, which Newman accepted, moving to Britain in 1958. In 1975 the Head of Drama at the CBC, John Hirsch, noted that the tendency of so many writers and directors having followed Newman to the UK in the 1950s and never having returned to work in Canada had a detrimental impact on the standard of subsequent Canadian television drama.

ABC

Soon after Newman arrived in the UK, ABC’s Head of Drama Dennis Vance was moved into a more senior position with the company, and Thomas offered Newman his position, which the Canadian quickly accepted. He was, however, somewhat disparaging of the state in which he found British television drama. “At that time, I found this country to be somewhat class-ridden,” he reminisced to interviewers in 1988. “The only legitimate theatre was of the ‘anyone for tennis’ variety, which on the whole gave a condescending view of working-class people. Television dramas were usually adaptations of stage plays and invariably about the upper classes. I said, ‘Damn the upper classes: they don’t even own televisions!'”

Newman’s principal tool for shaking up this established order was a programme which had been initiated before he had arrived at ABC, Armchair Theatre. This anthology series was networked nationally across the ITV regions on Sunday evenings, and in 1959 was in the top ten of the ratings for 32 out of the 37 weeks it was broadcast, with audiences of over 12 million viewers. Newman used the strand to present plays by writers such as Alun Owen, Harold Pinter and Clive Exton, also bringing over associates from Canada such as Charles Jarrott and Ted Kotcheff. Writing in 2000, the television historian John Caughie stated that “Newman’s insistence that the series would use only original material written for television made Armchair Theatre a decisive moment in the history of British television drama.”

In 1960 Newman devised a thriller series for ABC called Police Surgeon, starring Ian Hendry. Although Police Surgeon was not a success and was cancelled after only a short run, Newman took Hendry as the star, and some of the ethos of the programme, to create a new series (not a direct sequel as is sometimes claimed) called The Avengers. Debuting in January 1961, The Avengers became an international success, although in later years its premise differed somewhat from Newman’s initial set-up, veering into more humorous territory rather than remaining a gritty thriller.

Newman’s great success at ABC had been noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, whose executives were keen to revive their own drama department’s fortunes in the face of fierce competition from ITV. In 1961 the BBC’s Director of Television, Kenneth Adam, met with Newman and offered him the position of Head of Drama at the BBC. He accepted the position, eager for a new challenge, although he was forced by ABC to remain with them until the expiration of his contract in December 1962, after which he immediately began work with the BBC.

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He was born in Synge Street, Dublin, and educated at Synge Street CBS. He began his career as a clerk in an insurance office. He was a keen amateur boxer and won the Irish junior middleweight title in 1944.

In 1946, he became a full-time freelance sports commentator, working for Radio Éireann, Ireland’s national broadcaster. In 1950, he began presenting programmes for the BBC, being particularly well known for boxing commentaries, and soon became one of television’s most popular presenters. He began hosting the game show What’s My Line? in 1951.

Throughout the 1950s, he commentated on the major British heavyweight fights on the BBC Light Programme, with inter-round summaries by W. Barrington Dalby. On 20 January 1956, he reached #18 in the UK Singles Chart with a “spoken narrative” recording named “The Shifting Whispering Sands (Parts 1 & 2)”, which was produced by George Martin with musical backing by the Ron Goodwin Orchestra, released by Parlophone as catalogue number R 4106, a double-sided 78rpm record. The song later reappeared on Kenny Everett’s compilation album The World’s Worst Record Show, which was released in June 1978.

Between 1955 and 1964, he presented the long-running Sports Report on BBC’s Light Programme. In 1965, he left the BBC to join the ITV contractor ABC, where he pioneered the talk show format in the UK. He hosted a chat show on ITV, The Eamonn Andrews Show for five years. He was known for coming up with off-the-cuff linkings that did not work – such as: “Speaking of cheese sandwiches, have you come far?” This was parodied by the character Seamus Android on Round the Horne in the 1960s, performed by Bill Pertwee. In the 1960s he presented Thames Television’s Today news magazine programme.

He was likely best known as the presenter of the UK’s version of This Is Your Life, between its inception in 1955 and his death in 1987, when he was succeeded by Michael Aspel. Andrews became the very first This Is Your Life subject on British television when he was surprised by the show’s creator, Ralph Edwards. Andrews also created a long-running panel game called Whose Baby? that originally ran on the BBC and later on ITV. He was a regular presenter of the early Miss World pageants.

His contribution to UK radio is commemorated in the The Radio Academy Hall of Fame. Andrews appeared as the linking narrator who introduces the unrelated segments that comprise the portmanteau film, Three Cases of Murder (1955).

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ABC WEEKEND TELEVISION – NORTH (1956-1968)

Notional Date: June 1964
Announcers: John Benson, Jill Bechley
Music: Perpetuum Mobile (Roberts), used 1962-1968; ABC March (Bliss), used 1956-1968

At one and the same time, the ABC start-up routine manages to be both an industry standard, and a daring departure from the norm. A departure, in that the choice of two company theme tunes with the Authority announcement between did away with the need for a pause in the main theme to make the announcement. This meant the company symbol could form up with its own discrete piece of music and not be reliant upon a crescendo in the main piece.

ABC were a company very conscious of the need to promote their name and image. This they did with non-stop gusto, throughout the sixties.

With a two day weekend contract in the North and Midlands, they found it essential to fight back against the five day domination of Granada and ATV respectively. Their chosen method was strong and dynamic branding, and the daily opening routine set the standard for the rest of the day.

Perpetuum Mobile was composed by Michael Roberts, a member of the company staff who wrote string music as a hobby. At three minutes and three seconds it was only just long enough to cover the minimum time the tuning signal required. Accordingly, the company symbol which followed had its own music.

Perpetuum was not the first piece ABC had used. In the early years Busy Batchelor and Mr Punch had been tried, but with a major revamp of ABC style at the end of the fifties, Perpetuum was introduced and together with its later use by ABC when they became Thames, was the stalwart of the genre for almost thirty years.

Taking ABC and Thames together, this was the longest lived start-up theme in Independent Television history, and the only one to have been used in all four major regions, over time.

The symbol form up over the second piece, the ABC March, is the principal ‘tour de force’ of television ident graphics of the sixties. It makes no bones about being an icon, intending to be one, exhorting the viewer to give respect to the authority of the station and taking a declamatory tone throughout. The pulsating triangle is screen size and dominant, the serif letters neat and symmetrical beneath.

This 28 second piece was also used as a local ident from time to time, and was always the choice for lunchtime closedowns after the Sunday morning service.

The crisp and businesslike tones of John Benson are heard between the pieces, giving the standard Authority announcement. For collectors of these licensing statements this is both definitive and stylish. The wording conveys authority, the intonation and inflection is word perfect but the use of the non-standard ‘you’re tuned to’ very daring for the time, adding real character. Amongst collectors of these gems, this is considered a great example of station identification. Listen to the way he mentions ‘channels nine and ten’ giving absolute equality of status to both.

John Benson was regarded by many in the trade, as the definitive Independent Television continuity announcer of the sixties. He was with ABC for thirteen years, and went on to work for Thames thereafter.

When ABC moved to London in 1968, they took these start-up practices with them, only substituting the Thames music for the ABC March.

This approach to company identity set the standard for many other companies to follow. The ABC Midland start-up was similar, but used John Edmunds, and later Bill Steel for the recorded announcement.

ABC and ATV were each contracted to produce 22 Sunday morning services per year, with STV, Anglia, Southern and TWW producing two each. These ABC and ATV church broadcasts came from all over the country, usually from the same town as had hosted their outside broadcast vans for football matches the day before.

The churches were often outside the company areas, but this was an economical measure that made good sense. The ABC Teddington fleet could easily cover a London service, and this was never a problem for rival ATV.

It is the elegance of this start-up routine, from an age without electronic caption creation, that inspired the original Transdiffusion children, and created their interest in television presentation as a hobby. We have a lot to thank ABC for today.

This article originally appeared on Transdiffusion before 2001. It has been republished with the addition of the animated ABC start-up recreation by Dave Jeffery.

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Now she is charming ABC’s week-end audiences in a different role! As a demonstrator in the Saturday advertising magazine Quick on the Draw, she shows how to use all kinds of things, from the latest cake mixture to a machine for cutting grass the easy way.

“I’ve learnt to much about housewifery I think I should make the most competent housewife ever,” she laughs.

But in case any male reader should consider himself a likely candidate for the role of husband, there’s nothing doing. Sheila is far too busy to think about boy friends.

“The programme takes up my whole week,” she says, “but I always have Sunday off – my one chance to have a good rest.”

Monday finds her checking with producer Eddie Kebbell on what clothes she will need for Saturday’s programme. If she hasn’t already got them in her extensive wardrobe, she goes out to buy them.

Tuesday she has a script conference with Eddie. Wednesday she has a hair do. If she has to learn something especially difficult for her demonstrations, she spends the rest of Wednesday practising. Thursday and Friday are rehearsal days.

There may also be a cabaret to do, or a broadcast, and as Sheila is primarily a singer and dancer, lessons have to be kept up.

When Eddie Kebbell – who also produced her in Friday’s Girl – wanted a vivacious personality for Quick on the Draw, he immediately thought of Sheila. “I think she is a great artist,” he says.

Sheila has no illusions about show business. “I’m the most impatient person in the world regarding my career,” she says. “Of course I would like to he a big star.”

But at 27, she admits there is still plenty of time to reach the top. She is sincere enough to agree that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life trying to attain that ambition.

Television presents its problems, says Sheila. Once, in Friday’s Girl, she forgot the words of a sing she was signing. She fitted-in with the first words which came into her head. No one noticed the difference!

She finds advertising products fun, but exhausting, too. Remembering trade names and their various uses can be nerve-racking. So far, she hasn’t slipped up.

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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.

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He joined BBC Television as a trainee Light Entertainment producer in 1952 and was put in charge of the Department’s output of panel games, both finding and producing them, which he proceeded to do by introducing Guess My Story, Find the Link, The Tall Story Club and The Name’s the Same. With fellow ex-trainee Ernest Maxin he co-produced and directed the first television comedy series by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, And So to Bentley, starring Dick Bentley, Peter Sellers and Bill Fraser. He went on to produce series with Bob Monkhouse, Petula Clark, Billy Cotton, whose Band Show Wakey! Wakey! he devised, Ask Pickles, British television’s first request series, which he also devised, and Bathnight with Braden, starring Bernard Braden and written by Muir and Norden, which was BBC Television’s first weekly comedy series, such shows until then only being broadcast fortnightly.

At ATV from 1957 to 1960 he took over Sunday Night at the London Palladium, produced specials built round such international artistes as Rosemary Clooney and Johnnie Ray, devised and produced series of Val Parnell’s Saturday Spectaculars with Max Bygraves, Dickie Henderson, Arthur Askey, Harry Secombe and Dave King, and devised and produced New Look, a revue with a team of new performers including Bruce Forsyth and Roy Castle, whose television careers the series kick-started. In 1957 he won BAFTA’s first award for Light Entertainment Production when the Academy was still the Society of Film and Television Arts. His last production was Sammy Davis Jr’s first show for British TV in 1960.

As Director of Programmes at ABC TV and Thames TV during the 1960s and 1970s, he oversaw the first British television shows of Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby. He introduced ITV’s first weekly series dedicated to the arts with Tempo; British television’s first late night chat show with Eamonn Andrews’ Live from London and its first hidden camera show Candid Camera with Bob Monkhouse. Programmes he commissioned included Thank Your Lucky Stars, Callan, The Benny Hill Show, Public Eye and The World at War.

He was a founder-director of both Thames Television and Channel Four; managing director and then chairman and managing director of London Weekend Television; and the founder-chairman of ITV’s first venture into satellite broadcasting with SuperChannel. During his career, he worked for four legendary broadcasting bosses: Ronnie Waldman, Lew Grade, Howard Thomas and John Freeman; and when he became a broadcasting boss himself he appointed four future legends: Jeremy Isaacs as his Controller of Features at Thames; Michael Grade, John Birt and Greg Dyke successively as his Directors of Programmes at LWT.

He retired in 1994.

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