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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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.

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The post David Hamilton appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

He was born in Manchester, Lancashire, in 1938. He adopted his mother’s maiden name as a show business name.

He attended Glastonbury Road Grammar School at St. Helier in Surrey, until aged 17. On leaving school Hamilton became a script-writer for the TV series Portrait of a Star.

In 1960 he became an in-vision television announcer for ABC in Didsbury, Manchester and appeared with Ken Dodd in the TV series Doddy’s Music Box, acquiring the nickname, ‘Diddy’. Throughout the 1960s he hosted shows for the Tyne Tees, Anglia and Westward Television companies.

He joined the then new Thames as an announcer in 1968, subsequently hosting many shows for them including Miss TV Times, TV Times Gala Awards and The World Disco Dance Championships, as well as many outside broadcasts, circus and sports shows. He appeared alongside comedians Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper and hosted Thames TV’s showcase weeks on television in New York City and Los Angeles. Later he hosted ATV’s Saturday night series Up For the Cup, and four series of ITV’s Hangman-style game show All Clued Up.

For BBCtv he compered Top of the Pops and Seaside Special and in 1986 the Eurovision Song Contest previews. For seven years he was the main host of one of the earliest satellite TV stations, Lifestyle.

In February 2012 at the age of 73 he danced to the track “Push it” with fellow DJ Tony Blackburn as contestants on the charity show “Let’s Dance for Sport Relief”.

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