I am extremely proud that I have been in Howard Thomas’s highly-successful television team from start to finish.

There is a natural feeling of sadness that this journey is now approaching its end. But what a fascinating and interesting time I have shared with the others who, like me, have been lucky enough to serve ABC Television throughout the company’s life.

Much of the excitement and triumph of the early years has been almost lost in the kaleidoscope of time. So many things have happened that there is a tendency for the memories of them to run into one another. Each is a story on its own but there is not the space to recount them.

Some of the early incidents would seem tame today and some absurd. Like the time we nearly lost an Outside Broadcast from a gas works in the Midlands because the communications engineer did not realise that gasometers rise when filled with gas.

In the first three or four years we successfully carried out so many “firsts” in television history that to record them would make most people raise the eyebrow of doubt or disbelief.

There has always been a varied mixture of emotions in life on Outside Broadcasts. The exhilaration of the open air on sunny summer days, and the misery of freezing fog and snow on the wicked winding road of the Pennines in winter.

The cold chill of being told in the middle of a televised church service that a high explosive bomb is hidden inside the church.

Above all, I think that all who have worked on Outside Broadcasts will value the wonderful comradeship. At all times we have worked as a team. One man’s misfortune was shared by all and many is the time that a programme would not have gone out but for the devotion and zeal of every single member of the team, often under appalling weather conditions.

During the entire period of ABC Television’s contract in the North and Midlands we have never once failed to get to an OB location, no matter how bad the weather or the road conditions.

We have travelled a million miles or more and contributed a surprisingly high proportion of the Company’s programme hours. We have established and maintained ABC’s Outside Broadcasts as the biggest and best amongst the ITV companies.

How can one select individual programmes for mention out of so many? I remember best of all the friendly fun of Holiday Town Parade which ran so successfully for the first seven years.

I can still see Joe Loss’s face when one Friday at the band call a waiter brought him some ham sandwiches. “I cannot eat those,” said Joe. “Oh, I am sorry,” the waiter gravely replied, “I forgot that you can’t eat meat on a Friday!” [Loss was Jewish — Ed]

I suppose that the most memorable highlights would be the great occasions. Like the opening of the Yorkshire Station in November, 1955 [sic — 1956]. The first-ever OB from the huge Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool which had previously been thought to be so big as to be impossible to light.

The first Communion from Coventry Cathedral with a mammoth transmission of three-and-a-half hours only equalled by the great Easter OB from York Minster.

Perhaps the greatest achievement was the coverage of the Consecration of the Metropolitan R.C. Cathedral in Liverpool last year. A three-hours’ ceremony which ended at 5.45 p.m. and was condensed by editing while the recording was being made into a 70-minute programme which went out over the network half an hour later at 6.15 p.m. A transmission controller complained that it had underrun by 20 seconds!

Now the finest and most specialised collection of OB men is breaking up and scattering to new places and new companies.

I venture to forecast that if they do not think so now, before long they will look back on their days with ABC as the most happy and satisfying of their careers and I am sure that they will be most lucky if they find an equal to ABC Television for the way they are treated and the respect given to them as individuals.

I also think that those ITV companies which get the benefit of the specialised experience and talent which these “OB types” possess will have cause to be grateful for their good fortune and may in time recognise amongst their best men the magic touch of an ABC training.

To all who have worked with me during the past twelve years, thank you and the very best of good luck to you in the future.

To Howard Thomas, whose great skill and foresight has guided and inspired us all, I take this opportunity to say a thousand thanks for letting me play a part in ABC Television’s “Twelve Glorious Years”.

The post Twelve glorious years 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.

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.