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'Island sites' of the 60s (Read 8536 times)
petesimpkin
Ex Member





'Island sites' of the 60s
Dec 3rd, 2005, 3:36am
 
Does anyone remember working in the early 'sub regional' tv studios in the 1960s?
I worked in the Southampton studio at the South Western  hotel building.As engineers we were the original multi-skilled team working on cameras,sound,telecine,radio studio,OBs and even film processing.....often you could do several of these jobs in one day!
We produced the nightly news programme South Today in what was in fact an ex hotel bedroom with two cameras in the main studio and a third in a radio studio across the corridor. We were a special breed of people and went on to jobs all over the place having gained a terrific grounding in basic broadcasting.special tribute and thanks to Ken Nicholas the engineer in charge who encouraged us all.
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Bristol
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Re: 'Island sites' of the 60s
Reply #1 - Jan 31st, 2006, 5:39pm
 
I worked in Norwich for a year and remember it well.  The STelE used to shout "Switch" to the Peterborough and Tacleston tranmitter engineers and the frame always rolled.
One night the VHF bulletin clashed with Look East and Charlie, the handyman porter made his usual remarks about us, breweries and the like.
So we made him go into the studio and read the weather forecast "while the red light is on"  He did well in a thick Norfolk accent.
Never smart arsed us again though
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droyw
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Re: 'Island sites' of the 60s
Reply #2 - Feb 1st, 2006, 5:03pm
 
Norman Austin was the STelE for most of my time in Norwich but as "integrated" engineers we did a bit of everything, and my abiding memory is of Inky clearing his throat before reading the news upstairs in the sound studio.
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Bristol
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Re: 'Island sites' of the 60s
Reply #3 - Feb 3rd, 2006, 2:49pm
 
Norman was the man in question.  And do you remember Streaky who hated operations?  How once got Gordon Mosley - who was messing about giving level - to shout so loud that on tx he was hoarse.  Taught me a lot my year in All Saints Green - and then I went to Edinburgh
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petesimpkin
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Re: 'Island sites' of the 60s
Reply #4 - Feb 28th, 2006, 7:31am
 
Very interesting to see the replies so far but I'm sure there are many more who like me owed their BBC careers to the substantial grounding we got in the old sub regions.........also of course there were jobs we did which have completely disappeared...are there any ex film processors out there for instance..remember the film editors trying to get us to clip extra films for rush developing onto the running film.....and even tearing films off as they came out of the drier cabinet?.....and that long lost skill of changing the magazine without stopping the machine.........videotape?.they don;t know half of it !!
Pete
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petesimpkin
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Re: 'Island sites' of the 60s
Reply #5 - Jun 7th, 2006, 8:47am
 
Further to my earlier entries,Prospero has very kindly published some of my memories and some pictures of Southampton's original South Western House studio in the current edition....does this bring back memories of an age long gone?
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