This article was prompted by the Machiavellian thought that by airing in Fusion something really misleading about the activities of the presentation section the so far unpenetrated mystique of our main effort may remain unpenetrated. I must admit that certain sections, notably vision mixers, sound balancers, telecine, VTR, links, MCR and certain production assistants, have a shrewd knowledge of our day-to-day operation, but beyond this club there is such a wide misunderstanding of the role of presentation’s duty team (programme officer, programme officer’s clerk and announcer) that by occasionally letting slip selected phrases like ‘…network considerations … Post Office switch … clock-hour entitlement … electronic cue-dot … George or clean feed …’ we can scare away without much difficulty those people who fondly imagine that the programme officer only has problems at times of breakdown or national crisis. To protect our interests we try to ensure that such people remain in a permanent state of healthy bewilderment about all that goes on in the presentation control room on the first floor at Television House – in fact, to have gone so far as to reveal its location is almost a breach of professional ethics.

It is with this delicate and necessary feeling for the irrelevant that I draw your attention to the photograph reproduced here. It shows Muriel Young and announcer Mel Oxley consorting with Charlie Squires’ mina bird, Will, and a Spanish girl called Magadelaina who is dressed like a Goya painting. The fact that they are all in Studio 10 (another of Presentation’s Secret Weapons) is accounted for by an exhibition of cage birds at Olympia and of Goya’s works at the Royal Academy.

But I had better explain.

For 125 consecutive Fridays ‘London Weekend’ has been transmitted after the early evening news bulletin. Its brief is to tell people what is happening (in the real world, not the telly world) in London over the weekend. The time-honoured ingredients are Laurie West’s weather forecast, a run-down of London’s main sports fixtures and, above all, an illustrated list of selected events ranging from Sheepdog Trials in Hyde Park to a route map of the Lord Mayor’s Show – whatever happens to be on.

It can, of course, be argued that one or two of our viewers might conceivably be unmoved by the prospect of an exhibition of cage birds – though Will is a good ambassador – but it is not London Weekend’s job to invent popular happenings only to describe such exhibitions or goings-on as seem to be of genuine interest in their own field, however unlikely or specialised. Unbelievably, it is only necessary to refer to a display of medieval rooks in Soho or to a collection of antique musical instruments in Holland Park, for someone to ring up, either asking for the address to be repeated or volunteering information about some more recondite subject – such as a rally of greenhouses at Catford.

The sifting of information and the impartial selection of items which seem worthy of a mention involves research in miniature; the explanation on-air requires scriptwriting in miniature; and the transmission, which combines film, slides and Studio 10, involves production in miniature. The transmission is carried out by the duty programme officer, to whom (apart from perhaps a deep breath and a raised eyebrow) it is just part of the evening’s work. The research and preparation is done by a production assistant attached to presentation, who becomes after a few weeks so knowledgeable about London affairs that she is like a walking encyclopaedia. Our current P.A., Helen Best, is always having adventures in the course of her inspection of subject-matter. She has permitted me to reveal that at a preview of rare pottery, including oriental vases worth thousands of pounds, she observed that the experts were inspecting the bottoms of the vases by holding them aloft. Not wishing to be outdone she lifted up what she thought was a particularly beautiful example of Nth dynasty pottery and gazed at it knowledgeably. A mink-clad lady near by eyed her rather oddly. A moment later poor Helen was engulfed in cocktail snacks. Unfortunately the crush was so great that she could only stand her ground with a wintry smile.

One obstacle in the path of accurate research is the unbounded enthusiasm of the PRO types at exhibitions, who provide a flood of information of varying relevance: ‘Two Irish Romany caravans have just managed to make the Camping and Outdoor Life Exhibition. One arrived at Paddington Goods Depot in good time for the show, but its wheels were with the caravan which took a devious route from County Cork to London. Irish Wagontrain Master Mr. Matt Murphy said…’ Sometimes there is a barren-looking weekend, when there really seems to be nothing to which we could send people with a clear conscience. To cover this contingency we have a number of old faithfuls like Kew Gardens, Dockland, the Tower and London Parks, which do yield, if squeezed, a surprising flow of interesting material. When there is a surfeit of events we concentrate on those which have just begun or are just about to finish, and in this way the weekly content remains fairly constant. Frequently it is the ‘dull’ weekend which on close inspection reveals odd little exhibitions of high calibre; on the other hand a reasonably interesting-sounding ‘Display of Boats’ may turn out to be a couple of shelves of dusty models, in which case we ban it loftily from our script.

We do not have any illusions about ‘London Weekend’. It is the kind of item, like the BBC’s ‘Points of View’, which inevitably gets handed to a presentation section because it is short and regular and complicated without being creative in the sense of a proper programme. Nevertheless, although it forms such a small part of the section’s work (a point which I might well be lynched for failing to labour) I have a soft spot for the assignment because for once we are indulging in something which at least approximates to other activities in the programme department. For the section which is obliged to be to some extent ‘apart’, 6.08 p.m. on Fridays is our Moment of Normality, when for a few minutes we find ourselves initiating a contribution to the station output. But who knows? By the time you read this some Master Finger may have tapped the kaleidoscope which governs the pattern of our programmes, and ‘London Weekend’ may have disappeared.

The last sentence was prophetic: after 131 editions ‘London Weekend’ was buried on April 3, 1964

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Tele-snaps

Recreations

Redvers Kyle opens Rediffusion, London for the day on Christmas Day.

The usual rules about the “grammar” of broadcasting were suspended for Christmas Day and Boxing Day (as well as Good Friday). The daily opening routine, which used the same tune every day over the same sequence of static cards and/or film, was replaced with different music and festive visuals over Christmas week with special effort and a carol being used on Christmas Day itself. The Authority Announcement was the only part of the sequence to survive unaltered – although on ITV stations which did the announcement live, it would often include a nod towards the holiday in question.

1964 start-up audio with thanks to David Heathcote.
Recreations by Dave Jeffery.

The post Tele-snaps: Christmas on Rediffusion appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Leslie Mitchell makes the first continuity announcement on Associated-Rediffusion:

A year or so later, Redvers Kyle makes the same announcement:

Jon Kelley does a quick station identification for Rediffusion London in the late 1960s:

Redvers Kyle and Jon Kelley close Rediffusion for the final time on 29 July (early 30 July) 1968:

Rediffusion’s William Squire (using the name Frobisher Collingwood) introduces ABC’s Professional Wresting, taped the previous Saturday and shown on Rediffusion on a Wednesday in 1965:

Rediffusion starts the day in June 1967 in this recreation of the visuals over a real recording of the audio. Redvers Kyle reminds us that Independent Television will be covering the tournament at Wimbledon:

The post Tele-snaps: announcers appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Recreations by Dave Jeffery

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The first Associated Rediffusion authority announcement, and thus ITV’s very first announcement of any kind.

Noticeable is how the pattern for announcements had not yet been set. A slogan – This is London – gets a look in, but the ITA do not.

The channel gets a mention, but so does the VHF band. Also missing is the word ‘weekdays’ – a word that was not available in English at the time, so the rather longer circumlocution “every week from Monday to Friday” has to be used.

Complete audio for the station’s evening start-up, from which the above excerpt is taken. It begins with variations on the traditional tune British Grenadiers and includes a fanfare by Charles Williams, closing with an excerpt from Elgar’s Cockaigne overture.

Using the same script as the above, the voiceover here is spoken by a female announcer, probably Muriel Young (or possibly Shirley Butler). The opening music is from the Prelude to Richard Addinsell’s orchestral suite based on his music for the 1945 David Lean film Blithe Spirit. This startup was probably used to open afternoon transmissions, but only for a brief period immediately after broadcasts began in September 1955.

A year later, and the announcement has been significantly simplified: the Independent Television Authority receives what is by now its required mention. This announcement preceded Eric Coates’ Music Everywhere, used September 1956 to late 1957.

Another year further on, and the pattern of authority announcements is now set. A-R complies with Redvers Kyle – one of the quintessential voices of ITV – reading an announcement that provides everything the ITA could want. Gone now is the ident in the middle of the announcement, and also – in fallout from the Suez crisis – the some might say militaristic tune that accompanied the first announcement. Instead, this announcement was accompanied by S. Bates’ Associated-Rediffusion March, used from 1958-64.

Several years later, Redvers Kyle (for once again, it is he) adopts the ‘voice of god’ tones of Mitchell for the final version of the announcement.

The whole look of the station has been lightened, the name simplified and the heavy music of the past changed for The Widespread World of Rediffusion, a Dankworth piece which has never dated (except, perhaps, for the ‘summer holidays’ middle) and gives a thrill of anticipation as it builds to a climax.

The Swinging Ident

1964, and a relaunch of station identity – in order to compete effectively with the new BBC-2 – brought A-R firmly into the 1960s and saw the London weekday ITV service itself renamed ‘Rediffusion, London’.

The adastral rotated anticlockwise constantly, unlike the ‘clockwise then stop’ of the A-R idents.

The post Seen and Heard appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

In April 1961, Associated-Rediffusion, the first commercial television company ever to broadcast in the UK, and on-air since September 1955, maintained a Presentation section comprising the Head, Neil Bramson (ex French horn player in the London Symphony Orchestra if my memory serves me well, and apparently the originator of A-R’s ‘morse code’ ident); three transmission controllers (idiosyncratically called ‘Programme Officers’ or ‘POs’ by A-R), Alec Gunn, Harry Sloan and Wendy Powell; one Assistant Programme Officer, Allen Taylor; and one trainee (myself). There was also Peter Martin, whose function was to ensure that the commercial reel make-up (nearly all film in those days) conformed to the relevant laws, to oversee the slotting-in of community service announcements where necessary, and to provide film cue sheets to help the POs take commercial breaks smoothly. Supporting all these, there was a secretarial staff of six ladies (including, at one time, my wife) to prepare the schedules and to log each transmission shift in its entirety, to the exact second.

To write the link scripts, there was a separate promotions department, which in those days gave work to, among others, Hugh Whitemore, later to become a distinguished playwright. It was then A-R’s policy to use continuity announcers in vision for some early shifts (mostly linking children’s programmes). The three main ‘voices’ of that time were Redvers Kyle, Dick Norton and Tom Glazer, supported from time to time (for example holiday relief) by Dick Graham, Nick Worrall and Mel Oxley, to name a few, who otherwise mostly had full-time careers elsewhere. Later, Anne Aldred was another personality who provided a welcome feminine presence. Yet others included the late Laurie West (Squadron-Leader L.J. West), who prepared the weather forecast; Muriel Young, who had a desk in our office, despite her major role as anchor-woman for a number of children’s programmes; various puppeteers such as Wally Whyton and Ivan Owen (through whom I first met Ollie Beak and Basil Brush); and certain seasonal fixtures who would come into our tiny studio to deliver the latest on the cricket scores, for example.

Head of Presentation reported to Assistant Controller of Programmes (Planning), Cyril Francis in my day, who, with the other ACPs, reported to John McMillan and, ultimately, the Board.

Operationally, the Presentation Control Room was staffed by a Programme Officer, a secretarial assistant (to log the output), a vision mixer and a sound balancer, with a duty announcer to make all scheduled announcements and, importantly, any unscheduled ones that might be necessary. This crew worked closely with engineers in the Master Control Room, Central Control Room and/or Central Apparatus Rooms, with their attendant line/link operators, who were the final liaison with the engineers at the transmitter.

One aspect of the operation that kept us busy was that, as well as having the responsibility of providing a full television service for the London area from Monday to Friday, A-R was also ‘Nominated Contractor’ for that same period. This meant that, should anything arise to necessitate changes to the published programme timings, the whole commercial television network had to be informed so as to reorganize their schedules to conform to network requirements, or make their own individual arrangements. A conference call would be made on the ‘red phone’; the roll of the entire network was called; and negotiations would begin. For much of the 60s that would have involved A-R, ATV, Granada, Anglia, Southern, Television Wales and West (TWW), Wales West and North (WWN), Border, Tyne-Tees, Scottish Television, Grampian, Westward and Channel. ATV, who took over responsibility for the London area at weekends, became Nominated Contractor for Saturday and Sunday.

Mistakes were rare. Broadcasting regulations at that time were stringent, and we were acutely conscious of our station output being closely monitored for abuses. But I can confidently report that the ethos of the company kept us on our toes; the procedures handed down to us from our ex-Royal Navy masters (in Office Organizational Memoranda, or OOMs), although sometimes rather quaint, were always explicit, rather like Queen’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions in the Navy itself.

Inevitably, though, freak events would sometimes occur. Once, during a race meeting outside broadcast somewhere up-country, the microwave link was momentarily broken. It was only for a second or two, but the receiving equipment did what it had been designed to do, making a quick search to find the signal again – and found the BBC instead! A most unsettling experience. I seem to remember hearing that favourite expression from the engineers: “OK leaving me, mate!”

There were also times when it paid to have some local knowledge. John McMillan, who had a razor-sharp mind and always seemed to know exactly what was happening, also had the unfortunate drawback of sounding intoxicated and slurring his words when on the telephone. Whereas certain other senior executives had been known to take a sudden dislike to some programme you were busy transmitting and, in their cups, would demand it be taken off, with John Mac you had to listen carefully – and do what you were told.

For years, ITV was not permitted to transmit the Queen’s Christmas message: that always came from the BBC. The first year the ‘ban’ was lifted, I was on duty on Christmas Day and I decided I would rehearse the BBC’s tape for duration and any technical problems. Just as well I did: the Beeb, whether accidentally or by design, had left an unusable Take 1 on the front of the tape – where Her Majesty dried! Had I transmitted that, there would have been hell to pay.

The post Who’s who in presentation appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Notional Date: December 1957
Announcer: Redvers Kyle
Music: Associated-Rediffusion March (Bate), used from 1957-1964

The original Associated-Rediffusion (A-R) daily opening routines had used The British Grenadiers with Cockaigne to start the main evening broadcasts from 7pm, and Blithe Spirit with Cockaigne for the morning and teatime transmissions.

The Rediffusion March (originally known as Music Everywhere) by Eric Coates was used in 1956-7 but lasted a relatively short time and soon gave way to this long remembered sequence featuring the first piece specially commissioned by the company. The earlier Rediffusion March had been re-dedicated by the composer for use originally by the Rediffusion cable concern in the late forties, as an interval signal and been borrowed by the TV operation at rather short notice in 1956.

At the time, Sir John Barbirolli was chief musical adviser to A-R, with Steve Race as the company’s Director of Music. The piece had been designed to fit the newly clarified regulator’s requirement of a pause in mid-tune to allow for the contractor’s licensing authority reference, a main section heard over a tuning signal and a grand closing verse with climactic point for company symbol to form and closing reprise over a clock face. In the early sixties this was shortened to a direct cut from tuning signal to clock. In the early years of Independent Television, these elements were highly specified and their daily conduct policed by the authority. This level of detail was thought to matter in the broadcasting environment of the day. This formulation for a start-up became a national standard for the first generation of regional ITA daily opening routines.

Someone, possibly Race, will have selected a composer, in this case the almost unknown Stanley Bate, and given instructions on the exact requirements for a functional piece, expected to be heard by viewers several times a day for some years. The title Associated-Rediffusion March would probably have been specified by the company rather than the composer. Corporate Identity was the name of the game.

The tuning signal in use here, the second ITA design, (the first having mainly been used in pre-launch tests) had two incarnations, with transmitter name originally used, and region name substituted as the number of stations on air multiplied. Only with its successor in about 1960 did the ITA develop the ‘Picasso’ tuning signal that is so well remembered today, a design ironically borrowed from an internal A-R camera setup card of 1956.

The fade to symbol for the last verse is of special interest. The brief rotation of the A-R star symbol, also known as the adastral, as part of the form up event, is for one rotation only and the trade mark remains static once complete. History has often mis recollected this feature. It was not until 1964 that the star remained in permanent movement on the logo caption. It did rotate without stopping, on the company clock however. It is worth noting that the rotation was in the opposite direction on the form up caption to the direction of rotation on the clock and indeed on the post 1964 Rediffusion London symbol. This is as obscure an observation as it is possible to make, in the history of television presentation!

The A-R clock, now in the Bradford media museum, was one of the glories of early weekday ITV in the London area. It was even nicknamed Mitch after the company’s first Head of Presentation, former BBC TV announcer Leslie Mitchell, also known as the commentary voice on British Movietone News, the famous twice weekly cinema newsreel that ran on into the seventies. The florid grandeur of the image may seem absurd to modern eyes, but at the time television was a theatrical focal point of any living room and to give the company clock an iconic status seemed the obvious thing to do. The attendant mock heraldry was of course a response to the BBC coat of arms, still in occasional use by BBC TV presentation in 1955, and helped to lend A-R the gravitas and weighty image that it craved.

A-R, throughout the life of the company, made a non-stop effort to give the new commercial television channel a respectability that it believed was needed to look the BBC in the face and to prove wrong the critics who had predicted that commercial television would, by definition, be vulgar.

A-R regularly sponsored concerts, engaged leading artists and musicians of the day and took some risks with occasional heavyweight programming in peak slots, especially after 9pm. The clock very much represents this ethos and was not thought to be ‘over the top’ at the time. Britain was a very different place then, and this daily start up routine gives an almost perfect flavour of the country in the fifties. The clock had become dated by the time of its demise in 1964, but had been seen as very grand in the previous decade. The voice of the very young Redvers Kyle sounds respectful and modest, as if even the duty announcer knew his place in a deferential society.

The music is perhaps best described as a cross between mock-heraldic and a B-picture war film. It is almost a pastiche of its own genre. It was well remembered, if not necessarily liked, by those who heard it as it insisted that ITV was not a penny bazaar and would prove that commerce could equal public service when it came to respectability. This is probably the most heavyweight ITV daily start-up routine of all, almost to the point of a surprising dreariness and very much of its time. It was evidence of the A-R desire to keep up with the ‘respectability’ that was the simultaneous ethos of their main rival, BBC Television.

This article originally appeared on Transdiffusion before 2001. It has been republished in a slightly different form and with the addition of the animated Associated-Rediffusion start-up recreation by Dave Jeffery.

The post Rising star appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Notional Date: June 1967
Announcer: Redvers Kyle
Music: The Widespread World of Rediffusion (Johnny Dankworth)

The Rediffusion London daily startup routine of the mid-sixties was widely regarded by those who followed the genre as the definitive station sign-on sequence of the monochrome era, a daily screen event that helped – together with those of ABC and ATV – to set the on-screen, corporate identity standards to which other companies aspired. At that time, daily startup routines were as much a promotion of the company trademark and ethos as an engineers’ tuning feature.

Courtesy of the music as much as the graphics, from the opening fanfare to the stunning closing climax, this was the signing-on moment that wrote the rules. For presence and charisma it was never bettered in the black and white years. Confident, assured, it unmistakably stated Rediffusion’s corporate belief that they were Independent Television and that as the flagship contractor of the network – London weekdays – it was their job to captain the team, lead the pack and set the standards for ITV in the sixties, as they had in the fifties. This they did with an energy and dynamism in channel identity standards which was matched only for verve and innovation by ABC in their North & Midlands weekend contracts.

Rediffusion Television Limited, to give the company its proper corporate name, had commissioned this full orchestral piece from the jazz composer and bandleader John Dankworth as part of the company relaunch in 1964, when their operating name was shortened from the long-lived Associated-Rediffusion to the new, punchier-sounding Rediffusion, London. Their Director of Music, Steve Race requested a modern fast-paced orchestral march, with a strong percussion and a modern, sixties jazz undertone. Combining a march format with a jazz style was quite an undertaking but in going to Dankworth, Steve Race had picked the right man. This was part of a major company relaunch and needed to be both innovative and conceptual. It was replacing the rather dull traditional march used previously by A-R and in corporate identity terms needed to startle regular viewers in order to emphasise the change of name. This was a time when ITV company names had a bigger on screen profile than the letters ITV did, still used in a subsidiary role to the names of the contractors.

This challenge was carried off by Dankworth with with a breathtaking style and the result – The Widespread World of Rediffusion – was acclaimed, by those who took an interest in these things, as an outstanding achievement in the promotion of corporate identity on screen. The repeated syllables of the motif “Re-diffu-sion-Lo-n-don” appeared in every other line of the main theme and the sweet melody of the middle eight provided a relief into something less militaristic, before the final build up to a march climax resumed. In corporate identity terms this was a triumph for the company and boxed adverts in some of the broadsheets, explaining the 1964 change in London ITV to the viewers, all mentioned this special musical commission to be heard by London viewers several times each weekday.

This was a piece of music that almost commanded you to sit down and watch the screen (if not standing to attention as a result of the militarist undertone of the beating drums in the last verse). Though broadcast three or four times a day for several years (daytime broadcasting was not continuous at that time, with many intervals between schools and other programmes, which used the final 25 seconds of the music to mark each closedown) it was a theme that retained familiarity, without gaining contempt. It became well known to weekday television viewers in London and even had the distinction of appearing as a footnote in the Television Audience Measurement (TAM) figures, as collected by set-top meters outside the control of the specimen viewers. People were tuning in five minutes early to catch the teatime transmission at 4.30. This was the only ITV startup routine to ever appear in the TAM ratings.

In the continuity departments of other franchise holders, this corporate identity triumph was admired and at a time when these things were given a greater importance than today, even the Head of Presentation at ABC Weekend Television in the North & Midlands, Geoffrey Lugg, declared himself to be “quite taken aback at the ability of the piece to project the new modern ethos of Rediffusion London”.

The visual side of the equation was no less impressive. The Picasso tuning signal is seen here in its region name variant and the timing of the fade-to-symbol is powerful. The closing seconds over the clock counting down to the first programme is a masterpiece of tension building within this genre.

The senior Rediffusion announcer Redvers Kyle, who along with John Benson of ABC was the longest-serving ITV announcer at the time, brings an electrifying tone of voice to the authority announcement. An almost impossible mixture of gravitas and dynamism is conveyed. The purposeful slight rasp in the intonation of the word ‘Authority’ is an elocutionist’s triumph and is the crowning glory of this short, punchy statement.

The statement that they, Rediffusion, are broadcasting on The London Station of the ITA, conveys quite utterly the undercurrent ‘where else would we be?’. This is the almost perfect encapsulation of the Rediffusion company policy of the time: network leadership.

The crescendo to the climax, which leads into the start of the final musical verse, reproduced the successful ATV habit of visual transfer from tuning signal to ident, from television authority to contractor. This was at a point of tension and drama within the music – almost filmic in tone. This was the perfect embodiment of how it was felt that these things should be done at the time. The sense of drama probably seems overdone by today’s standards but in the sixties, television still had power and modernity. The independent television companies saw themselves as substantive and moral equivalents of the BBC and wanted to convey a sense of permanence. No contractor had ever been replaced (save for the bankruptcy of little Teledu Cymru) and the expectation of broadcasting in perpetuity seemed a given.

Rediffusion, as London weekday contractor, was the successful linchpin of the network. Profitable beyond the wildest dreams of its original investors and constantly spending more on serious and prestige programming than they were required to do, they could do no wrong. This was ITV’s first golden age.

This article originally appeared in a somewhat different form before 2000 in another Transdiffusion publication. It has been republished with the addition of the animated Rediffusion start-up recreation by Dave Jeffery.

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Notional Date: October 1956
Announcer: Leslie Mitchell
Music: Music Everywhere (aka The Rediffusion March) (Eric Coates)

Geoffrey Lugg, Presentation Manager of ABC Television and later Head of Presentation at Thames, had joined the industry in 1955 as a trainee transmission controller for the putative ABC North & Midlands weekend contract. ABC were new to the broadcasting industry, having previously run cinemas and film studios. By the time ABC was recruiting staff, Associated-Rediffusion (AR) had been on the air for some weeks. There was a shortage of skilled technical instructors in the new industry and at the suggestion of the ITA, selected new technical recruits from ABC and Granada – both coming on air months later than AR and ATV – were seconded for six month periods to shadow various jobholders at Associated-Rediffusion. Thus it was that while on the ABC payroll, Geoffrey found himself training in the AR transmission controllers suite at Television House, in the Autumn of 1955.

Many years later, when the original Transdiffusion organisation was founded in the 1960s, Geoffrey Lugg agreed to become Honorary Lifetime President of the Transdiffusion archive and was interviewed several times by a small delegation of presentation and continuity enthusiasts at his home in Teddington and again later when he moved to Camden as Thames began, when the ABC Presentation department at Teddington moved to Television House in Kingsway. Thames was building on the foundations of the old Rediffusion contract and Geoffrey in his several interviews, spoke highly of the Rediffusion presentation standards and their long record of ‘conceptual’ use of commissioned music for daily startup routines (five routines in 13 years).

Because of his association with AR in 1956, Geoffrey Lugg had a fund of stories about the internal politics of early ITV, and particularly the way in which Associated-Rediffusion ran its operation. One of the most interesting stories he told Transdiffusion was about presentation music at AR.

How do you know that a country is beginning to change? What indication is there that a nation may be beginning to turn its back on colonialism, is getting tired of Empire and that some of the establishment and people no longer have the stomach for militarism, so soon after standing alone and then jointly winning the biggest war in human history? It’s not something that can be accurately measured by the polls, or by votes in an election. But oddly, it could perhaps be glimpsed in a sudden change of on screen presentation routines and music used at the daily start of transmissions at one of the early ITV contractors.

This means war

The year is 1956, the company is Associated-Rediffusion, and the story is of how they suddenly, unplanned, switched to using an Eric Coates piece Music Everywhere.

For their first year of broadcasting, AR had been using an arrangement of a traditional piece, The British Grenadiers, as station theme for the daily 7pm start to evening transmission, with another softer piece for daytime programming. At that time, there was still a mandatory gap between daytime and evening television broadcasting – for both BBC and ITA transmissions, enforced by the General Post Office on the instruction of the Postmaster General, a member of the Cabinet. This was ostensibly so that the nation’s mothers could get their toddlers to bed without tears after children’s programmes ended at 6pm.

It had been a particular worry of the legislators who had recently authorised commercial television to be introduced in the first place that it might have a deleterious effect on children’s lives, so this stress relieving cordon sanitaire was conceived as a solution, in a culture where children’s bedtimes were still strictly enforced in middle class families – the only people, of course, who had television sets at the time.

This enabled Associated-Rediffusion to select a different station theme for daytime and for evening broadcasting and it was not until some months later with the cut back of unremunerative daytime programming for housewives that the regulators decided that one registered station theme for all daily startup routines would become the national standard.

With the use of The British Grenadiers as station theme for the 7pm start-up each weekday, AR was following the general ethos of many broadcasting signature tunes of the time – orchestral versions of military marches, with their inevitable hint of territory and triumphalism.

The Grenadier Guards depart for Suez

Into this obscure world came an intrusion from the unexpected arena of international politics, with the invasion of Egypt in the summer of 1956 by British and French troops determined to wrestle ownership of the Suez Canal back from the Egyptian government who had nationalised the Anglo-French canal owners operating company against the wishes of the shareholders.

T

here was uproar. The Americans were horrified that the old colonial ways of which they thought they had rid Europe ten years before were suddenly reasserting themselves. The population of the UK were largely against more war and more deaths so soon after the last. Cooperation between the parties in parliament came to a sudden end and scenes of bitter recrimination in both houses were reported in a divided press. The government fell out badly with the BBC when the latter agreed to give the opposition chance to state the case against the invasion. The BBC was threatened by the government of the day. Twas ever thus.

The Postmaster General suggested, off the record to the Post Office and the Post Office in turn to the ITA, that it was perhaps not appropriate or neutral for AR to be using, on a daily basis, a march whose unsung words were known to many school children from hearing them in music lessons and assemblies, a common choice for rousing primary school sing-songs. They were about a leading British regiment that was at any moment possibly to be involved in the invasion of another country. This was not so much a warning on the Post Office’s part as a piece of friendly guidance to the ITA. The whole thing was done informally – most probably by telephone – but hit home nevertheless.

AR quickly decided to change the daily music – at least for the duration of the conflict. They had to look for a replacement in something of a hurry as there was not sufficient time to commission and record a new daily theme for the station. The music used in regional ITV opening routines was registered with the Authority and could not be instantly changed at will. Thus was the ethos of independent broadcasting regulation in the fifties. In their hurried search, an inspiration occurred.

Back in the late forties, when Rediffusion/British Relay were principally in business providing wired sound services bringing clearer piped radio signals to valleys and areas with poor reception, they had been granted a special waiver by the Post Office to provide a very limited service of football commentaries on nearby matches in specified local areas, without commercials, provided by their own staff on closed circuit systems in a number of Northern and Welsh provincial towns.

This certainly did not amount to a local radio service but did signify, for the first time, the willingness of the authorities to make a tiny, non-commercial sound provision for a specific local need. The service was only possible where the football club concerned felt it would not detract from match attendance and also that there was a wired service available nearby – so relatively few places enjoyed this facility. This tiny and now forgotten niche facility was probably the first home-generated, non-BBC output in domestic services, though it was of course limited to a few wired networks and never broadcast to the mainstream radio listeners.

This was an unusual, if tiny concession at a time when the BBC had a monopoly of domestically generated sound broadcasting. The authorities had always been ambivalent about wired relay services, not strictly being broadcasting at all, and the Rediffusion company British Relay Services may have felt that this could give them a foot in the door should independent broadcasting of any kind be later authorised in the UK. The creation of non-BBC services had been debated but not acted upon by legislators for some years.

Sound and Vision

For this very minimal service of a couple of hours on Saturday afternoons in only a very few localities, Rediffusion needed to create a more distinct identity that could be distinguished from that of the BBC – and indeed Radio Luxembourg and Radio Eireann – that they generally relayed. A short unique signature tune – in those days known as an interval signal – would be required to distinguish the brief local output from the normal national fare. This was first used around 1949 on some of the company’s wired systems.

It is not clear as to whether the Eric Coates piece Music Everywhere was adopted off the shelf or whether it was specially commissioned – which seems unlikely for such limited exposure. It would be most probable that it was selected for use from a record library, where much Coates style music was available. Seven years later, when the AR Music Department was casting round for an urgent replacement to The British Grenadiers, the copyright clearance that the company already enjoyed with Music Everywhere made it an obvious choice and with the composer’s agreement (and no doubt some money changing hands!) the piece was renamed The Rediffusion March. This was not the only time Coates had agreed to a move like this – renaming an off the shelf piece for a customer.

Television March

In 1955, the BBC and ATV were both using Coates pieces as station theme tunes (the BBC Television March and Sound & Vision, the ATV march) so there was no question of this choice being from some totally new field. Coates, for a few months at least, had a total monopoly of London TV station signature tunes. This may have been a lack of imagination on the part of the companies concerned as much as being a self-perpetuating genre.

The supposedly new Rediffusion March entered use rather suddenly during the Suez Crisis in September 1956 and remained in use for more than a year. It might have been wise to have left well alone after that point but someone in the AR music department, possibly their supposed Musical Adviser John Barbirolli, or their Head of Music Steve Race, was of a notion to commission a new piece, to be specially composed for the company as a more permanent daily station theme. Stanley Bate, a lesser known composer of the time, was engaged and so his Associated-Rediffusion March replaced Coates’ Rediffusion March late in 1957. The new piece though appreciated no doubt by some, seemed like dreary “B film” music, compared to the bouncy Coates piece and not for the only time in the history of ITV daily startup music, an improvement turned out to be a dis-improvement. In hindsight, the Coates ’stop gap’ piece may be considered the more memorable work of the two. Make the judgement for yourself.

In vision

Leslie Mitchell on British Movietone News

Visually, this start up was impressive. It opens with the authoritative voice of former BBCtv announcer Leslie Mitchell, latterly installed as Head of Presentation at the fledgling Associated-Rediffusion, who was also for very many years the narrative voice on British Movietone News in cinemas. The purposeful identification, almost ex-cathedra in tone, is followed by the Coates piece, borrowed by A-R from the archive of a parent company.

It is interesting to note some similarities with the Coates BBC Television March of the time (written in 1946) latterly in use on the opposite channel. Particularly to be noted is what almost amounts to a composers ‘signature motif’ heard when the opening lines are reprised in louder form some moments further into the score. This brief identifier is heard identically on the BBC Television March, and suggested an ‘authentication’ of the piece as part of a Coates marches canon. With ATV also using a Coates work at weekends, the composer was suddenly dominant in a growing genre.

As was becoming standard for such daily opening ceremonials, the tuning signal faded as the grand last verse of the march approached and the AR symbol formed on screen. Although the ‘adastral’ trademark star revolved on the AR clock of the period, in the ident itself this revolved only as part of the form up music and froze again thereafter. It was not until many years later that the star was shown in permanent revolution in the new 1964 idents of successor identity Rediffusion London.

The trademark caption gave way to the company clock over the last lines of the music and the formality of the era was underlined with a continuity announcement that is all information and no welcome. The ethos of ‘carrying on where we left off yesterday’ was typical of AR, who did not, in the main, waste too much time on sentimental welcomes. But this was the ethos of the time and thus not unusual. On the hour the sequence cuts to the opening caption of the first programme, identifying the company who had originated the production, not the company output on which you were watching it; a habit that was to become standard everywhere on the network for more than 30 years.

This article is based on other articles by the same author that originally appeared in a slightly different form before 2000 as well as all new material. It has been published with the addition of the animated Associated-Rediffusion start-up recreation by Dave Jeffery.

➔ FROM TRANSDIFFUSION

The post Forward march appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Over the years, Transdiffusion has amassed a great deal of knowledge, reports, facts, deductions and recordings concerning Independent Television daily start-up routines.

Start-up routines were the rituals occurring at least once daily through which the Authority ‘handed over’ control of its television transmitters in different parts of the country to the franchise holders for the region.

In the early days of broadcasting, when television enthusiasts were likely to make up the entire audience rather than just a small minority, the record of these start-ups was in the form of audio recordings, often captured with a microphone held up to the television loudspeaker.

These recordings are backed up by still photographs and, of course, memories. The Transdiffusion Broadcasting System you are now watching is living proof of this, with the largest known private archive of this type of material.

However, if we go back to the very earliest days, predating even the majority of what we would now call television enthusiasts, documentary evidence is even more scarce, and memories less reliable.

A case in point is the way in which Associated-Rediffusion started its daily transmissions.

A recording in the Transdiffusion Archives, taken from a one-off acetate disc labeled “Opening Day”, provides the audio for the start-up sequence that occurred on 22 September 1955. The opening night, shared with the London weekend contractor at the time, “ABC” (which quickly became ATV), began with speeches and stirring music, and continued with a variety gala and some quite highbrow programming.

Of the potential viewers of the time, some, of course, were watching the “other channel”. Others couldn’t watch Band III because they had yet to install the additional aerial and a down-converter or new dual-band TV set. Yet more were listening to the fire that consumed Grace Archer over on BBC radio. In total, less than half of those who could even receive the broadcast watched it.

But those who were watching the earliest moments of Associated-Rediffusion saw and heard an impressive opening. A simple tuning signal was followed by a piece of music: an orchestral arrangement of the traditional tune, The British Grenadiers.

The sprightly three-minute piece progressed through numerous key-changes and passages of light and shade, culminating in a majestic re-statement of the theme and a triumphant close.

This piece of music was used every day for almost a year. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, however, it seems that Grenadiers was thought a little too militaristic and A-R cast around for something else to use as the station’s opening music.

They chose a bright, symphonic march by that master of the light music march, Eric Coates, called Music Everywhere, which had been written in 1948.

Subtitled “Rediffusion March”, Music Everywhere was the perfect choice until something could be written specially to take its place. That happened several months later when the unknown composer “S Bates” – almost certainly incorrectly rumoured to be Associated-Rediffusion’s musical advisor Sir John Barbirolli – completed the piece that came into use in 1957.

Meanwhile, back in September 1955, the “Grenadiers” was followed by a dramatic pause. Then the dulcet tones of former BBC Television and Movietone News announcer Leslie Mitchell announced, “This Is London”, followed by a short fanfare by Charles Williams: Fanfare Number 1 from Five Fanfares. The whole story is told elsewhere, in the History section of this site.

Although evidence for the visuals that accompanied the known audio track is unfortunately scant, we can tell a great deal by running likely images together with the audio and seeing how they fit.

With a compendium of available knowledge on the structure and requirements of start-up sequences that evolved later, we can make some very good educated guesses, helped where available by memories and documentation, as to what the viewers of 1955 would have seen on their screens as the music played.

Although the pieces used in 1955 by A-R were not specially commissioned as was later the case, it would still have been possible to time transitions in the visuals to occur at salient points in the music.

There is no doubt that, with experimentation, some of these juxtapositions fall into place in a most convincing manner, rather like finding two pieces of Neolithic pottery on an archaeological dig and, on cleaning them, finding that they fit together perfectly. Trying such juxtapositions and playing them to people who might have their memories triggered as a result can be a useful technique in reconstructing events like this.

Once it was believed that this start-up was used on opening day only, and on subsequent days omitted the “This Is London”. Apart from anything else, the format, surely, was a little over the top, even for those days. “This Is London”?

Apart from the occasional DX viewer, only people in London could watch the broadcasts from the ITA’s new transmitting tower on Beulah Hill, Norwood, just down the road from the BBC’s Crystal Palace tower in South London. The ITA called it their “Croydon” transmitter (though it was strictly not quite in Croydon) but Associated-Rediffusion, more concerned with the great city in which their audience lived and breathed than technical accuracy, always called it “London”.

My uncovering of a second start-up from the same period, as described in a previous article, prompted a reconsideration of the theory that “This Is London” was used once only.

Along with the complete Grenadiers start-up I located, labelled on my tape “A-RTV Evening Intro”, was another complete start-up sequence, labelled “A-RTV Afternoon Intro”. This featured opening music by Richard Addinsell from the movie Blithe Spirit and a female voiceover – but with the same script and the same content apart from the initial piece.

This suggested that not one but two start-ups had been used in the early days: one for the afternoon programmes starting at 5 pm and the other for the evening, beginning at 7 o’clock. Both included “This Is London”. This also presented a problem.

The General Post Office, the body in those days responsible for licensing of wireless transmissions of all kinds in the UK, and the Independent Television Authority, which had the job of administering Britain’s burgeoning commercial television network, were traditionally thought to have been quite strict with their definition of how the ritual handover of the transmitter from the Authority to the broadcaster was to be carried out.

Opening themes had to be registered with the Authority. A suitable announcement had to be made at the start of the theme. Other requirements also had to be adhered to. By the late 1950s at least, nobody would have been allowed to have two opening pieces, used at different times of day.

In those earliest, heady days of the country’s first commercial television stations, there was a little more leeway. It may be that, as in the days of radio before the BBC, the rules had yet to be written. Or, as the official history of ITV has it, the new contractors forgot, and were quickly reminded of, their status in the broadcasting hierarchy by the ITA.

Whatever happened, if the rules were written in stone on day one, they must have been ignored in the excitement of a dream of broadcasting being finally brought into reality.

You can listen in full to the startups featured in this article in Seen and Heard.

The post Undercover A-R appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Opening Night, September 22, 1955, included three pieces of startup music:

• Variations on a theme of The British Grenadiers (Trad., probably arr. Adolf Lotter). Lotter was the principal double bass in the Beecham Philharmonic Orchestra. Preceded the announcement (by Leslie Mitchell) “This is London”, which was followed by
• Fanfare No. 1, from Five Fanfares, by Charles Williams. Preceded the main body of the announcement, which was followed by
• Excerpt from Sir Edward Elgar’s overture Cockaigne (In London Town) Op. 40, probably played by the Hallé orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, A-R’s musical director at the time.

This arrangement of startup pieces continued for about a year: Grenadiers was dropped in the summer of 1956, probably as a result of being seen as too ‘militaristic’ in view of the Suez Crisis.

For some initial period, ending no later than 1956, possibly during afternoon and/or morning broadcasts, an alternative startup was also used. This had the same structure as the above, but with a female V/O. It also replaced Grenadiers with an arrangement of Richard Addinsell’s orchestral Prelude from the music for David Lean’s 1945 movie adaptation of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. The fanfare and excerpt from Cockaigne were unchanged.

Idents from this period initially used an eleven-note phrase taken from Cockaigne and arranged for three trumpets and three trombones. This was later replaced by two trombones playing figures representing the Morse Code for the letters ‘A-R’ (“dit-dah, dit-dah-dit”), accompanied by the sound of a Morse key. This ident phrase continued to be used for some time.

From September 1956 to late 1957, the company used Eric Coates’ Music Everywhere. This piece, written in 1948, was adopted by Rediffusion some years before there was any thought of a television company, possibly when the Rediffusion name first began to be used by Broadcast Relay Services Ltd. The piece was renamed (with Coates’ permission), the Rediffusion March. It seems likely that when Grenadiers was dropped, Coates’ piece was brought into play for startup purposes temporarily until a specially-commissioned theme could be written and recorded.

Virtually nothing is known about ‘S. Bates’, who composed the resulting Associated-Rediffusion March, used by the station from early 1958 until it became Rediffusion, London in 1964. He is thought to be a member of the A-R studio orchestra.

The change of name to Rediffusion, London was accompanied by a dramatic change in on-screen style, and with it came a new musical identity, this time the famous Widespread World of Rediffusion, written by noted composer John Dankworth. (See Gavin Sutherland’s analysis of this piece on Transdiffusion. – he also notated the score shown above) There was also an accompanying ident.

Thanks to Gavin Sutherland for his assistance in preparing this article

The post The music appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Very few trademarks live on after their parent companies have ceased to exist but this symbol, used on the ‘break bumpers’ of London weekday ITV in its first thirteen years, has resisted all attempts to bury it. It was a symbol that became utterly synonymous with UK commercial television.

Indeed, it is probable that the London weekday ITV viewers of the fifties and sixties thought that this symbol was national, and seen by viewers everywhere, between each advert. It became the standard punctuation mark of product promotion in this country, even appearing in cinemas and newspapers when the subject at hand was “TV ads”.

It was not geometrically an ordinary star. The sixteen ‘prongs’ were each inclined to the right of the perpendicular, giving the logo a sense of motion even when it was still. Even though the term ‘star’ has been used over the years, the design implications were of ‘energy’ from a sun, and that in some mysterious way the device represented the very act of ‘rediffusion’ when used as verb “to rediffuse”.

In today’s more cynical world this sounds like another attempt to “read too much meaning in” but a trade mark like this needs to be seen in the context of its era. Television was new, and commercial television newer still, when this logo was first used. In an era of state authority and an age of deference, the implied meaning and mysterious nature of almost fascistic company symbols was largely taken for granted.

This sounds far fetched today, when television is no longer awe inspiring – but back in the fifties and sixties, the iconic role of network symbols was thought essential to the corporate identity needs of television companies.

What makes this symbol a classic?

This was the first ITV symbol to move continuously while being seen, although this came after some years of use in static form.

The design suggests authority. The silent rotation conveys purpose. The suggestion that the star was actually ‘diffusing’ (whatever that was supposed to mean) though palpable nonsense today, suggested to the minds of the unsophisticated viewers of the fifties and sixties that some mysterious force was at work bringing television to them.

Surveys had showed that most viewers had no idea what the word “rediffusion” actually meant – a state of affairs that was considered ideal at the time for the requirements of promoting a corporate identity. This symbol thus came to define Rediffusion, in a marriage of company name and logo, in a unified way that no other company managed.

The ident in use

Station clock ‘Mitch’ with a rotating adastral, and an ARTV front cap from the 1950s, with an adastral that was largely static.

It’s the late 1960s, and time for a swinging Rediffusion London programme, and London’s weather

If you were interested, guided tours of Rediffusion’s Wembley studios were available, and tourists were given this brochure explaining all.

The studios became London Weekend’s in 1968, were abandoned in the late 1980s, and are now home to Fountain Television, and independent production company. The ARTV foundation stone is still by the entrance.

An enhanced photograph of Television House, Kingsway, used in publicity by Rediffusion London. The backlit adastral was never this bright, but it looks good anyway.

And, taken by a Transdiffusion child in 1963 is the ARTV frontage, complete with mechanical rotating adastral on the front. Giving London the best of all Television indeed.

The post The adastral appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.