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.

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

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