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+--- Thread: Tvam- Timeslot (/showthread.php?tid=367)
Tvam- Timeslot - Neil Jones - 05-06-2021
Humphrey Hacker post_id=16934 time=1622917052 user_id=1128 Wrote:It was so wooden and stagey that had it been in the theatre it would have closed after day 1
No, somebody in the dress rehearsal would have put it out of its misery before it got that far.
Tvam- Timeslot - Humphrey Hacker - 05-06-2021
Neil Jones post_id=16937 time=1622917406 user_id=961 Wrote:Humphrey Hacker post_id=16934 time=1622917052 user_id=1128 Wrote:It was so wooden and stagey that had it been in the theatre it would have closed after day 1
No, somebody in the dress rehearsal would have put it out of its misery before it got that far.
Probably but In all seriousness it was a pathetic first incarnation.
Tvam- Timeslot - Inspector Sands - 05-06-2021
The description says that was broadcast two weeks before it launched, Breakfast Time started on the 17th January so I presumably it went out before then.
If oni wonder if that was more what they had planned? I don't remember ever seeing any of those settings before - Frost is seen in two seperate seating areas with different swivel chairs and there's not a sofa in sight. I seem to remember they only decided to have an on screen clock after seeing the BBCs, I wonder if the sofa was the same?
They mention that there will be regional news and travel bulletins, of course they never materialised. I assume that that idea was something that was due a while after launch but the whole thing was such a disaster that they never got round to it
Tvam- Timeslot - Neil Jones - 05-06-2021
I suspect the regions thing was the first thing to go. One thing to plan it, another to implement it. Although the blurb suggests it was probably planned to be to what GMTV turned out to be - national with regional opt-outs. TV-am had fallen out with Equity at the time and it probably had a knock on effect to what they could produce, which was just the national service - and of course nobody gives a monkeys about a tailback on the A2 if you're watching in Manchester.
Incidentally the original sofa was given away in 1985 as a competition prize when they got a new one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uScz8qNqPo
Tvam- Timeslot - IndigoTucker - 05-06-2021
The regional opts would have needed the automatic (and instant) line switching at the exchanges from the IBA. This work wasn’t done until TVam had launched and hit the buffers, so there was no money at that point to open the regional studios.
Tvam- Timeslot - Humphrey Hacker - 05-06-2021
IndigoTucker post_id=16964 time=1622922599 user_id=1026 Wrote:The regional opts would have needed the automatic (and instant) line switching at the exchanges from the IBA. This work wasn’t done until TVam had launched and hit the buffers, so there was no money at that point to open the regional studios.
Is that why Oracle's local services didn't start until 9.25 AM?
Tvam- Timeslot - Steve in Pudsey - 05-06-2021
I thought we had concluded at the old place that the ads were played in on a macro-regional basis, hence them continuing when TV-am had to decamp to the Thames continuity studio following the great storm.
Tvam- Timeslot - James2001 - 05-06-2021
Admittedly I'd just assumed the adverts on that day were played out from Thames.
Tvam- Timeslot - James Martin - 06-06-2021
Steve in Pudsey post_id=17001 time=1622932941 user_id=942 Wrote:I thought we had concluded at the old place that the ads were played in on a macro-regional basis, hence them continuing when TV-am had to decamp to the Thames continuity studio following the great storm.
It's possible the London ads were simply aired nationwide - to get that many split lines set up out of THS at short notice would be a tall order.
Tvam- Timeslot - Steve in Pudsey - 06-06-2021
I think we thought it more likely that the facility playing out ads for the rest of the country (either Didsbury or Wilmslow depending on who you
ask https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1243901#post-1243901) was also covering macro regions played out from London
Tvam- Timeslot - Markymark - 06-06-2021
Humphrey Hacker post_id=16985 time=1622929036 user_id=1128 Wrote:IndigoTucker post_id=16964 time=1622922599 user_id=1026 Wrote:The regional opts would have needed the automatic (and instant) line switching at the exchanges from the IBA. This work wasn’t done until TVam had launched and hit the buffers, so there was no money at that point to open the regional studios.
Is that why Oracle's local services didn't start until 9.25 AM?
Yes. The regional Oracle pages were generated and inserted at the regional ITV studios. When TV-am was on the air these were totally by-passed by BT/IBA.
We had a discussion about this in the old place in 2010
https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/networked-itv-1990s-31327/page-4
The really useful link to an IBA paper on the subject I provided is broken. I'll try and fix it later today
Tvam- Timeslot - deejay - 06-06-2021
I gave up on that video (interesting though it was) when David Frost shamelessly ripped off the Yes Minister skit about who reads which newspaper.
Tvam- Timeslot - Steve in Pudsey - 06-06-2021
He didn't - that TV-am piece predates Yes Minister using the same gag by about 4 years. But it wasn't original when Frost used it.
http://www.dirtyfeed.org/2021/04/what-the-papers-say/
Tvam- Timeslot - Steve Williams - 06-06-2021
IndigoTucker post_id=16664 time=1622819379 user_id=1026 Wrote:Peter Jay had a yearning for a television programme with a "mission to explain" - developed with John Birt. This apparently meant "high brow analytical journalism – as apposed to the adversarial style (at least theoretically) favoured by current affairs journalists." . Jay always meant for TV-am to be like this, so when he grabbed the franchise, ran with it. It of course tanked in days when put against Breakfast Time from the BBC Current Affairs department, but the "mission to explain" later led to the abolition of the split between news and current affairs at the BBC when John Birt took over.
Yes, as you mention Peter Jay had long had his own ideas about the presentation of news on television, and the whole reason why the breakfast franchise was advertised separately was to create a new national news service who would do things differently and create more choice and competition within the ITV system.
The Breakfast Time revamp in 1986 was rubbish, it was too jarring a shift, and you could argue that the Breakfast we have now is what they should have done then - more formal than the original incarnation and based around news, but in a more engaging style.
James Martin post_id=16745 time=1622833352 user_id=872 Wrote:Yes, when told off by the IBA Bruce Gyngell basicallt turned round and offered to either shut it down there and then or give him until February 1986 to provide a sustainable news service, which did eventually happen. If I recall, TV-AM did deliver with the Manchester runway fire in 1985. As they were the only company on site (neither Granada nor ITN could get anywhere near) I believe it was mentioned on the blue place that TV-AM actually stayed on air past 09:25 to provide rolling news.
Of course, you could argue the bad relationships between TV-AM and the network didn't help. Border Television were able to assist ITN covering Lockerbie, yet TVS couldn't do that with TV-AM for Brighton.
As Morning Glory points out, TV-am did approach TVS to use their resources at Brighton and Greg Dyke, who was phoned at five in the morning, said they could use them if they could access them - but they couldn't access them anyway as they were cordened off, so the point was moot. Of course it's very different to Border contributing to ITN because Border paid for ITN and they had a formal relationship that worked both ways. TV-am were a competitor.
The Manchester Airport disaster is mentioned in the 1985 Television Yearbook, it says TV-am were broadcasting at 10am as they were the only broadcaster with pictures - both the BBC and ITN were stuck in traffic but they'd managed to get a crew there. However the book doesn't explain whether they were doing rolling coverage or just a newsflash (ITV using them as they would a newsflash from ITN).
Inspector Sands post_id=16942 time=1622919120 user_id=1003 Wrote:The description says that was broadcast two weeks before it launched, Breakfast Time started on the 17th January so I presumably it went out before then.
If oni wonder if that was more what they had planned? I don't remember ever seeing any of those settings before - Frost is seen in two seperate seating areas with different swivel chairs and there's not a sofa in sight. I seem to remember they only decided to have an on screen clock after seeing the BBCs, I wonder if the sofa was the same?
I think this went out on the previous Friday, the 14th, so they could claim to have got on air first.
The sofa was always planned, in the TV Times in the week of the launch they say that Good Morning Britain will, "perhaps surprisingly", be hosted from sofas. But if you watch the first morning, which used to be on YouTube and maybe still is, there are loads of different sets - a one-to-one interview area and a little continuity-style set, and they flit between them all throughout.
The other thing about the first morning is that the order of the news stories keep changing in every bulletin, not because of any breaking news as they're always the same, seemingly just for the sake of it. It's absolutely the product of a bunch of people rather playing at running a station, thinking "well, how hard can it be?" and doing things nobody's done before without realising why nobody's done it.
For all his obvious skills and experience, you'd have to say David Frost had some very idiosyncratic ideas about television and he was very prone to self-indulgence and going off on odd tangents. About twenty years ago I went to see an Audience With-style show he was touring, which was very interesting but, much like that TV-am clip, featured some of the oldest jokes in history, which he'd clearly been wheeling out since TW3.
Tvam- Timeslot - Inspector Sands - 06-06-2021
IndigoTucker post_id=16964 time=1622922599 user_id=1026 Wrote:The regional opts would have needed the automatic (and instant) line switching at the exchanges from the IBA. This work wasn’t done until TVam had launched and hit the buffers, so there was no money at that point to open the regional studios.No technical reason I can see why it couldn't have been done from day 1 if they'd had the time to set it up. The opt outs themselves wouldn't have used the sort of line switching they did before and after their airtime. And of course it wouldn't have been using the ITV companies at all. All the transmitter switching would have been done before and after they came off air as actually happened, just from different locations
They did open regional studios eventually, but for contributions, I think the last not long before the announcement that they hadn't had their license renewed