Great behind the scenes clip. Love all the technology, the Betacart and especially those robotic cameras - 20 years ahead of BBC London News where I work! Thanks.
I love the way they always say "the world's most up to date studio" whenever anything new is built. Of course it is, by default! Those robotic cameras caused problems at Central East when mid-show they'd go barreling off sideways across the studio floor and take out anyone or anything that got in their way :-) Nice video. Thanks for sharing it.
The Ridge Hill transmitter should never have been South, a fact supported by the transfer back to Birmingham! i lived in South Dudley at the time and got pictures from Ridge Hill as no other transmitter gave usable signals.
The problem is, transmitter coverage is not a perfect circle around an antenna... Things get in the way. Big things called "hills". Ridge Hill serves as far south as Cheltenham and Gloucester as signals from Beckley and Membury can't get over the Cotswolds. There's whopping big hills blocking the signal to the north of the Stroud relay, too. South Dudley getting served by Ridge Hill rather than Sutton Coldfield was for similar topographic reasons due to the hills to the north and east. The majority of Ridge Hill's coverage area was firmly catered to by Central South - IE: Herefordshire, Worcestershire west of the Malverns (another signal-blocking hill range), and North Gloucestershire. The fact that somewhere as far north as Dudley needed Ridge Hill was something of an outlier. The "transfer back to Birmingham" only occurred when South got shut down and Central News West began covering Herefordshire and Worcestershire again, whilst Gloucestershire started getting covered by ITV West. Not a problem now that DVB-T can serve multiple local broadcasts and your receiver can choose one based on postcode. Then, though? A sticky problem that could've been fixed by either broadcasting two ITV channels and the hassle of informing some viewers that they'll need to retune (which, ironically, they only did in 2006 when Central South kicked the bucket and folks in Gloucestershire were told to retune to ITV West if they wanted local news coverage) or a relay station that clearly nobody was willing to pay for.
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Great behind the scenes clip. Love all the technology, the Betacart and especially those robotic cameras - 20 years ahead of BBC London News where I work! Thanks.
In August 2020 I drove passed the now defunct Central news Abingdon building, but the road signs still say 'central tv' all these years later.
I love the way they always say "the world's most up to date studio" whenever anything new is built. Of course it is, by default! Those robotic cameras caused problems at Central East when mid-show they'd go barreling off sideways across the studio floor and take out anyone or anything that got in their way :-)
Nice video. Thanks for sharing it.
Hey Stevey. I love this video. Thanks for putting it on RUclips.
bob southgate also involved in the birth of TVS
This is great, thanks for sharing.
Thanks so much for uploading this to RUclips
Mind you, he still looks very young today. Bless him.
Broad Street Studios Birmingham Central was there from January 1982-July 1997
A young Wesley Smith there, who strangely had a deeper voice than he has today.
1:20 Bob Southgate has a point about Central being a very vast region
5:39 “Bother That Telephone!” Said The Fat Controller
The Ridge Hill transmitter should never have been South, a fact supported by the transfer back to Birmingham! i lived in South Dudley at the time and got pictures from Ridge Hill as no other transmitter gave usable signals.
The problem is, transmitter coverage is not a perfect circle around an antenna... Things get in the way. Big things called "hills".
Ridge Hill serves as far south as Cheltenham and Gloucester as signals from Beckley and Membury can't get over the Cotswolds. There's whopping big hills blocking the signal to the north of the Stroud relay, too. South Dudley getting served by Ridge Hill rather than Sutton Coldfield was for similar topographic reasons due to the hills to the north and east.
The majority of Ridge Hill's coverage area was firmly catered to by Central South - IE: Herefordshire, Worcestershire west of the Malverns (another signal-blocking hill range), and North Gloucestershire. The fact that somewhere as far north as Dudley needed Ridge Hill was something of an outlier. The "transfer back to Birmingham" only occurred when South got shut down and Central News West began covering Herefordshire and Worcestershire again, whilst Gloucestershire started getting covered by ITV West.
Not a problem now that DVB-T can serve multiple local broadcasts and your receiver can choose one based on postcode. Then, though? A sticky problem that could've been fixed by either broadcasting two ITV channels and the hassle of informing some viewers that they'll need to retune (which, ironically, they only did in 2006 when Central South kicked the bucket and folks in Gloucestershire were told to retune to ITV West if they wanted local news coverage) or a relay station that clearly nobody was willing to pay for.
It looks like a wallaby, the nose doesn't twitch enough for it to be a rabbit.
Newstar - what used to be Basys, before Avid bought the system from ITN
John Caine!
Have you seen the first edition. It was one of the biggest f*** ups ever broadcast