Dogs, of misfortune and misunderstanding, at the heels of BBC-2 in its early days created a picture of it which was wrong, and which is only now being corrected. Some thin Italian hands, of course, were at work. Some whiffs of old grapeshot were scented from the commercial lines. It would be naive to suppose the new channel was launched into an entirely friendly world. The black-out of the first night was succeeded by the dim-out of the first few months in the hard, bright light of the finest summer for five years. Some bought new sets without realizing they needed new aerials as well. The strange new rooftop devices were thus often angry last straws. Many more, aware of this need, were frustrated by apathetic or ignorant landlords. Propagation problems were aggravated by the high blocks now so typical a part of the London, and Greater London, scene. Then there was the Seven Faces of the Week policy, pleasing to some, alienating to a majority who found some nights when they wanted to watch nothing at all. ‘So quick bright things come to confusion.’ We said we would make mistakes, and we did. But they were not all ours. There were a few programmes that were actually bad. But Michael Peacock’s scrapbooks grew fat with praise of the good and new ones. It was ironic, but galling, to read on one page of the dailies and weeklies that BBC-2 was a ‘flop’, and on another, warm critical notices of its outstanding items. Meanwhile the audiences in the South-East, many of whom escaped the sampling nets because they were outside the official fringe area of direct reception, or were being supplied by local enterprise even beyond the Home Counties, were still small, smaller than we would have wished, but deeply appreciative. Letters and telephone calls, which in the experimental stages of a new service may be more significant than scientific samples, proved that, in their hundreds and thousands.

The next stage in this comical, tragical history (and history, said Carlyle, is a distillation of rumour), was when, foolishly, as it turned out, we allowed the news of a feature film deal, in which BBC-2 was minimally concerned, to be revealed at the same time as our plans for the necessary re-shuffle of the nightly pattern. The watchdogs were loosed. Making all kinds of assumptions from an absentee position, the critics bayed. ‘One sees more devils than vast hell can hold.’ ‘From now, on, BBC-2 is on its own, so far as I am concerned’, was a favourite line among those who believed, honestly

and erroneously, that they had been betrayed in their support of the new channel. Gradually, and generously, they retreated, as they realized the alarm was false, that what was happening was a spread, and not a dilution, of the programmes which marked BBC-2 out from BBC-1 (and naturally, from ITV), that the minorities were being catered for at least as comprehensively as before, that many of the timing changes were being made, not to tuck such programmes away on the sidelines, but to present, so far as possible, an array of common junctions with BBC-1. This could not, of course, eliminate the agony of choice, but at least it reduced the unfairness of it. Anyway, it quickly became clear that the UHF viewer liked the new plan, and began to watch something every night. This meant that many of the more unusual programmes got a better chance of a spill-over audience. It was an all-round improvement. Seven faces became seven days.

As we expected, with the coming of autumn, and the disengagement from elections and athletics, the number of UHF sets and the volume of BBC-2 viewing in the South-east grew appreciably. But it was undoubtedly the unexpected acceleration of coverage for Birmingham which gave the second channel the fillip it needed. ‘BBC-2 Showcase’ on Sunday afternoons on BBC-1 whetted appetites as it was intended it should. The press in the Midlands displayed a daily interest even before the transmitter was open. The industry, in all its parts, became more and more confident of disposing of sets. First reactions in the Birmingham public were friendly, positive, and contained a certain robust contempt for people in the South who took a long time to know a good thing when they saw it.

‘Midland furze afire —
Buy my English posies,
And I’ll sell your heart’s desire.’

Perhaps ‘heart’s desire’ pitches it a bit high. Nevertheless, in terms of programmes accomplished, sometimes by the rawest recruits, sometimes by older people drawn into new effort and new imagination, the first nine months were more than pregnant; they were a new birth. Thinking back to the very large and unexpected range of musical programmes, for instance, or to the breakthrough into the ‘new leisure’ by ‘Time Out,’ or to ‘Theatre 625,’ which was, ‘seminally’ to be in the word fashion, at least as important as anything happening in that time at the Aldwych or the Arts or the Court, or to the various kinds of interrogation in depth for politics or science, or to the acceptance of ‘Tuesday Term’ as a start in re-education which is now a national issue, or above all to what is already a worldwide as well as a national impact of ‘The Great War,’ thinking back to these things seen, by those who have BBC-2,1 would be prepared to match myself against Bacon: ‘A crowd is not company, faces are but a gallery of pictures, talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.’ If we still have less than a crowd for BBC-2, there is a company and an enlarging one; faces are increasingly alive; talk is more than percussion. Love, in terms of eager, professional skill, is being lavished on our company. Enough of statistics, for this book; they are the ghoul, anyway, at any programme feast. Poetry is of graver import than history. We have Aristotle’s word for it. At this moment, I am more concerned with the poetry of BBC-2 than with its history.

The post More than a Tinkling Cymbal appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

Before a new network can be engineered, the standards and the channels to be used must be known. When both of these are new, as is the present case, the engineering problems are intensified. Many years ago preparatory work started in the examination of the problems of 625-line picture generation, recording, distribution, and transmission. Much of the studio equipment installed in recent years for the existing 405-line programme has been made suitable for operation on the new standard as well, while other equipment has been made so that it can be fairly readily converted.

In the transmitter field the characteristics of UHF are very different from those of VHF. The signals required are more intense while the falling-off of the signals with distance is increased. Moreover, shadow effects of hills and other obstructions are very marked. The result of this is that more than three times as many transmitters will be required to give coverage in UHF as are required in VHF, while the power radiated by each transmitter must also be much greater. Further, to reduce the shadow effects higher masts must be used. When we add to all this the requirement that, while not initially called on to transmit colour signals, all the equipment must be such that it can be readily added to or adapted in order to make such transmissions, it will be seen that the complexity and cost of the new network is necessarily very high.

The starting point in planning the transmitter network is to carry out propagation measurements across different types of terrain, including sea-paths from the continent, in order to find out exactly how many stations will be wanted, what should be their power, location, aerial height, and so on. This has now been completed for the first group of stations, and building work on these stations is in progress. The first transmitter is already in experimental operation and comes into regular service in April 1964. The others follow at intervals.

For many years past we have been taking steps to reduce the manpower required for routine transmitter operation. In view of the large number of transmitters involved, the need to economize in manpower is all the more apparent, and we are planning these UHF stations to operate with the minimum supervision. Automatic devices are being used to the full.

Those BBC studios not yet capable of operating on 625 lines are being modified to enable programmes to be so produced, and in the future all BBC studios and the associated recording facilities will be capable of operating on both 405 lines and 625 lines. Because of programme exchange with North America some facilities are also provided for the 525-line system. The programme links between the studios and the transmitters are being engineered for 625 lines and the construction programme for the distribution network, which is carried out by the Post Office, must be co-ordinated with the construction of the transmitting stations.

Greater precision is needed when transmitting colour pictures as deficiencies in transmission which would cause only small errors in a black and white picture cause much more serious errors in a colour picture. Moreover, the situation is complicated by the fact that at the present time it has not been decided what colour system should be used. The engineering must therefore be on the basis of making provision for whichever may be the most exacting of the systems under consideration. Possibly a decision on the colour system will have been taken before the entry into service of all the facilities and it may then be possible to relax some of the present requirements.

The construction of a new network not only brings with it the problem of finding a large number of men to carry out the design and installation work involved, but also of course to operate the new facilities. Some hundreds of additional staff are required. Naturally, these men are not available already trained in the new techniques and, although many of them will have very good experience on 405-line techniques, it is essential that they should be trained in the techniques applicable to 625-line black-and-white operation and begin to be trained for 625-line colour operation. This has added to the training problem and has necessitated an increase in BBC training facilities.

The engineering of such a network involves very large sums of money, and careful balancing of the amount of money available between the various facilities required for programme origination, distribution, and transmission. The availability of money and the engineering effort to spend the money puts a very definite limitation on the rate at which a second network can be expanded. Fortunately, although a very large number of transmitters is required to give complete coverage, a fairly small proportion of these gives the greater part of the coverage, and as has already been announced the second programme should be available to 75 per cent of the population by 1966-7.

The standards laid down for 405-line television more than twenty-five years ago still apply and give very good pictures. We have to ensure that the engineering going into the new network is at least as good, since the 625-line system, which will probably last for an indefinite time, is expected to give even better results.

The post Engineering of the new network appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

Prediction in television is a dangerous game. Already since we began talking about a second channel nearly three years ago (which was before Pilkington had reported, and the Government had given the BBC the go-ahead, so that what we then had was a case, to persuade, and not a plan, to propound) my colleagues and I have had to alter our proposals considerably, and more than once. Much even of that part of them which we thought safe to make public has been overtaken, by changes of date for starting up, of the progress of coverage across the country, and perhaps most importantly of all, of programme thinking in a medium so unpredictably fluid and fast moving that yesterday’s good idea seems inadequate today, and impossibly old fashioned tomorrow.

Even now, with the opening night really imminent, I have in front of me the second master plan from Michael Peacock, whose exciting responsibility BBC-2 is, and this is, he warns, still likely to be no more than a rehearsal, on paper, of what eventually will happen. (I am also acutely conscious, as I write, that before this Handbook has ceased its annual validity, that eventuality will have been an accomplished fact for months!) Now there is nothing surprising about such changes in tactics. In fact, they are inevitable for a number of reasons. We have been, and shall be throughout 1964 and afterwards, very dependent on the prompt delivery of a vast range of new equipment, and the keeping to time-table of all kinds of construction, from studios and offices to cutting rooms and warehouses. This is the technical problem.

We are equally dependent on the success of the people we have taken on, who are being assimilated into the general productive capacity of BBC Television as a whole, so that two services can be maintained instead of one, and half as many hours again of new programmes can reach the screen. We are heavily dependent, again, on the flexibility and efficiency of our training schemes, for while a few experts have moved across from the commercial companies, most of the recruits are young, and new to television, and incidentally, must be given, so far as possible, a run on the nursery slopes. About a thousand newcomers, in all classes of output, production assistants, floor managers, designers, costume and make-up assistants, film editors, cameramen, and every category of technician, constitute a formidable ‘citizen army’ who must be made ready to play their full role in the field. This is the human problem.

Having reached the UHF 625-line screen, it must be with something that looks, taking not only a week as a whole, but any one evening, new, and lively, and different, something which will have an appeal for large groups of viewers, and for smaller groups as well, and something which takes off from the point of technical sophistication and programme maturity already reached by BBC-1. This is the professional problem.

No one television organization has ever been asked to do this before. It is an entirely different situation from the setting up of an alternative system, as happened when commercial television came into being in this country, and was based on a substantial diversion of qualified personnel from the BBC. It is altogether different again from starting television in simple circumstances for an audience to whom it is a complete novelty, which is the condition confronting many of our brothers in the Commonwealth, and indeed in the emergent countries everywhere. Here you have the oldest television system in the world, with all the standards and models and examples it likes to think it has set for other television people in Britain and elsewhere, being called upon to begin again by improving on its current performance, because if it does not appear to be doing that, the public wrath will fall, and the Government’s confidence in the BBC will be shaken.

In other words, BBC-2 is not starting from scratch, but under the handicap of existing liveliness and variety in BBC-1, and the rapidly improving form of much commercial competition as well. This is a challenge we accept and we believe we can meet. But it does not mean that given a successful start in the South-East in 1964, this will be adequate for the Midlands and North in 1965, or for the further very important extensions, in particular to the other nations of the United Kingdom. We shall refuse to be content with whatever pattern emerges in the first year. I believe that viewers in 1964 (who, after all, do comprise one-fifth of the population, if they are properly converted), will discover that the freedom explicit in two channels quickly becomes so natural, so inevitable, that they will wonder how they were ever satisfied with anything less. But they must not suppose that they can settle down into a mere extension of the viewing routine which emerges from the ‘either/or’ situation. BBC-2 will not stay put (any more, of course than BBC-1 will). It will be continuingly, perhaps indefinitely, experimental. Release from a strait-jacket can have a permanently invigorating effect.

The post Strait-jackets are no longer being worn appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.

This didn’t happen – the change of government in October 1964 scuppered the plans, as the Labour Party was ideologically opposed to expanding commercial broadcasting and would have preferred a BBC-3 educational television service, incorporating their planned University of the Air.

Here are the words of Lord Hill of Luton, the chairman of the ITA, from August 1963 as he announced what the Authority planned to do with the existing ITV service in the run up to ITV-2.

My main subject today is the shape, the pattern, the structure. Two main changes lie ahead. Firstly, there is the change to 625 lines and UHF. Secondly, there is the declaration of intention of the Government announced by the Postmaster-General on 27th June in relation to the second Independent Television service. You will remember his words: ‘if all goes well and there are suitable companies willing to offer their services to the ITA, the Government would certainly hope during the autumn of 1965 to authorize the physical build-up of the second programme, starting in the areas of big population’.

With these words in mind the Authority’s planning for the future must be based on the assumption that there is to be a second Independent Television service over much of the country. Therefore it has to begin as soon as possible to plan and prepare for Independent Television’s second phase – the two service phase.

On the assumption that the Government’s intention is fulfilled, the Authority has already resolved how the second phase shall begin. It contemplates that for the areas of denser population there shall be competition between two independent companies operating over the full week, and so for the viewer a choice between two independent television services. According to what is decided in the mapping out of these areas of denser population, there will be six or more seven-day companies competing in pairs. The Authority proposes, as soon as it has completed its urgent work in relation to the interim phase, to get down to the task of planning that second phase on these lines.

The basic plan for the second phase, which I have described, will change the face of television over much of the country. There will be changes of coverage, in terms of both areas and days. There will be openings for new companies in these highly populated regions and no doubt smaller companies then operating may wish to consider applying for the larger franchises.

Clearly the same contract cannot apply to the second phase with all its profound change as well as the period immediately ahead – the interim phase. It follows that the immediate contracts will have to end when the second service begins.

What should be the duration of the contracts soon to be awarded? In other words, when can we expect the second service? The Postmaster-General said it could be on the air in 1966 – and then went on to stress what he described as the very real hurdles. The actual date will depend on, amongst other things, the P.M.G.s decision, after having the advice of his Television Advisory Committee, on the method and timing of duplication on 625 of the two existing television services – a complicated problem which I will not go into now except to say that it affects the dates by which the Post Office could have the links available. In all the circumstances, the Authority’s judgment is that the second service will become possible at some time between the autumn of 1966 and mid-1967.

As the immediate contracts have to be related to the expected date of the launching of a second service, the Authority has decided that their duration should be three years, subject to four points. The first is that should the second service begin before the expiry of three years – this is possible but by no means certain – then the contracts will terminate when it begins. Secondly, should the announced date of commencement of the second service be after July 1967, contracts will continue (subject to a reconsideration of rentals in the light of experience) until the second service arrives, up to a total period of six years. Thirdly, any contract terminated by the arrival of the second service and applying only to an area in no way affected by its introduction will be renewed, subject to the six-year maximum and to reconsideration of rental. Fourthly, if for any reason it becomes apparent that a second service cannot be introduced before 1970, there will be no extension of the three-year contracts and the Authority will re-examine the whole pattern on the basis of a single service.

The question which now arises is whether there shall be a fundamental re-casting of the pattern from next July, bearing in mind that a drastic re-shaping is likely to occur two or three years later. Clearly it would be wrong to do anything in the interim phase which prejudices the long-term plan. A number of ideas, as you know, have been put forward. It has been suggested that a seven-day service should be introduced for the Midlands with or without a change from the 5:2 pattern to a 4: 3 pattern in London and the North. You know the objections equally well. The 4:3 pattern, involving the addition of a day to the weekend and a reduction of weekdays, is in conflict with the pattern of most of our lives – five days work and two days recreation. For myself I dislike this variation.

Should a seven-day service be introduced for the Midlands, the successful company knowing that a few years later there will be a competitor in the same area and for the same days? Some might think yes. On balance, because what lies immediately ahead is an interim period during which the second phase will be planned and those years will be the period when the expanded competition of the BBC will be felt, the Authority has decided not to submit Independent Television to two upheavals in a few years. With certain modifications, the existing pattern of days and hours will continue during the interim phase. Let me make it absolutely clear that what I have said relates solely to the pattern of days and areas – of supply that is – not of companies. Present companies and new companies are to apply for any area they choose. All bets are off and there will be a fair field for all.

The post Preparing for ITV-2 appeared first on THIS IS ZENITH 1964 from Transdiffusion.