A FINE tribute to the work of the Company’s Graphic Design Department appears in “Gebrauchs Graphic”, the journal of International Advertising Art.

Here are some extracts from the article, which is printed in three languages:

“Today, only a few years after the start of commercial television in Great Britain, there are already remarkable results to be seen in the graphic design work of these companies. This is clearly shown by the work of Associated TeleVision.

“ATV use only their own highly skilled staff for all graphic design requirements. The standard of the ATV work… results from great co-operation between staff.

“The graphic designers of ATV work under the supervision of Bob Wainright, in his position a link between production, stage and graphic design. Under the hands of his collaborators the wishes of the producers, which arrive as a typed order, are shaped into good graphic design.

“Remarkable is the skilful intermarriage between pictorial and lettering elements of the designs, more so as television demands so much on such a small area in such a short time.

“To achieve, under these conditions, a high standard of work, the graphic designers of ATV often work as a team, each member of the team again specialising in a particular field, like lettering, illustration, cartoon or symbolic design.

“For such work even an experienced graphic designer will need some conditioning. For this reason it is to be welcomed that some staff designers of the ATV graphic design studio, together with colleagues of other TV companies, have declared themselves willing to pass on their experience in evening classes to be held in the School of Graphic Design of the LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts, London.”

SOME EXAMPLES of the Department’s work which are reproduced in the magazine. They include titles for TV programmes, phases from the TV play “The Glove” and the children’s play “The Secret of the Nubian Tomb”. They are the work of Colin Cheeseman and Jerome Gask.

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WILL JOAN PALMER bring her two-year-old son Adam to the television studios on Christmas Day?

According to Joan it all depends on whether the viewers would like to see him – and on what sort of mood he’s in.

“On some days, I wouldn’t let a soul see him – let alone millions of viewers” says Joan in typical motherly manner.

Joan is one of a team of three A.T.V. announcers who will be doing 17-hour shifts on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The others are Peter Tomlinson and Kevin Morrison.

Peter Tomlinson is working on Christmas Eve.

“I’ll be the first person to wish everyone a Happy Christmas Day” he says. “I’ll be giving my message immediately after the Pope’s broadcast. Imagine that – following the Pope.”

Peter will then drive home, arriving about 3 a.m. and will tiptoe into the house to kiss small daughter Belinda but only very softly because it would never do to wake her.

“My wife will be waiting up so that we can fill Belinda’s stocking and hang it at the end of her bed together.”

Peter lives in a Gloucestershire village, and as viewers there don’t receive ATV no one locally is really impressed by the fact that he’s an announcer.

“To them I’m Peter Tomlinson, husband and father – not a character who appears on the box. And I like that idea very much.”

He’s a bit nervous about how he’ll cope on Christmas Day. He’s given himself extra household tasks this year as his wife is expecting their second child in the Spring. “I shall be in charge of fetching and carrying and keeping the fire stoked. And I shall carve the turkey for dinner.”

This is the cause of his anxiety. His in-laws are staying over Christmas, and they are very particular about how the turkey is carved. “And I’ve never attacked one before” says Peter.

Joan Palmer became a television announcer in 1968. After a ‘pause’ while she produced Adam she returned to the screen again. Christmas has a special meaning for her. “It was while working a long day shift three years ago that I found myself unaccountably tired – and wanting to eat lumps of coal instead of Christmas pudd. That was when I first discovered I was about to be a Mum!”

(We’ll be watching to see if you yawn this year, too, Joan.)

So many viewers have written to ask if they can see her son that Joan wonders if it might be a good idea to bring him in to the studio for a few minutes on Christmas Day.

“There are several reasons why I’d like it. First because otherwise I shan’t see him at all on Christmas Day, and because children make Christmas and I would like viewers to share my delight in Adam. I expect all he’ll manage to do is wander round and poke his fingers into everything. But he just might be persuaded to wave at the screen and say, “Hello everybody.”

Kevin Morrison is a 23-year-old batchelor and the youngest announcer. When he wants to goad Joan Palmer he tells her that he remembers watching her on the screen when he was at school!

He’s glad he’s working over Christmas because otherwise he’d be fed up, even though he has a smashing new flat in Edgbaston. “Christmas to me seems like an endless Sunday – and it’s not much fun being on your own.

“I’ll have a special word for those who have only a television set for company at Christmas.

“I’m a compulsive worker and my life is completely bound up in television.”

He’ll start Boxing Day wearing an informal outfit – a sweater and trousers probably – and then a shirt and tie after lunch with the usual immaculate dinner jacket for evening programmes.

Joan Palmer will be making a colourful picture in a red crepe evening gown, and long white ostrich feather boa.

“I made the dress myself” she says, “and I have been known to bring my needlework to the studio on occasion. As for the lovely white feather boa – it belongs to my son’s godmother and I got her to lend it me specially for Christmas Day.

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THE first thing John Terry, ATV’s Head of Presentation, showed me was a Routine Sheet. “You could say this is our daily ‘Bible,’” he said, thumbing a 10-page foolscap-size document in which the entire programme timings, plus ad spots for the day, were typed.

“It’s prepared from a ‘spot list’ which we receive from Sales Department nine days before transmission.”

This “sheet” was for one of ATV’s Saturday transmissions in London.

A glance told me there would be a Wyatt Earp episode from 19.30 hours — half-past seven in viewers’ language — to 19.42.30 hours. Then a caption would appear for four seconds to announce the “end of part one” and precisely at 19.42.34 a 30-second spot for Guinness would be screened, followed by a 15-second Penguin spot and another 15 seconds for Shell.

I also learned from the sheet that the Guinness and Penguin spots would be on 35 mm. film with sound-track, while the Shell spot was on slides with an announcer’s voice supplying the sound.

Complicated as it seemed, that routine accounted for one minute in the whole day’s screen time.

In the film library at Television House there’s a stock of 6,000 “commercials,” including duplicates — an important item where ad spots are repeated at different times of day — and about 3½ million feet of programme film.

Operations Film Manager Tom Carpenter told me that seven days ahead the library assembles in large wooden bays all the separate pieces of film that a day’s routine demands.

“From here they’re wheeled on a trolley to the splicing room next door,” explained Mr. Terry. We entered a smaller room in which Tom Rowland was joining ad spots and programme features into one large reel.

“There will be 3,000 feet of 35 mm. film on this reel when I’ve finished,” Tom told me. “We use between eight and ten reels a day— and some 16 mm. film, too.” So for one day’s showing there may be over 30,000 feet to make-up — and later to break-down for return to the library.

Each reel is checked in the theatre at Television House, then taken to ATV’s control centre at Foley Street, in the West End.

“The ‘spots’ reach viewers’ screens from here by means of four telecine machines,” explained Peter Fowler, one of the two telecine supervisors.

Each is linked to the Control Room where the controller, sitting behind a bank of several monitor screens, can line-up everything in the day’s programmes into one steady sequence — like a traffic policeman controlling a junction of busy streets.

“When it’s time for the ‘commercials’,” said Mr. Fowler, “we have the telecine machine standing by. We know it will take five seconds to run up to full speed, so exactly five seconds before it is booked to appear the controller gives us the order ‘Roll’.”

And the ad spot appears on viewers’ screens precisely as the “routine sheet” commanded.

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But these are the very much the exceptions. Weeks, even months, can go by with not one single thing going wrong – yes, even in the 1950s and 60s. And during those times, 99% of all broadcasting, everything in transmission control and continuity runs like clockwork.

It does so because it’s planned to the exact moment by a team of highly trained, highly talented people working long hours and producing copious amounts of paperwork – even now, in the days of ‘everything’ being on a computer.

The paperwork, and its computerised equivalents, still look something like these documents from 27 July 1968 – ATV London’s last Saturday on air. They are shared with everyone who could possibly need or want to know, since more information leads to better television.

Each day’s transmission schedule for each company is copied to the person responsible for co-ordination of the network at each company or branch. Here, someone in every TX studio in ITV on air that day, from Miss Leidan at STV to Geoffrey Lugg at ABC, gets a copy. The transmitter staff get a copy too; the Independent Television Authority, as the legal broadcaster of ITV at the time, gets one. The people at “ATC” (Associated Television Corporation, ATV London’s parent company) manning the lines from the transmission centre at Foley Street in Marylebone in London to the General Post Office television control suite in the nearby Museum Exchange, the chief engineer next door in the offices at Ogle Street and the duty officer at ITN all get a copy.

Elstree, the beating heart of ATV for nearly all of its life, gets 10 copies; Mr Summers gets a copy to edit down to share with the newspapers and the TVTimes; 24 copies go to head office on Great Cumberland Street, including one for Olive Hennessy, who must be prepared to look back when the inevitable letters from viewers – what was the advert I saw at 9pm on Saturday last? was the racing from Ripon or Richmond? who do I write to if I want to complain about the results of OpNox? – flood in over the next week.

Meanwhile, the output of the ITV companies trundles on, each advert, announcement and even the National Anthem at the end of the day timed to the very second.

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1963

1964

1969

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We were not deterred from asking more of her. On 24 November 1965, she told us that if we want a copy of Sound & Vision, we can buy the 78rpm with the code NIXA 15003.

She lied. NIXA 15003 was not the version of Sound & Vision ATV used. We told her so. On 16 December 1965, Olive bats gamely on anyway, politely telling us to get lost.

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Stephanie de Sykes sings Odyssey, a track off Rain’s 1974 album that had the catchy title ‘Rain featuring Stephanie de Sykes’, over one of two films – one showing the rural nature of the Midlands region and one showing the industrial side. Best of all for ATV, this was free: the film was produced by a staff member whose hobby was helicopter rides and the album was on Bradley’s Records, a label owned by ATV Music.

The results are interesting – singing about how beautiful life is over shots of cooling towers and factory chimneys belching acrid smoke couldn’t not be – but also against both the spirit and the wording of the Independent Television Authority’s rules on formal station openings.

The IBA had inherited these rules from the General Post Office, who licensed each of the Authority’s transmitters and had seen itself as the regulator’s regulator, imposing a number of formal requirements and sometimes bizarre standards on the ITV companies that didn’t apply to the BBC. One of these was that a set instrumental piece of music had to be registered with the Authority and used without variation, except on Good Friday and over the Christmas holidays.

This piece obviously does not fit that pattern, and just as obviously was not registered for use. Eventually, the IBA’s Regional Officer in Birmingham happened to tune in one morning… and then song hit the fan, the IBA intervened, and order was restored.

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The beds in the above collection were designed to be used to replace the existing fanfare on ATV’s Zoom 2 ident. Here we’ve used the Zoom 2 vision with one of the cuts to see how that would look and sound…

Here’s the main ‘Midlands Montage’ theme in use on ATV on Monday 18 May 1981, with Stewart White doing the authority announcement on tape and Mike Prince doing the continuity.

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