ATV’s own spectacular!

THE start of colour television in the Midlands coincides with the completion of a remarkable achievement, technical and in construction, that marks a major stage in Birmingham’s development as a source of television programme production.

Programme-making switches from the Alpha Television Theatre at Aston Cross to the new city centre studios of ATV Network, part of a £6,000,000 [£84½m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] development.

When the administrative block is ready late next year, the TV unit will be the first completed section of the £15,000,000 [£211m] entertainment and hotel complex that is to rise on the site of the former West End Cinema and car park.

In design and fitness, the contrast between the two buildings could not be more vivid. At Aston ITV began in 1956 in a building converted from a former cinema which itself had replaced a theatre of Edwardian days.

The new building at ATV Centre houses the world’s most up-to-date complex electronic machines that create programmes for colour television — the new look viewing standard for the 1970s.

It could be a happy augury that ATVs new home goes on the air in little more than 15 months from the day construction of the building began.

Equipment

Progress on a complicated operation has called for the most exacting of timetables.

About half of the £6,000,000 outlay has been on studio equipment. The building, to which the administrative block is to be added, will occupy three acres of the six-acre West End site.

At the end of the year the Alpha studios will close, but the offices in Edmund Street will be occupied for another year. Then the new television headquarters will house a staff of 550.

What has most impressed the broadcasting world is the efficient, compact design that breaks away from the familiar system of lateral studio layout favoured in the past. ATV Centre embodies new architectural and acoustic features.

It has been planned so that the group of three main studios are at the heart of the structure, apart from essential service departments, but still within easy teach,

Control room design embodies a new principle that seems appropriate to 1970 thinking.

Now a producer, or director, must select his pictures for transmission solely from the array of monitor screens that light up the pictures captured by individual cameras.

Lighting and sound controllers command impressive galleries that include computer-regulated “memory banks” of lighting effects. By pre-selection these can store a vast range of patterns which can be “keyed” for use as the sdript demands.

Completion of the first stage of this development sets the seal on one of the most spectacular transformation scenes in a Birmingham accustomed to a major clearance projects and achievements that are re-shaping the city.

That achievement has earned the admiration of visitors from overseas and from many parts of Britain who have toured the building.

It required a dovetailing of building and operational priorities that depended on the installation of many thousands of pounds worth of intricate equipment for sound and vision.

Trend-setting colour

COLOUR TV is likely to prove an even more forceful mass persuader than it has been in the past. It will influence styles in many ways.

Girls won’t always be the trendsetters in fashion — though colour will emphasise the smartness of way-out clothes.

Masculine styles will encourage more attention for the peacock look.

Cosmetics will get sharper scrutiny because of colour’s “truth.” Blonde and brunette will be registered with a clarity that monochrome cannot match.

Pastel shades, too, will alter ideas about the household.

You can expect to see kitchen and cooking equipment in a wider range of colours — check how food really looks while it is being prepared and served.

Roasted meat joints, or poultry, will have to be seen to be the “lovely golden brown” the chefs proclaim.

We’re colourful in black and white… but look at us now!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15th. ATV the Midlands network goes colour. Programmes produced at our new colour studios in Birmingham’s Television Centre will be beamed to viewers from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Your favourite characters, drama, news, sport, outside broadcasts, all will have a new richness, a new reality — in living colour!

What colour are Tom Jones’ eyes? Can you tell the Sky Blue of Coventry from the Old Gold of Wolves?

Is Noele Gordon wearing the same dress as last night? In colour it all comes true! And ATV gives you colour at its most natural. After all, we’ve been producing colour programmes for the world longer than anyone else in Britain. As far back as 1964 American viewers were enjoying ATV colour programmes. But even if you’re not quite ready yet to switch to colour viewing, your ATV favourites will still be entertaining you, as colourfully as ever, in black and white.