FIVE years of success in the Midlands were celebrated last month when ATV staff, their friends and families packed the Aston studios for the Gala Anniversary Programme.

Mr Val Parnell, who had just returned from the United States, came to Birmingham to produce the programme personally.

When the gala show went on the air at 11.15 p.m., it was five years ago almost to the minute that Independent Television in the Midlands was launched.

In 1956 less than 1,000,000 viewers were watching. Now that figure has rocketed to more than 5,500,000.

Beryl Reid, Morecambe and Wise, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss came from Midland pantos for the sparkling 45-minute variety show directed by Reg Watson and introduced by Noele Gordon.

The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Birmingham, Ald. Garnet Boughton and Mrs Boughton, were welcomed by Mr Philip Dorté, Midlands Controller, and Ald. Mrs Pearl Hyde, Midlands Public Relations Officer.

Others who took part in the show included: Jerry Allen and his Trio, Alfie Bass (Bootsie) and Bill Fraser (Snudge), Jean Morton, Patricia Cox, Susan Denny, Eula Parker, Evadne Price, Roy Edwards, Alan Grahame, Ken Ingarfield, Pat Astley, Peter Regan, Lionel Ruben, Leslie Dunn, The Ponytones and the George Carden Dancers.

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THE Midlands administrative staff move into new offices this month.

The company has acquired the entire ground floor of a new multi-storey building in Edmund Street, Birmingham.

The new offices will be light and airy. They will also use the Open Plan principle which has proved so successful at ATV House in London.

Muzak has been installed to provide background music and the accommodation provided is the Midlands match to London’s ATV House in Great Cumberland Place.

Although the move has not been made yet — final touches are still going on — the building was officially opened last month by Alderman Garnet Boughton, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, by cutting a length of video tape at the entrance.

The ceremony was attended by Mr Prince Littler, Chairman of ATV; Mr Norman Collins (Deputy Chairman); Mr Val Parnell (Managing Director) and Mr Lew Grade (Deputy Managing Director).

The company’s London delegation were welcomed by Mr Philip Dorté, the Midlands Controller.

After the opening 150 Midlands dignitaries were entertained to lunch at the Grand Hotel. The Lord Mayor congratulated the company on its success and referred to television as “Another star in the firmament of our city”.

CHAIRMAN’S REPLY

In reply to the Lord Mayor’s speech, Mr Littler recalled that it was nearly five years since Independent Television had been inaugurated in the Midlands.

“In those five years ATV’s audience in the Midlands has grown from a handful in 1956 to well over four million today”, he said.

“Nowadays, 71 per cent of the Midland television audience with a choice of programme elects to view ATV in preference to the BBC, whose share is 29 per cent”.

Mr Littler added that although Mr Dorté the Midlands Controller met so many local people, and members of the Board visited Birmingham regularly, this was the first occasion for four years his Board of Directors, as a whole, had played host to a reception gathering of Midland civic, ecclesiastical and ambassadorial leaders.

ALPHA PROGRESS

Meanwhile, work continues on the new Alpha studios. Here, incidentally, the workers probably down tools more often than any other builders in Britain. And it’s all on account of TV.

“We had to issue programme bulletins to the foreman to enable him to call a stop to all noise while we are on the air”, Frank Beale, General Manager of Alpha, told me. While noise is a headache for the television staff, office accommodation for the production staff is at a premium too. But as soon as the new building is completed (August is the target month) there’ll be six floors of space with comfortable accommodation for everyone. But the building operations haven’t always been inconvenient.

SPECIAL FEATURES

One of ATV’s best “Lunch Box” shows was actually done on the building site. Special features in the new Alpha building will be: a control area on the top floor; a canteen covering the whole second floor and electric underfloor heating.

“We’ll turn on the current at night, and off in the day-time. This should keep the building comfortably warm all day” said chief engineer David Whittle.

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Keith Rogers, ATV’s Operations Controller has had a varied background.

In his teens he was a wireless operator on board a Fleet Reserve oil tanker during the first World War. Bom in London, Mr Rogers attended Mill Hill School. When he left school the exciting new world of wireless, just opening up, beckoned him.

In 1917 he joined the Marconi Company as a wireless operator. “Sometimes now, after all those years, if I happen to hear a snatch of Morse code on the radio I automatically translate it,” he says.

After two years at sea, Mr Rogers continued working for the Marconi Company until 1922.

Mr Rogers was with a radio technical journal until 1935 when he started to write freelance articles on scientific subjects for Fleet Street.

“I was aware of developments in television quite early,” he says. “I had written articles about Baird and I had been carrying out experiments on the reception of television on cathode ray tubes with the Edison Swan Company.”

When war came in 1939, he was commissioned in the R.A.F. and was concerned in the installation of radar in Britain. It was then that he first met Mr. Philip Dorté, now ATV Midlands Controller.

After the war he rejoined the Marconi Company, in their television and radar department. He supervised radar installations in Denmark.

Then, by chance, he met Philip Dorté again. “Why not join the BBC as an outside broadcasts producer?” he suggested. Mr Rogers took his advice.

“I enjoyed the work tremendously. Television outside broadcasts are a form of reporting and I had done plenty of journalistic work in the past.

“During my last few years with the BBC, as Senior OB Producer, I was responsible for organising the Royal broadcasts.”

When ATV started in 1956, he was one of the first to join the Company. His job then was head of the Outside Broadcasts Department. After a few months he was asked to take charge of Operations.

This was a challenge, for commercial television on the British pattern had not been tried anywhere else in the world.

Mr Rogers helped to thrash out networking details with the other contractors to establish the practice necessary for networking to function efficiently.

“I thrive on a sense of urgency,” says Mr Rogers. “We feel this strongly in Operations because we are always working against the clock.”

Mr Rogers’ department is responsible for the cohesion of everything transmitted by ATV.

That includes the transmission of live and recorded programmes, preparation and transmission of films, the insertion of commercials, announcements, weather forecasts, station identification and promotion of forthcoming programmes.

Everything is timed to the second by clocks synchronised with TIM.

Although his job leaves little time for hobbies, Mr Rogers enjoys gardening at his Haywards Heath, Sussex home. He is married with one son, who is a doctor.

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BERNARD BLAKEMORE, 47, has joined our Midlands staff as Administrative Assistant to Mr Philip Dortd. He replaces Bob Morrison who has left to join his family business.

Mr Blakemore thus renews a wartime association with our Midlands Controller — a wartime Group Captain — under whom he served as a squadron leader employed on radar defences with 60 Group at Leighton Buzzard.

Our new Midlands executive is also an engineer. He has spent most of his life in the technical field of radio, electronics and television.

After serving his apprenticeship with Rediffusion Ltd. [aka Broadcast Relay Services, providers of wired radio services – Ed] he joined the BBC’s Engineering Department in 1937. Two years later, on the outbreak of war, he was one of four BBC technicians selected to work on radar development at the Air Ministry Research Establishment at Bawdsey, near Ipswich.

After his spell at Leighton Buzzard he spent some time at the Air Ministry and was then posted to Delhi as Wing Commander, Chief Radar Officer. On demobilisation, he returned to the BBC and was then appointed Deputy Station Director and Chief Engineer of Radio SEAC in Ceylon.

Here, he first made contact with the programme side of radio and the staff included a number of young men who have since made big reputations for themselves on both TV channels.

“Three of our announcers were McDonald Hobley, David Jacobs and Desmond Carrington of ‘Emergency – Ward 10′”, he told me, “Hobley and Carrington were army captains. David Jacobs was a chief petty officer in the navy”.

After a year in Ceylon, Mr Blakemore returned to England to look after family affairs and later took up an appointment as an executive engineer with the Lancashire Dynamo Electronics Products Ltd where he has been for the last four and a half years.

During this period, his firm sent him to Moscow for a month — “But I don’t think I’d like to work there” he says.

A former Wolverhampton councillor, he is now a member of Tettenhall, Staffs, council where he lives with his family of three daughters — Rosemary, 9, Felicity, 7, and Veronica, 5.

“I’ve always wanted to get back into the executive side of radio and television” he told me. “So, when the chance came to join ATV I was naturally very pleased”.

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Announcers working for Associated TeleVision were warned by Mr. Philip Dorté, ATV Midlands Controller, yesterday that if they did not dress sensibly for the cameras they might be faded out.

Mr. Dorté, who considers that both the men and women are trying to be too fashionable, said: “Announcers are there to do a serious job of work and their dress should in no way lead to distraction from what they are saying. Recently there has been a tendency for announcers to be too flashy in their appearances.”

Pat Astley, the announcer, said: “I quite agree that announcers should not be flashily dressed. I try to be discreet with my choice of clothes, but I have to keep an eye on the latest fashions.”

‘Stuffed Shirt’

Jean Morton said: “I believe that viewers expect me to be fashionably dressed and, without being flashy. I try to be discreet in choice of styles. Viewers are critically interested in fashion, hair styles and the jewellery we wear.”

Mr. John Taylor, editor of The Tailor and Cutter, said: “It seems to me a stuffed-shirt attitude. We might as well all go back to radio if the announcers on television are not to be allowed to look smart and fashionably dressed.”

A BBC television spokesman said there had been no complaints of their announcers wearing dress that was anything but correct.

No Restrictions

Mr. Ted Harris, Midland executive of ABC Television, responsible for the week-end ITV programmes in Midlands and North England, said: “Each week-end we have four male announcers – John Edmunds, John Benson, Mel Oxley and David Hamilton. We leave the question of dress to their own good sense, and we have had no occasion to reprimand them for their turnout.

“Our announcers are free to express their own sartorial personality, and we rely upon their good dress sense. As John Edmunds was recently voted the best male announcer on television, we do not intend imposing any restrictions.”

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And her one regret is that her double shift makes it impossible for her to see Shakespeare at the Stratford Memorial Theatre. For five evenings a week she reads the news from 5.55 to 6 o’clock.

“It’s almost 6.30 by the time my make-up is removed,” she says. “The Memorial Theatre performance begins at 7.30 and I just can’t make it by bus.”

I don’t think it will be long before she has a car — and then she’ll be able to go again.

Last year she went to the Memorial Theatre nearly 50 times and saw each play six times. In 1951 she saw each play in the historic cycle seven times.

Her ambitions are to do more TV work and to act at the Memorial Theatre.

Patricia, who is 25, was auditioned, with scores of other girls for Midlands newscaster at the beginning of May. Producer Ned Sherrin liked her immediately. So did ATV’s Midlands controller Philip Dorte. A private transmission was piped to Val Parnell, in London. Patricia was called for a further test and given a contract.

Apart from a two-week holiday she has been seen every week-day since.

It’s a long day for Patricia. She arrives at the gown-shop in a suburb of Birmingham at 9 o’clock each morning. She models and sells gowns till after 4, when she leaves by taxi for the television theatre at Aston. She reaches the theatre at 4.40, is made up, and runs through the news with Sherrin and Raymond Roden, the man who scripts it for TV. She uses the intervening time before 5.55 to memorise as much as possible of the script.

Her calm, sympathetic approach to the news has won her many admirers. She receives a lot of fan mail and people recognise her in the street.

“I try to be as personal as possible when reading human interest stories,” she says. “I find the best way of putting anything over is to forget the camera and technicians and imagine I am talking to mother at home.”

Though newscasting was Patricia’s first experience of television, she has broadcast in several plays. She set out to be an actress while at Wolverhampton Art School and studied for 18 months with an elocutionist. She won the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art’s gold medal for elocution.

Then she took a drama course at Birmingham Theatre School and appeared in many plays. No wonder the theatre — and music — are her hobbies.

She likes to spend her weekends in the country. Usually this means a trip to the Cotswolds — more often than not to Stratford-on-Avon. Just to look at the Memorial Theatre.

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