August 2012 – Page 2 – What Was Pebble Mill?

The Sky at Night

Patrick Moore

‘The Sky at Night’ has been presented by Sir Patrick Moore since its start in 1957. He has only missed one episode, when he was extremely ill with salmonella in July 2004.

The documentary astronomy programme is transmitted once a month on BBC 2 (and on BBC 4).

The series began life at Lime Grove, and I’m not sure when it came to BBC Birmingham.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Peter Poole: ‘I’ve been watching this wonderful programme for years. Only the BBC would produce this fine example of public service broadcasting. Is Birmingham losing this programme as part of the cut backs?’

Mike Workman: ‘Why is it the BBC see fit to ram everything great in Salford, everything interesting in Bristol and everything that makes money in London? They forgotten about the Midlands? Citizen Khan may have had its rushes shot in Sparkhill, but the studio and post was MediaCity. Great going.’

Peter Poole: ‘What’s next for Birmingham? Perhaps the Mailbox will close and Midlands Today will be broadcast from a industrial unit in Redditch.Just think how much money that would save. And why not send the Archers to Salford!’

Mike Workman: ‘After all, Salford is the traditional home for radio drama in these austere times! Let’s just translate the whole BBC North project – two words – last one ‘up’ and first starts with an f.. The slow abandonment of the Midlands by London management is starting to grate, it seems you can only be from the South East or North West if you live in the UK. Midlands Today, meh, just merge it with North West Tonight, it saves money and it’s not like it’s a region in its own right!’

Telecine – Ray Lee (part 5)

Jim Gregory in TK

I worked in TK for around a year and a half before moving to VT for a brief attachment. I had further subsequent spells in TK, later in my career, including one period where I refurbished every board in the machines, as by that stage some components, mainly the trimmers, were completely worn out. The maintenance budget took a big hit that year, but the machine reliability improved no end.

In the early days TK had regular bookings for ‘Pebble Mill at One’, ‘Midlands Today’, ‘Farming’ (The predecessor of Countryfile), ‘Asian Programme’ inserts, Studio A inserts for various network dramas, and from time to time film inserts to ‘Nationwide’ and other London News items.

I remember one day in I think the summer of 1975, Jim Gregory and I viewing a film trailer for what was expected to be a big series of films. There was an item in a programme about George Lucas, and his vision for the films, the trailer was from “Star Wars” (although I’m not sure it was known as such at the time). It did eventually become a whole series of films, but after the initial “Star Wars” was released in 1977 there was a long period of uncertainty, regarding the rest.

Jim Gregory and Paul Richards pretty much were TK, for most of the time I worked at Pebble Mill. Graham Winter went on to lecture at Wood Norton, and everyone else moved round various places. I remember the time with affection, and was quite sad to see the old Cintel TK’s finally removed to make way for new equipment, something I was involved in as a member of Post Production Maintenance in the 90’s.

R. G. Lee

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

Keith Brook: ‘This is a rare shot indeed. Jim Gregory out of his chair!!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Fascinating stories of TK. I was at Evesham with Jim in the 60s. I remember in a previous job in regional TK in Southampton waiting to send a commag news story to AP for the new BBC 2 News and after a very long wait eventually getting through to VT there who were going to tape it and the operator said something like ‘Hang on there’s a lot of noise ouside in the corridor, I’ll just shut the door’, we sent the package up OK and when he came back on to say all was OK he told us that TVC and all TV had crashed due to the major power failure in London which eventually led to the abandonment ofhe opening of BBC 2 that night!’

Midlands RTS Awards 2008

Photos from BBC Birmingham post production, no reproduction without permission.

The photos were taken at the 2008 Midlands Royal Television Society Awards held at the ICC in Birmingham. Amongst the winners were ‘Countryfile’ and the documentary series ‘Family Wanted’.

I’ve added most of the names, but please add a comment with any that I’ve left out.

Cutting Reversal Film for News – Paul Freeman

Paul Freeman, Julia Gray, Anne Williams. Newsroom photo by Ivor Williams

During my time in the newsroom all material – except for a few ‘features’ was shot on reversal commag stock. The main problem with commag stock was, of course, the separation of the gate and the recording head, meaning that cutting the picture in the right place was wrong for the sound and vice-versa, hence the need to transfer the sound to sepmag stock (16mm magnetic tape, but it was perforated like 16mm.). If time didn’t allow for the transfer, then the cut mismatch had to be accommodated by either inserting a noddy (or the next actual reporter’s question preceeded by a pontifical (leading) noddy, or any one of a number of other technical fudges!). Or else it needed dubbing in studio 9 where we covered the bumps with suitable audio (commentary, SFX, music etc.) recorded onto sepmag stock in the TK machine, or occasionally dubbing it live if a last-minute network insert run live from London (more adrenaline than on a battle-field!). Not forgetting – as occasionally happened – to gently remind the TK operator to ‘pull it up 3 frames’ before TX.

I don’t believe edited sepmag was ever laid back to the commag – apart from anything else, the resultant audio would have ‘bumped’ over the edits. Why would you bother when the commag track was about a 10th the size of the sepmag?  Having had the opportunity to see other regional news mags, and how they coped with commag and all its attendant problems (usually live reporter v/o in the studio + live grams) I think studio 9 was an elegant and efficient solution, no matter how much some of the ‘proper’ dubbing mixers looked down their collective noses at us!  The features, and the opt-outs were usually shot on either reversal (with the commag track not used, or used as either a guide track or occasionally a wild track) with sound on 1/4″ recorded on a Nagra or mute colour neg + 1/4″.  What a faffy world it was before video/u-matic/Beta/digibeta, but I count dubbing shifts in studio 9 as some of my happiest times in Pebble Mill.

Paul Freeman

Peter Poole, left the following comment on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group: ‘Hi Paul, thanks for an interesting blog. I probably complained about Studio 9. You had limited facilities and time pressure. And looking back on it I think you did a good job. I remember station assistants playing sound effects discs live in Studio B to cover mute film. Norwich still did live commentary even when U-matic tape was in use.’

PAs Leaving Party – more photos

Photos from Jane Mclean, no reproduction without permission.

The photos were taken on 17 Dec 1998 at the PAs leaving party. The Production Assistants at BBC Pebble Mill took redundancy, although many came back as freelancers with the BBC.