June 2013 – Page 4 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Panasonic D3 VCR

Photo by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

This is a Panasonic D3, D350 VCR. D3 was introduced as a new 1/2″ tape format in 1991. The format was not used on location as far as I remember, but was used extensively in VT editing suites, because the beauty of it was that it did not degrade if you went down a generation. It was also used for master copies of programmes for transmission.

Unfortunately D3 does not seem to have withstood the tests of time very effectively, and many D3 tapes in the BBC archives have deteriorated badly.

Mike Skipper added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook group, ‘one of the disadvantages of D3 is that the recorded signal is digitised composite PAL. The format rapidly went out of favour when productions started to shoot and archive material in 16:9 widescreen format. Digital Betacam, being a component recording standard, rapidly took over from D3. Digital Betacam machines require an option board to be fitted to allow them to play back analogue Betacam SP tapes.’

Ray Lee added the following information on the Facebook group: ‘from a maintenance point of view the D3’s needed a lot of expensive equipment for rotary head replacement, so all machines were dealt with in London, whereas the Digital Betacam were much more straightforward, didn’t need so much equipment and we replaced the heads locally at Pebble Mill. One reason digital Betacam was shunned initially is that the system employed a kind of signal compression. Although few real signals would ever trigger the compression, it was felt better to use a non compressed format. However as standard betacam gained widespread use in News, and the component editing was already gaining acceptance, Digital Betacam was a natural extension, and the machines could even play the analogue tapes. In fact it was a simple matter to substitute Digital Betacam machines into an analogue edit suite, as most of the existing wiring could serve for both.’

Sound Effects Disc – ‘In A Provincial Town’

This BBC Sound Effects Disc was given to Peter Poole when he left Pebble Mill and moved to the O.U.P.C., Milton Keynes.

Sound effects tracks, like the ones on this record were used as background atmosphere on many location based television shows, they were added on in the dub, and helped smooth out differences in background audio.

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

Pete Simpkin: ‘The cue-ing up was interesting, there was a blip of tone just before the start of an effect and you stopped the disc on prefade as soon as you had heard this. Was fascinating to hear on live news programmes the occasional ‘beep’ in the background from one of the grams which had slipped or been miscued in the rush to do live on air effects!’

Peter Greenhalgh: ‘Ahh, Prov Town. I used to use that a lot when editing mute news rushes. In fact I think its still used today and exists on our Quantel server. City Skyline was another useful one, although you have to avoid overusing the bus that went past at one point as people started recognising it….’

Macbeth on the Estate – TX card

Thanks to costume designer, Janice Rider, for making this transmission card available.

Macbeth on the Estate was recorded on the Ladywood Estate, in Birmingham. The modern day adaptation of Shakespeare’s play went out on BBC 2 in 1997. The film was adapted and directed by Penny Woolcock, produced by Alison Gilby, with executive producer, Julian Murphy. Graham Smith did the photography; John Dinwoodie, the editing; with music by David Wilson. John Ellis was the production designer.

The film starred: James Frain, Susan Vidler, David Harewood, Andrew Tiernan, Jo Dow, and Ray Winstone.

Studio Operations (Part 1) – Ray Lee

Studio A lighting gantry 1975, by Jim Gregory

Studio A production gallery 1971, by Ivor Williams

Staff

I joined studio operations (as part of the operations engineers “merry go round”) around July 1974. For some historical reason by that stage Studio A was entirely staffed by operations engineers 3 in the gallery and 3 in TAR, whereas Studio B only the gallery was (1 or 2 engineers), the TAR staffing being done by Comms & Engineering services staff. I suspect it was largely due to power struggles / empire building by managers on the 3rd floor trying to justify their existence. At that time Bill Berry was in charge of operations engineers as Ops Organiser, a position which a little later (1976?) John Lannin took on. The Manager Comms. & engineering services at that time was Tony Pilgrim, who in later years was replaced by Doug Taylor, and later still Frank Stevens in the early 1980’s.

Studio operations staff also rotated onto CMCR9 to staff the O.B.s although it was only a sub group who for reasons explained later were often referred to as the Mafia. The staff who at that time crewed both studio’s an O.B.’s were John Bradley, John Moore, Ron Pickering, Steve Searley, Ray Sperry, Jim Cleland, John Abbot, Elson Godbolt. John Allison was the VCMS for the scanner, and Peter Hodges and Mike Lee the VCMS (Vision Control and Maintenance Supervisor) for Studio A. In theory all 3 VCMS’s could work on the scanner, or in the studio, but in practice Peter and Mike, apart from a brief stint, stayed largely in the studio. Peter had only been appointed VCMS in early 1974, so was quite new in the job when I started working with the Studio A crew. The other Studio A engineers included myself, Dave White (who later moved to Norwich), Dennis Kiddy, John Kimberly, Peter Wood-Fisher, Ian Dewar, and Brian Jones (who did go out on O.B.s’ later- I think he was the first to break in to the select group). There may have been others, and the staff movements were fairly fluid at that time around the studios, VT and TK, although there was no real movement with regard to scanner crewing until around 1977. Jim Howarth was basically the engineer for Studio B gallery, (I don’t recall Jim ever working anywhere other than Studio B) aided by one of the other ops engineers on his days off, and Pebble Mill at One Days. Jim Howarth could very often be found in the club bar, sometimes with only minutes to go to transmission, but always seemed to manage to turn up just in time!

Ray Lee

Update on CMCR9

This article from the BBC retirees’ magazine, Prospero, by Jerry Clegg gives an update on the OB scanner CMCR9 – Pebble Mill’s original CM1, and later Manchester’s North 3.

The scanner will be on display several more times this year, in case you would like to visit it, see the article for the details.