Category: Television

More spooky goings on at Pebble Mill – Kath Shuttleworth

Kath Shuttleworth with Johnny Ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many tales of spooky goings on at Pebble Mill. I too had a slightly unexplainable experience in Studio 3. Whilst staying late one evening to prep some SFX I was working in the cubicle and the lights on the studio floor were off. I heard the sound of the studio door open as if being picked up via one of the mics and coming out of the speakers. I assumed it was security doing their checks but when I looked at the desk there were no mics faded up. Strange I thought and carried on working. I was at the back of the cubicle and several times turned round suddenly as I could have sworn someone came in through the door at the back. At this point I thought this was all getting a bit weird but put it down to being tired and went home.

The next day I mentioned this to a colleague who wasn’t surprised to hear my tale and told me more tales of mysterious moving props, rearranged furniture and similar bizarre goings on. A few months later another of my colleagues also had a weird experience of strange things happening with CD players and unexplained sounds coming from the speakers.

Before we left Pebble Mill we did a piece for Halloween for Late Night Currie. The programme was broadcast from the Mailbox but we still had the ISDN facilities in Studio 5 at the Mill so we did a little OB from there. We had various psychics and ghost hunters in studio 3 at Pebble Mill trying to fathom out all these ghostly tales and see if there was anything there!

After the TX the ghost hunting team said they’d love to do an all night ghost watch before the building was demolished. So we did! It was all very spooky and there were certainly some cold spots and unexplained feelings around Studio 3 and some of the basement areas.

I do have a copy of the report but it is not conclusive as to paranormal activity. All I know is that there are certainly some good tales of spooky goings on and having experienced something bizarre myself I have to admit I’m not quite as sceptical about ghosts as I once was!

Kath Shuttleworth

Sourcing Clothes for Presenters – Janice Rider

Specially shot interview with costume designer Janice Rider, talking about sourcing clothes for television presenters. Janice mentions the challenges of finding a suitable outdoor jacket for wildlife cameraman and presenter, Simon King.

Simon King, photo by Gail Herbert

New Year Opt-Out – Peter Poole

Peter Poole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission.

This programme was probably broadcast sometime in the 1990’s. I think it may have been to celebrate the start of Birmingham City of Music or some other event. This programme was not listed in The Radio Times or any other TV listings. Viewers watching BBC1 Midlands at midnight would have expected to see Big Ben ringing in the new year. The normal London epic was replaced with a live OB from Birmingham city centre. I was the studio sound supervisor and the studio presenter was probably Sue Beardsmore. I wish I could remember the rest of team. The OB unit was the News Rover with 2 cameras. A camera was placed on Pebble Mill’s roof to give views of the city skyline. The programme was on air for about 15 minutes. If anyone worked on this I would welcome their comments.
Peter Poole

David Stevens, Midlands Today and the self opt

This blog is made up from comments from various contributors on the Pebble Mill Facebook page.

‘David was one of a team of Announcers who in the 70s became both TV and Radio broadcasters reading the radio and TV bulletins and also operating the local TV continuity desks. For a glorious time in the 70s all the Regions had one of these self operated desks, originally placed in the news studios but eventually in their own little cubby hole but using a studio camera wheeled into place after the regional news programme had finished. They shadowed the London announcers doing their own sound and vision mixing ……in vision…… and could call up captions, slides and even telecine.  So the entire evening looked as if it were coming from Pebble Mill. The team consisted of David, Guy Thomas and others and seemed to be a great success.’ (Pete Simpkin)

‘David was always a delight to work with. Many years ago when BBC 1 closed down at the end of the day’s broadcast the Regions would opt out to say goodnight. David was famous for these opt outs and would often show photos from local photographic clubs. One time this opt out carried on after the other had Regions had closed down. The transmitters had a system called RBS. If the line feed failed, the RBS would rebroadcast an off signal, signal from the nearest transmitter. This resulted in all the transmitters switching back on and broadcasting David across the UK!’ (Peter Poole)

‘On the subject of RBS, assuming the tx’s of that era weren’t still being shut off manually at the end of the day (it’s quite possible that the main stations were still manned during operational hours in those days). It would likely be that only stations north of Sutton would carry this extended programme, as the RBS system was designed to work from London outwards it would be unlikely that any transmitters south of Birmingham would’ve stayed on as they would be RBSing from sites in the south, which would likely to have been fed from different regions. The network was strictly one way, a fully meshed configuration would have been a nightmare.’ (Andy Marriott)

‘As an engineer in the Communications Centre on the late shift, I would see David come in around 23:30 and load all his slides from local photographers into the slide scanner for his closedown news bulletin. Depending on how many slides he loaded determined how late we would have to stay!

We would do checks with him from the self op desk to make sure his mic and camera were working ok and then ‘opt him in’ (that is, change the route of BBC 1 Network (from London) from going directly to the transmitters to going via his self opt desk so that when he was cued via Network t/b, he could switch his own output to the transmitters instead of that from London Network)….sometimes there were a lot of slides!
When he had finished, we could put the Network feed back to the transmitters and go home.’ (Brian Johnson)

Contributions from Peter Poole, Pete Simpkin, Andy Marriott and Brian Johnson, and photo supplied by Annie Gumbley Williams