Category: Regional

Chris Phipps & Janice Rider at Kaleidoscope Event

Photo from Janice Rider, no reproduction without permission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to costume designer, Janice Rider, for sharing this photo, of her with Chris Phipps, taken at the archive organisation, Kaleidoscope’s event on Sept 2nd 2017.

“I attended an interesting talk last week at a Kaleidoscope Event held at Birmingham City University – an interview with my old friend and colleague Chris Phipps, former Radio WM broadcaster and presenter of Look! Hear! and later the booker for bands on The Tube and producer for Zenith North. Lovely to discover his passion for music is undimmed – he has just worked on a documentary about Black Sabbath’s last performance and is publishing a book next year.”

Janice Rider

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Trail for Look! Hear! and News intro

https://www.facebook.com/AlastairYates.media.adhd/videos/693130690707859/

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

This, circa 1978, video includes a trail for the regional music show, Look! Hear!, and Midlands Today presenter, Alastair Yates, introducing the national 6pm News.

Chris Phipps trails Look! Hear!

 

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Alastair Yates on Midlands News

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

A Midlands News broadcast, presented by Alastair Yates, from 1979. Alastair left Pebble Mill for Grampian in 1980. The broadcast had been recorded by Chris Howles on a Philips N1700 format tape, and donated to TVArk.

The prompter seems not to be working at the beginning of the broadcast, with Alastair doing a wonderful job of reading off the script, whilst looking up from time to time. The cartoon over the weather seems very odd, and then the prompter seems to be working properly after that. The news seems to consist of a litany of crime, followed by a list of what’s on in every single theatre in the region! This was one of the last ‘closedown’ broadcasts to be done from the Midlands, due to an economy drive! Nothing new about BBC cut-backs!

Thanks to Chris Howles for bringing the clip to my attention.

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

Bryan Sharpe: ‘Alastair gave me my first insight into radio.. when he used to be AL KAY at BBC Radio Derby… in 1974… I was 12ish and later went on to work at Radio Derby then onto work at Pebble Mill and eventually as senior director at BBC Nottingham… thanks AL!!’

Malcolm Hickman: ‘Haven’t I seen Alastair on BBC World?’

Jonathan Dick: ‘Alastair was indeed a presenter on BBC World, where I had the pleasure of directing him on many occasions.’

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First digi-prompt

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

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This photo shows Barbara Steele operating the first news digi-prompt machine at Pebble Mill, circa 1990.

This photo was originally posted on the Pebble Mill Engineers’ Facebook page, thanks to Stuart Gandy for allowing it to be shared here.

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

Keith Warrender: Autocue prior to this was generally known as the loo roll. It was manually typed with approximately three or four words per line and was hand cranked along to the speed the presenter needed to speak. They saw a magnified monitor below the camera. It was exciting if an item was dropped due to time or for a more important news story and frantic scrolling was required to go to the next news item. Corrections to Autocue were made with sellotape and scissors!

Mary Sanchez: Yes lovely Barbara… saw her recently and she’s still looking the same! So glamorous! She does not age! On the digi front – I worked on it in the 80’s when first started at Pebble Mill ( Daytime Live-Pamela Armstrong show)and yes indeed we typed about 2 words to a line in some loo roll looking paper and while on air if there were any changes we wrote them in manually and if there were any major cuts we literally cut out the paragraph and stuck it back together with sellotape during a VT!!! Hilarious! Happy manic memories! It’s very different these days in our Midlands Today newsroom!

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Broad Street News Studio Gallery

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These photographs show the news studio gallery at Broad Street in the 1960s. In the second photograph you can see into the studio, through the window. The man in the white shirt is a young Jim Dumighan.

These photographs were originally posted on the Pebble Mill Engineers Facebook group. Thanks to Stuart Gandy for allowing them to be shared.

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

Colin Pierpoint: ‘I did a short time in there. I didn’t do much except change a few caption cards in the studio, and I was on tape and grams at least once. The Director asked me for a particular sound effect, so I went to the F/X disc library to get one. When I returned I incurred the Director’s wrath for not being at my post when they had done a rehearsal! (In fact, I had left the tape machine on remote so the sound supervisor could start it). Photo 1: Sam Shaw standing at the back. I think the tape and grams operator may be Ant (Anthony) Astley.

Gordon Astley: ‘I used to work where the guy, back left in the first pic is, playing in sound fx on disc.’

 

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