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The Voice of the Balls

Published 12th April 2024

TV Presentation

Saturday the 12th April, 2014. I’m sitting in NC1, BBC One’s transmission suite. I’m not yet fully running things by myself; I’m still training. And one thing I’m still learning is how to safely and effectively transmit a live show on the channel.

Such as: The National Lottery. Specifically, the first episode of a new series of In It to Win It.

In It to Win It is a perfect example of why the idea of a “live” show can be more complicated than many might think. All the quiz section of the programme with Dale Winton was pre-recorded, but the lottery draw itself hosted by Kate Garraway is live. And yet in NC1, I wasn’t involved in cutting between the live and pre-recorded sections; as far as I was concerned, it was packaged up to me by production as a complete live show, coming in down the line like any other live programme.1

And as it was a live programme, that meant: talking to the programme’s PA, to go through all the details about that evening’s broadcast. Nothing is left to chance with these things. Of course we talk about some of the obvious things: crucial information like exactly what time they’re on air, and the duration of the show. We also do a clock check to make sure we both agree what the actual time is. (Yes, sometimes that is wrong.)

But we also need to know some less-obvious things, such as how the programme starts. This is crucial for a number of reasons. Firstly, it helps presentation choose the correct visual transition into the programme: “Oooh, that title sequence would probably look nice with a 10 frame mix.” It means you can check that what the continuity announcer is going to say makes sense into the start of the show. It also means you can make sure the production is cued up on the right thing a couple of minutes before air.

So, about half an hour before the live transmission, I buzz through to the The National Lottery PA over talkback. I’m a little nervous; I still haven’t done loads of live shows on the BBC yet. Not to worry – tonight the PA is very friendly, as they always were on the lottery shows. She says she doesn’t recognise my voice; I reply that I’m a new channel director, and I’m training today. We do most of our checks, and say goodbye for now.

A while later, she asks me if I’d like to see their rehearsal of the start of the show. This is common practice; I’ll often watch the rehearsals down the line to make sure all is OK with sound and vision. I agree, and turn the volume up on the incoming line.

In It to Win It‘s opening is a little complicated anyway; all the Dale Winton stuff at the top is pre-recorded, but Alan Dedicoat’s voiceover at the top is actually live. After all, he’s got to voice the lottery numbers later on, so why not do it live?

Below is the entire show on that particular day, as transmitted. “Now please welcome your host – it’s Dale Winton!”

But that’s not what Alan said at the top of the show during rehearsal. Because that production wanted to do something special for me, as I was new. Instead, he uttered the immortal words:

“Now please welcome your host – it’s John from Presentation!”

In my ten years of directing the BBC channels, it remains one of the nicest, kindest things anybody has ever done for me. Going out of their way to do something like that, just because they knew I’d get a kick out of it.

It made me feel part of something special. And I’ve never forgotten it.

  1. This leads to a dichotomy between how some people at home consider things, and how you think of it in presentation. For the educated viewer, they may feel very pleased with themselves that they’ve figured out that part of any given show is live, and part isn’t. But in NC1, for practical purposes, all of that programme is probably considered to be live. What matters most to the channel director is how the programme gets into NC1, not whether all the action is literally happening at that moment or not. ↩

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Commonness.

Published 3rd March 2024

Life / TV Presentation

Michael Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (2003):

“Walt Disney’s Snow White has virtues – of kindness and compassion and maternal love – that the Queen never had; she will win a victory of some sort over age, with a beauty of spirit if not of the flesh. Disney thus introduced a note of hope and love into a very stark, elemental story, without violating that story’s basic structure. To do that, he had to deal directly with emotions that most of us are reluctant to express, lest we be embarrassed by their very commonness.”

Those emotions are at their height, of course, in the scene where the Dwarfs mourn Snow White’s apparent death near the very end of the film.

Barrier goes on to quote I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism (1929):

“…these thoughts and feelings, in part because of their significance and their nearness to us, are peculiarly difficult to express without faults of tone. If we are forced to express them we can hardly escape pitching them in a key which ‘overdoes’ them, or we take refuge in an elliptic mode of utterance hinting them rather than rendering them to avoid offence either to others or to ourselves.”

*   *   *

Today marks ten years since I started my job in BBC presentation. Ten years of directing BBC One and BBC Two, among the BBC’s other domestic channels.

And I think back to my Dad. He died thirty years ago, in 1994. I was just 13. We were just beginning to have the vague stirrings of an adult-adult relationship… and then he was gone. We never truly got to know each other.

But he loved television. I remember him watching, long into the evening, well into the night. And I really, really hope he would have been proud of me.

The specifics might be different, but such feelings are common. They are embarrassingly common, exactly as Barrier describes. You can’t help but wish you had a more original thought. But some of our most important thoughts are some of the least original things in the world.

Such as: thirty years on, I still miss him.

An early version of this post was first published in the January issue of my monthly newsletter.

The Red Dwarf

Published 27th August 2023

TV Comedy / TV Presentation

On the 15th February 1988, the first episode of Red Dwarf aired on BBC2. I had no idea about it.

On the 7th January 1994, the first episode of Red Dwarf aired on BBC2 for the second time. I became obsessed with it.

On the 25th August 2023, the first episode of Red Dwarf aired on BBC2 for the seventh time.1 I prepped it for TX.

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  1. I usually write BBC2 for the channel pre-1997, and BBC Two for the channel post-1997, as per the branding guidelines. But that got really irritating swapping between the two with this article, so I’ve stuck to BBC2 for everything here. ↩

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Presents.

Published 24th August 2023

Film / TV Presentation

“I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper.”

— Greta Gerwig, in conversation with Noreen Malone

I love the above quote. I love it partly because I’ve spent years trying to explain why I think title sequences and fonts and all that shit are important, and Greta manages to explain why in fifteen words. And not just with films. No more will I be at a loss to explain why that sitcom should have a proper title sequence, thank you very much. The channel shouldn’t rip off the wrapping paper for you, just because it saves a bit of time.

For that matter, it’s also why radio shows should start with a lovely sung jingle.

But I love it for more than that. The idea that what you make as a creative person is a present to your audience is such a simple, obvious idea, but it’s one which is so easy to forget. We can get lost in a spiral of grumpiness, annoyed that things don’t work, annoyed that the process is such a damn pain.

But the above makes it all worthwhile. You’re making a present. For millions of people, for just a few, perhaps even only for yourself, it doesn’t matter. In the fog of pain, it’s something to grab onto.

A present. The simplest, nicest gesture in the world.

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Design.

Published 12th August 2023

TV Presentation

Recently, I enjoyed reading a piece by Cabel Sasser, “Fantasy Meets Reality”, on how so much design doesn’t really quite work in the real world. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, and he gives a number of fascinating examples. My personal favourite is the curved wall that caused so many injuries as people tried to climb up the damn thing, that eventually some brand new seating was placed at the base in order to stop people trying.

Cabel continues:

“But honestly, a lot of it, I think, is just that some designers are amazing at imagining things, but not as amazing at imagining them surrounded by the universe. That beautiful thing you’re working on, it lives in a window on your monitor tucked under a title bar, and that’s as tricky as it gets. What if you can’t imagine your thing in its final context? What if you aren’t great at predicting human behaviors other than your own? What if you push a worst-case scenario out of your mind because you like your idea so much that it’s “at least worth trying”? (I’ve done this!) Maybe you’ve forgotten how you would goof around with your friends to make them laugh way back when. Or maybe, a little bit sadly, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to experience the world as a kid. Not everyone will, or can, have these skills.

It almost seems like there’s a real job here for the right type of person. “Real World Engineer”? Unfortunately, the closest thing most companies currently have is ‘lawyer’.”

John Gruber, in reponse:

“Design is for humans, and needs to account for how people do behave, not how they should.”

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Loss.

Published 12th June 2023

Life / TV Comedy / TV Presentation

A couple of years ago, I had a great idea. In the BBC’s centennial year, I wanted to write a diary of the BBC presentation department. Capturing not only what we did, but what it felt like. The nuts and bolts of putting together reactive linear television at the coalface, no holds barred. All the great things about it, and all the awful things too. Oh, not for publication now, you understand. Or even in 10 years. At least 30, probably more. But there would have been no more worthwhile thing I could have done in 2022.

I failed. I never even started it.

It wasn’t laziness. I did loads of writing last year; over 50k words here on Dirty Feed. But I can’t do my fairly stressful job all day, and then go home and write it all up. Nor can I use my days off to do it either. My brain desperately needs to think of something else. I can put on Eurovision, and then go home and write about Fawlty Towers. But I can’t put on Eurovision, and then go home and write about putting on Eurovision. A few vague tweets is the best I can do.

All of which makes me sad. Because I mean it: there really is no better thing I could have done with my time last year. For all the fun stuff I published on here, that pres diary would have been far more useful. In decades to come, capturing what we did in our corner of the BBC to make everything work on air would be an amazing thing to have. But it was impossible to write. For me, at least.

Oh well. Sorry.

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BBC100: Epilogue

Published 22nd April 2023

Meta / TV Presentation

Right at the beginning of this project, I gave a bit of context about who these pieces were originally written for. It’s worth adding a bit more clarity to this: it wasn’t actually for the BBC themselves, but rather one of their many service providers.1

But the end result is the same: it was meant to be read by fellow colleagues in the broadcast industry, rather than archive TV nerds. Of course there are some who are both, including yours truly. But I couldn’t assume a huge level of knowledge about the intricacies of old television. Indeed, I couldn’t really assume that everybody reading it was in the United Kingdom.

With that in mind, here’s what I wrote as my introduction to this set of articles, when it was originally published.2

Working in television sometimes requires a special kind of double thinking. It’s both extremely important, and not important at all.

Take a typical Sunday night, when I sit down to direct a busy shift on BBC One. Firstly: there can be millions of viewers watching, so you’d better get it right. Secondly: thinking about that too much will make you so nervous that you can’t actually talk, let alone direct a television channel. For that reason, during huge events like a recent overrunning FA Cup Final, there were only a few people watching in my head… and they were all sitting right next to me. I’ll only think of the rest of the country on the train ride home, thanks.

And yet there is something special about sitting in BBC One’s pres suite, known as NC1. You are essentially transmitting a service which has run uninterrupted since 1946, when television returned to the UK after the Second World War. That’s over 75 years of continuous service. The weight of history occasionally hits you when you sit in that chair, whether you’re broadcasting the latest events from Ukraine, or Homes Under the Hammer.

NC2 is different, of course. BBC2 was launched in 1964, so that’s nearly 60 years. A mere drop in the ocean.

Of course, the BBC is even older than the above would suggest, when you take into account pre-war television broadcasting, and the early days of radio. In fact, 2022 is the BBC’s centenary year. And while I might try and ignore the BBC’s long history during stressful moments of directing, it’s nice to recognise it in some way here.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at some of my favourite programmes the BBC has made over the last few decades. Some of them are still well-known; others are less so. All of them mean a great deal to me, and stand as the reason why I’m proud to be a tiny part of this particular thread of history.

Because none of these programmes would have been seen by the nation, without people doing jobs like ours. And whatever part of the industry we work in, the same is still true today.

Reading it back, it does somewhat seem to be a rallying cry, doesn’t it?

But I post that introduction here because I want you to know. That despite the nonsense that inevitably happens, despite how stressful things get… there are people there who understand that when you’re in that chair, you’re part of something which stretches back over the decades. That your job is, as far as humanely possible, to protect something important.

And if that comes across as vaguely pompus, I’ll choose it over not giving a damn.

  1. This isn’t a secret. ↩

  2. Lightly edited to remove a specific detail. ↩

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Savage Garden Cuttings

Published 7th February 2023

TV Presentation

One of the joys of researching The Young Ones and flash frames is scouring through people’s old tapes. And sometimes, you find something just too good not to share. Last time, it was an ad-break from a 1984 episode of Spitting Image.

This time? A three minute trail shown in April 2001 on UK Gold, just after a showing of the Young Ones episode “Cash”.

I can’t in all honesty say that “To the Moon and Back” is one of my favourite songs.1 But it works in the context of the above trail, which is really rather wonderfully put together. The mix at 0:47 is particularly effective.

It’s also a reminder that the television of the late 90s/early 00s really does have a distinctive look about it now, entirely distinct from how TV looks today. A certain kind of film stock and transfer, with of course our obligatory 14:9 letterbox.

Anyway, I thought it was something worth sharing, from a time when UK Gold had some absolutely spectacular trails. I really do love it when a channel goes all out and uses virtually the entire length of a song to do something fun, rather than always chopping it down to 30 seconds. It occasionally happens today. But nowhere near enough.

Although maybe I just love that trail purely with my professional, TV channel director hat on. Seriously, do you know how useful three minute trails are, when a live programme finishes unexpectedly early? It can help get you out of a whole world of shit, believe me.

With many thanks to Dan Tootill for digging out this recording. Dirty Feed relies on many people providing access to their old off-airs for research, and I’m absurdly grateful.

  1. I did have a Savage Garden phase c. 1998, and believe it or not, that is not a euphemism. I wanted to make it look like I had cool music to listen to when I was feeling down. There are at least three things wrong with that sentence, and I have no justification for any of them. ↩