Grandstand titles

Grandstand Titles 1960-ish

Tony Grant

Memories of David Coleman and “Grandstand” in studio E.

Mid-way through one Saturday afternoon, I’m on David’s camera (2?) and one of the studio cameras goes down. Think it was Brian Venner directing, however and whoever, but much chuntering on t/b about coping with three cameras. Engineers arrive on studio floor and start disembowelling said camera.

A few minutes later, another camera bites the dust, and chuntering turns into restrained, and louder, panic about what to move around and how to change from one shot to another, always going via David? I keep pointing at David, who maintains professional calm.

You’ve guessed it, some ten or so minutes later, the other camera goes down, leaving me with the only working studio camera. At this point there were so many people shouting over t/b that I simply turned it down and listened to what David said, zooming in and out of any results captions he held up. Fortunately, we only had two studio links like this before the engineers had two of the other cameras back up and running, with the fourth following about twenty minutes later.

Needless to say, David maintained his cool throughout, and I suspect he realised that I was simply following what he said and paying no attention to the headless chickens upstairs. When we came off the air, all I could hear over t/b was members of the production team in the gallery congratulating each other on how THEY’D handled the situation. Credit/s where credit/s is/are due?…….Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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see also cameras, mounts and cables

“Grandstand” in the 1960s came from studio G LG, a studio it shared with “Tonight”.  The studio cameras were the CPS Emitrons.

(Click on each of the four pictures below to see a larger or clearer version of the picture:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the newly opened picture.)

CPS Emitron, the teleprinter and David Coleman.

What Camera 3 was looking at:

And, of course, the manual Football Results panels:

Tut tut – the camera did not manage to get square onto this display!

And, as ever, the racing results …

These racing results could be superimposed over the OB – to the accompaniment of “establishing wide shot – on a fixed camera” screamed with imprecations from studio G gallery (as TVC (and LG) had to be genlocked to the OB for the superimpose).

“Grandstand” – Later titles with Winter and Summer variations.

                  (Click on each picture below to see a larger or clearer version of the picture:
                   Click the “X” button (top right) to close the newly opened picture.)