Mike Jordan
I recently picked up a copy of his ”Life on Air” book. Amazing stories and some very topical photos for the Tech Ops group.
The TVC studio opening in 625 is particularly poignant.
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1. Outside the world’s first television studios at Alexandra Palace, with one of its early cameras. The photograph was taken in 1936, but the studios, the camera and the transmitting aerial were still there and operational in 1952.
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4. Inside one of the two studios in Alexandra Palace during a live programme. The cameraman focuses his optical viewfinder while the studio manager, eyes on script and taking instruction from the producer through his headphones, prepares to cue the speaker.
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52. The Tribal Eye team, having discarded their European clothes, are allowed to film in the anti-European village of Makaruka in the Solomons.
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8. Recording a frog chorus in Sierra Leone on our first portable battery-driven recorder. With one hand holding a torch to keep check on recording levels, the other had to hold both the speaker to the ear and the large microphone. Smoking a cigarette may or may not have kept away mosquitoes but certainly complicated the procedure.
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63. The new managerial team at BBC Television in March 1965, inspecting the first 625-line BBC2 studio in the Television Centre: Huw Wheldon, flanked by Michael Peacock, Controller BBC1, and the newly appointed Controller of BBC2.
Just to prove that “W1A” (BBC2 2015) is not a new concept, I can quote from David Attenborough’s book. This bit is where he gets the job as Controller BBC2 (very slightly amended to save space …):
“… Administrators have their perks. The sixth floor (of TC) was the heartland of BBC Administrators and thus very properly full of perks. I was offered one on my first day. I could choose my own desk. Mine seemed OK so I declined but a catalogue of desks was left with me. After 3 askings, I realised that one of the perks was a new desk so this one could move down a rung. The first letter I dictated came back typed on what looked like child’s notepaper. The top left carried a cartoon in bright yellow outlined in black of a kangaroo with a small joey peering out of its pouch. I asked what this was and was told it was Hullabaloo and Custard. Some demented PR guru had decreed that these characters were to be the network’s symbol and used on all publicity and promotions. Hullabaloo so-called because that was just what the network would create and Custard because – well that was just fun. My first executive decision was to banish Hullabaloo and Custard for ever!…”
