Dave Buckley

When I started at the Beeb in 1963, (and was working in the preview film theatres at TFS) I remember a film editor coming in with an episode of “Maigret” as a TR. He commented that there was a requirement that there was a fade to black after the titles to allow for an advert break.

Similarly, when in Australia a few years ago, I watched episode of “Bewitched” where there were ad breaks halfway through the title sequence – very off putting.

Trevor Webster

Around that time (1963/1964), I was gram op on “Maigret” (following on from John Delaney who did the first lot quite beautifully).  This was at a time when we were still playing-in the music to the actors’ timing, which could be variable, but that’s another story.  The incidental music cues (as well as the theme) were written by the late great Ron Grainer (an Australian, of course) and we recorded them in a music studio at Maida Vale a few days before the Television Centre Studio days.  We were required to make commercial breaks in the programmes for foreign sales – the only production required to do this as far as I know – so about three of four times we faded to black at the end of a scene and stopped recording.  Ron wrote a ‘fade-out music’ cue to match vision fade. 

We used these breaks for changing sets or costumes or for moving actors to a different set etc, and they were useful times for ‘taking stock’. When we restarted it was with a vision fade-up and Ron’s ‘fade-up music’.  For domestic transmission, the two pieces of music were cut together with the pictures and came out as one piece. 

After all this trouble, one of our number came back from holiday (Canada I think) where he had seen one of the episodes.  He said that they didn’t take any notice of the breaks we had carefully inserted, they just put in breaks wherever they wanted – and frequently!

John Hays

As a boom op I worked on many episodes of “Maigret” and Trevor’s reminiscences of the programme reminded me that Rupert Davies – who allegedly liked his pint = called his new retirement home in Wales Pystill!

Geoff Fletcher

On the afternoon of my very first day at TC after my week long induction course, I was put on Crew 4 who were working on an episode of “Maigret”. The scene in rehearsal as I entered the studio was a fight in a cabin on a barge between Ewan Solon and a villain. It was on a raised set and Ewan had the guy held down over a desk or table which was in danger of toppling off the set. A harassed looking young female AFM and a scene man were holding grimly onto the table legs out of shot to prevent this from happening, as I recall. Funny how things stick in the memory. When there was a pause in the action I was introduced to Reg Poulter and then handed over to Mike Harrison for my initial six weeks on cameras. This was on Monday 28 October 1963 and we finished at 22:15. It was the first day of a two day shoot and we continued on the Tuesday starting at 11:00. After the main recording in the evening we did a trailer for Canada. 

Alasdair Lawrance

Until recently, I had forgotten what a pain commercial breaks are, particularly if you’re watching a feature film.  Starts off with fairly long gaps between breaks and by the time you’re near the denouement, they seem to be every 5 minutes. It makes any tension a Director was trying to make a complete waste of time.

Mike Jordan

The commercials situation is why so many now choose to  have some sort of video recording receiver (Freesat or Freeview) so they can record (or use “live pause”) the regular programmes to enable spooling through breaks. I know the advertisers are getting very worried about this trend.

The way it is going, one will soon have to start doing the same on BBC as the adverts (sorry “trails”) seem to be getting longer and longer and the start time of the actual programme is either much later than listed, or starts earlier to grab people and co-incidentally miss the start of a recording if no “early start/late end” setting is set up on the recorder.

Pat Heigham

I did hear once that writers quite like the ‘breaks’ as it allows several ‘cliffhanger’ moments to be engineered.

However, a worrying trend is to directly cut to an advert which resembles a new scene in the play one is watching – no channel ID beforehand. I’m told by a colleague who regularly visits the USA that this seems to be standard practice over there.

Alec Bray

When I visited the USA for work, I would not watch TV – the ad breaks were horrendous.  “Star Trek” for example: come to the end of the action (where the cast all smile, of course) – ad break – then the credits!  

Peter Neill

I remember, back in the 1960s,  that “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” had ad breaks built in – to the extent that they appeared in the running order. I remarked on this to a writer friend only a few weeks ago and said that it was not uncommon, when writing for BBC dramas which had a good chance of being sold abroad, for ad breaks to be specified.

Alasdair :Lawrance

Ad breaks are fine if the writer(s) know about them, as in most soaps, for example. It’s when the programme material wasn’t constructed that way that I object.

I watched "The Beiderbecke Tapes" not long ago on DVD and it was obvious where the breaks were supposed to go, and a fade to black and up again made perfect sense