Hugh Sheppard

One of the great things about the BBC, as the old-lags knew it, was the attachment scheme. It facilitated up to 6 months working in another department whereby attachees soon learned that the grass in not always greener elsewhere. I can recall how my own built up resentments within tech-ops soon dissipated, not least when in traffic jams or on crowded trains to meet the demands of office-based schedules, as compared with the halcyon days of ‘working’ irregular hours or on the AP shift. And now? Just that I am grateful that the memory bank provides compound interest in recalling the satisfactions of those early studio days.

Dave Plowman

In ITV, if we worked on either of our ‘notional’ weekend days, we got paid overtime. Didn’t the same apply at the BBC after I’d left in 1976?

David Denness

Just to clarify,’ Notional’ Weekend Days were the sixth and seventh days of your working week which were set 28 days in advance so it was only in emergencies or during exceptional heavy work periods that these were worked.

It also wasn’t called overtime in the ACTT/ITCA ‘White Book’ which set down all the agreement with the union, but ‘Penalty Payments’.  If the management could not arrange matters so you got two days off per week they deserved to be penalised.

Also some ITV companies guaranteed a certain number of 48 hour weekends off per year. I think London Weekend were the first to do this. (I personally thought that if you were joining a channel with the contract to televise only at weekends you should expect to be asked to work any weekend).

Dave Plowman

Agreements varied by company. And indeed within the same one.

At Teddington, we (in sound) worked the same sort of roster as at TC.  Generally 4 working days, a day off, and a notional ‘weekend’, i.e. two days together – any two in the week and the working days totally irregular. As regards a penalty payment for working them, it was the same regardless of which actual day of the week it fell on.  Working an off day was paid at 1.5T, a notional at 2T.

Thames Euston studios and OBs always had Saturday and Sunday as their ‘weekend’.

The LWT arrangement may have seemed odd – but of course with programmes being made throughout the week too may have worked ok in practice.

Really, it’s not easy to make judgements about any shift pattern without actually working it.