Geoff Hawkes
So what happens with the Greenwich Time Signal when the we’ve all gone over to DAB? Will we simply continue to receive it three seconds late and have to rely on Rugby and our radio controlled clocks to tell the correct time? Perhaps the ever inventive BBC engineers will find a way of sending it out three seconds early, or will add the announcement, "On the third pip it will be __ o’clock precisely," like good old TIM, if he’s still alive…
Mike Jordan
Except the radio time signal to clocks isn’t sent from Rugby any more but from somewhere in the wilds “up north” which is why it isn’t as reliable as previously. Nor the negative pips sent to BH from originally Greenwich and then Herstmonceaux to be replaced by positive pips using the 1Kc/s tone specially sent from GPO Dollis Hill to BH.
I would guess that people nowadays rely on the time on their phone/laptop/tablet assuming that is connected to the interweb.
The old story of hearing Big Ben (the bell NOT the tower) earlier via radio than standing in Parliament Square is no use as so many “radio” sources are routed/coded differently.
My one trip up that tower was back in the 1960s, testing out the GPO line to BH and the standby line to BU and taking a walk from the BBC room at the bottom, up loads of winding (sic) stairs to the top to look at the bell and the view.
Geoffrey Hawkes
Nice story about the clock tower, and the mic in the clock tower which I think I was told was a good old "apple and biscuit". If I think hard enough I could probably remember the number from my time on Sound, fifty-odd years ago but am sure a flurry of ex-Sound guys will know it straight off.
The classic Mole Richardson boom mics I seem to remember were the 4033s and the ribbon ones were 4038s.
Tony Grant
I’ve had to climb the clock tower twice in the past, the first time (carrying Ike HL79D, sound recordist and sparks in attendance, rushing to get up before midday to get all the boings, gasp) would have been in the mid 1980s and there was an apple and biscuit mic up there. I was assured that it was the BBC feed, so have no reason to doubt it, and yes, they also used old pennies to finely adjust the mechanism.
I can’t remember what the story was either time, but the second time wasn’t as hurried. I can also confirm that it’s VERY LOUD, no make that VERY, VERY LOUD when it chimes and you’re standing beside it trying to hold a camera.
Bill Jenkin
“…Somewhere in the wilds “up north”…” would be Anthorn in Cumbria. It’s surprising how often it’s off air, which I discovered on return from holiday once and my alarm clock wouldn’t sync up.
Keith Wicks
Anthorn is not off-air as often as is suggested — at least, not according to their own publicity! However, it’s alarming to see that, in addition to their forecast maintenance breaks of up to 4 hours each, there is normally a 2-day break every year.
Tony Crake
As far as I know the MSF signal is transmitted on 60kc/s from Anthorn for "free". The antenna is NOT a huge job and is sharing with "other" major services.
If they need servicing I expect the whole lot have to be "switched off"! The original masts were erected in ( I think ) 1962.
This shipping container, possibly is it!
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Terry Meadowcroft
If things are the way they were when I worked at Bush House in the nineteen-sixties, the pips are inserted at source (on the network continuity desk, by a locking switch in the same way we inserted Big Ben), and the feed to the digital channels would have to be fed independently elsewhere with the ‘3 seconds early’ pips. I believe the pips were supplied from somewhere, can’t remember where, and were a continuous tone, suppressed except at the appropriate moments, from that somewhere, so they could not be altered to ‘early’. (I guess the ‘suppression’ method gave a cleaner start and finish to each pip).
In any case, the delay in all receivers can be widely different according to the receiver.
Bravo to radio controlled clocks and watches. I won’t have anything else. As long as Ofcom don’t get involved in its running it’s great and reliable.
On the subject of those clocks, the best I have found, with sweep seconds and completely silent, is a plainly designed German wall clock, type TFA, and you can choose whether to get one fed by MSF from the Anthorn Radio Station in Cumbria or its German equivalent if you don’t mind moving the hour hand back an hour! (I found that out because I mistakenly bought my first one from Amazon Germany after checking if they were cheaper from there – ah, the pitfalls of internet shopping!)
The switch to and from daylight saving time happens just the same on both transmitters but Germany is always an hour ahead of course.
Geoffrey Hawkes
I was interested to hear about these cunning tricks that the engineers devised to get the GTS timed perfectly.
I’m very fond of the radio controlled clocks and have several at home. I’ve tried to persuade the local Leisure Centre where I play badminton on Friday evenings to install them, as the clock in reception and the hall are never synched properly – which they should be for the change-over times when following or preceding other bookings,
Pat Heigham
The mic in the clock tower was a 4021.
The 4033 is also correct – a perfect cardioid pattern, being a mix of a dynamic moving coil, like the apple and biscuit and a figure of eight ribbon. In the late nineteen-sixties, from the TVT, we mounted an AKG C28 capacitor mic on a cradle below the 4033 in the boom – this gave a crisper sound, as well as rejecting PA spill from the theatre PA loudspeakers.
The 4038 was often used on brass, with a slip of cardboard tucked in the hinge, to modify the pick-up pattern.
Later, when the long reach Fisher booms were employed, the usual mic was the AKG D25, being much lighter than the 4033.
Regarding the open mic in the Big Ben tower, I heard a story, probably fake, when a radio programme came out a bit early – the continuity faded up the clock mic, and as there were workmen in the tower, they were heard to say: "Chuck us the hammer, Joe" – then “Bong!!”
Mike Bentine would have loved that one!
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Receivers differ from manufacturer to manufacturer in that the decoding circuit can vary as to the speed. Thus a bit pointless in advancing the pips/bongs at source.
What are our engineer friends doing about Big Ben being silenced for four years – presumably recordings played in. But who pushes the button at the right ‘time’?
I have two German made alarm clocks, which I believe receive the signals from Frankfurt.
Geoffrey Hawkes
I should’ve known that decoder rates would differ. Perhaps eventually they’ll get it down to milliseconds then no-one will care. Meanwhile it’s a case of pick your pip, depending on the speed of your radio. My Bose Wave is three seconds late so the third pip is "just right."
I still listen to Radio 4 mainly on FM and the lag is a bit annoying if I have the DAB one on at the same time in an adjacent room as when I want to hear the Daily Service at 9.45am in better quality than LW offers. That’s when I discovered that the network on DAB does its own split and you have to retune to a side channel, which like a secret door or Harry Potter’s platform nine and three-quarters only appears at the last minute. I have it stored on PV 5 but that reverts to the normal channel at the end of the programme and has to be selected again next time. Is the side channel used very often? I guess it’s a trick that was devised after you radio guys left?
There used to be a permanent feed of Big Ben in Pres B and I expect Pres A and NCs 1 and 2, which I’m sure Bernie could confirm. Between chimes and bongs you could hear the traffic noise in the street below. Anyone standing in Parliament Square today and hearing the bells would be imagining it.
Pres at TC also had a feed of the GTS at the throw of a Kellogg key and it was there on the quarter hour. Occasionally on Radio 4 today you can hear it on air at 9.15am if the announcer has forgotten to cancel it.
Bernie Newnham
Ah yes – the Jack Sudic practical joke. Connect Big Ben up to a channel on the Pres A sound desk and leave it open. Jack comes back, doesn’t notice until a very loud bong.
Dave Mundy
That was one of many practical jokes played on Jack by Dave Hedden and Crew 9 especially. The ‘whoopee’ cushion, the ‘green group fuse’, PPMs reading max. but no audible sound, and so on. Jack’s problem was that he never reacted to any of the japes, which made people even more determined to make him!
David Denness
You forgot the cross plugging of the group diverts on the sound desks, and also the insertion of the Ferrograph tape machine in the drawer into one of the groups to provide tape delay.
Geoff Hawkes
Poor old Jack, a real character he was as well. I remember him telling me that the key to winning an argument with Management or anyone else when the opposition is fierce and intimidating and many would crumble and give in, "The thing about standing your ground is to be right and to know you’re right, then it becomes easier." Good advice I thought,
Tony Grant
When I was A.P. in Pres (Bernie will recall) I had to deal with producing a 5 min. “Dr. Who” trail during a VT editors’ strike. However, the VT tape ops were not on strike, so I had access to 3 or 4 VT machines and 2 TKs, and we had to run them at the appropriate time and cut between them ( yes, I was doing my own mixing in the old Pres A). And Jack, bless him, provided fader perfect timing on all the inserts, and I think we managed a perfect take on the second run (Jack being spot on ALL the time). And he liked Jazz!
Thank goodness for all the characters from those days, whatever our or their perceived imperfections.
Tony Crake
Dave Hedden built a 15+kHz Sound Oscillator and fed it through a Leevers -Rich tape machine which had a direct/tape c/o switch …
Poor old Jack.. When Dave switched in on, all the PPMs shot hard over ! Jack took some time to react… obviously his hearing didn’t go up to 15K.
He called the Engineers in but Dave kept it muted till they had gone back to their hidey hole! We were in stitches! Jack kept tapping the PPMs!
However the oscillator was disabled for TX …. "I’m glad that instability in the desk went away" he said as the programme finished!
Dave Plowman
Re: his hearing didn’t go up to 15K…
Depending on when this was, could be the monitoring speaker didn’t either.
Philip Tyler
I remember the oscillator with a transducer fixed under the chair, which switched on when Jack sat in the chair and stopped when he stood up. It was fairly quiet just like tone induction.
Tony Crake
Was that another Dave Hedden invention?
Pat Heigham
As we had been chatting about Big Ben, there was a fascinating prog on Ch4 (12th November 2017), showing the work of the clock mechanics, prior to the shut down for repairs to the tower.
The presenter actually crawled inside the bell, helping to examine for cracks.
The mechanism is ages old and is difficult to repair while the clock is running – I wondered if it would be possible to move into the digital age and replace the four clock faces with large OLED screens, displaying a digital image of the iconic face design. The thing could then be controlled from one of the atomic clocks and would always be accurate. The striking mechanism could be electrically driven, so the bells would still sound! (But one couldn’t do a remake of the re-make of "The 39 Steps"!)
The programme presenter was quite fluent, but had a most irritating habit of waving her arms about far too much, like a demented windmill.
Mike Jordan
The waving presenter is as annoying as the “nodding head” used by almost all interviewers nowadays to cover the single camera “cutaways” to it looks as if they are interested in what is being said when the over-the-shoulder shot of the interviewee is cut in to cover the edits!
Not dissimilar to the “new look” “Antiques Road Show” which uses irrelevant cutaways to do the same job and of course the closeups (shot later – surely not!) on “Dickinson’s Real (sic) Deal” to talk about the items in detail – but not to cover his change of costume between items and going to auction – surely not because things are shot on different days?
John Howell
The OLED suggestion is interesting, I suppose if sponsored we would have to put up with their publicity screens occurring regularly.
For the sound side we could always employ a grams operator and use the system that existed in 1932 (picture below). I believe here was a similar setup at Marconi House in Tottenham Court Road.
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As for waving arms about my all time favourite is Magnus Pyke.
Vernon Dyer
I was going to mention Magnus Pyke! We did a science show with him at YTV in the 1970s – you couldn’t shoot him any closer than a MLS and keep him in shot!
“… If it squirms, it’s biology,
If it stinks, it’s chemistry,
If it doesn’t work, it’s physics,
And if you can’t understand it, it’s mathematics…”
Magnus Pyke.
Barry Bonner
Perhaps that’s the grams operator up on the balcony!
Dave Plowman
A church beside Tooting Beck tube station has got speakers instead of real bells. Very popular for funerals. And the speakers are wound up so they distort nicely. Bit like the mosques in some cities where they call the faithful to prayer. More of a loudness war.
And back to noddies …
Terry Meadowcroft
The Noddies used to be, for many years (1960s to 1980s), used in almost every interview we shot as an editing aid. They then went right out of fashion for a few years. Are they coming back – I hadn’t noticed? They do work better than jump cuts or, worst of all, crossfades!
Bernie Newnham
I’ve always done noddies for interviews, if the interviewer is someone who is a part of the programme – a presenter probably. For other interviews – if I’m asking the questions, or a researcher – the trick is to ask in such a way that the person being interviewed answers as a self contained statement. You can either set that up by asking them to do that, or by asking in the right way.
When I’m training people, which I mostly am these days, I always say "always shoot noddies, never use them…. and if you have to use them never use nods if possible". A look or a slight head movement is much better. Better still is a cutaway that illustrates what the person is saying, so during the interview I’m always listening with a view to what cutaways to shoot for that purpose.
Vernon Dyer
I once shot an interview with a reporter new to me. Noddies? I thought his head was going to fall off! Totally unusable.
Roger Bunce
In Sports Dept. for a while, having shot neither Noddies nor any other sort of Cutaways, but needing an edit, they’d cut to an electronically zoomed-in, black-and-white version of the same shot! I think they were pretending it was ‘Style’ rather than cock-up. (Maybe they still do it? I don’t watch sport, now they don’t pay me to do so.)
The favoured Cutaway these days seems to be a wide 2-Shot, completely out-of-focus, except for some bit of irrelevant foreground dingle. An interesting idea, the first time they did it, but Ye Gods it’s boring now.
I miss the days when we did these things in a studio, with proper manned cameras, on a decent eye-line!
Terry Meadowcroft
Ooh, me too! A lot more focus both in content and picture quality would improve my enjoyment of modern TV.
A person looking after the sound would make a fantastic improvement too. What could we call him/her…. I know; a Sound Recordist. Yeah, that sounds about right… Aahh, dream on…
Geoff Hawkes
Amen to that Roger. The wide shot with f/g in focus and the people b/g blurred was clearly some bright young thing’s idea of being arty and was then copied by others as being the trendy new way of shooting. Another example of the King’s new suit it seems to me! High time it was seen for what it is and dropped.
The over shoulder 2-shots that quite blithely jump frame is another that offends the likes of us, but who are we to say.
Peter Neill
Another short-lived trend was to give a researcher a domestic handycam to shoot random cutaways. Because they didn’t match the main shot in any way, they were desaturated and dropped in as "art".
Graeme Wall
Now they are just dropped in.
Pat Heigham
Pity they were not just ‘dropped’ !
I saw one programme where the ‘researcher’ had taken alternative angles on the interviewee – sadly, she had set up on the wrong side of the main camera, so the eyelines were completely out. So much for ‘training’.
Mike Jordan
As I was saying earlier (and echoed by many) I can’t believe how the presenter was waving her hands around ALL the time and all in shot.
Can you imagine people like Attenborough or Portillo or any of the guys who do rail and road programmes or even Bettany Hughes or Lucy Worsley doing the same? (We will of course not include Don Thump (?Trump) in that as he waves his midget hands all the time and signs an “O” with finger and thumb all the rest whilst turning left and right to read the autocue and never looking straight forward).
The flapping hands and some of the irrelevant items completely spoilt it.
