Background
Whilst Roger Bunce was watching the recently rediscovered Doctor Who “Web of Fear” (a series that he worked on), he noticed that it began with the Tardis shot on a crazy slanting angle. He thought it was done using CHAR (Camera Head Attachment: Rocking) but it might have been a PUMA (Periscope Upper Mirror Attachment). So, with CHAR and PUMA in his head, he starting thinking of all the other bits of homemade, ancillary equipment for which people had dreamt up clever acronyms (or backronyms).
The original content of this page has now been incorporated into as full a set of Acronyms, Backronyms, Abbreviations and Technical Jargon as we currently remember – the current list is available here.
Ian Hillson
When the first electronic box was designed for the BBC TV News opening titles (the stripey ones), on the back of that stripey BBC2 logo box, it was called ANT – Animated News Titles.We had suggested “Direct Infill Chroma-Key HEADlineS”
Patrick Heigham
I recall a story that following a staff reorganisation involving the Regions, there was to be appointed an overall Regional Supervising Engineer (RSE). I think it fell apart when there was a need to appoint an Assistant!
John Barlow, Albert Barber
Whatever happened to the National Association of Camera Assistants? Probably went to their own yard. Not to mention the National Outside Broadcasts Society. Pretty important lot!
Barry Bonner, Peter Neill, Roger Bunce, Dave Buckley, Patrick Heigham
Do you remember the CLUG? Some poor soul has her framed on his TV room wall!
Barry Bonner remembered when MLE walked past her, whispered something in her ear only for the Studio Engineer to rush out onto the gantry and complain that she’d turned bright red!
The name of the young lady, who is now (in 2014) getting into her 60s, is Lynne. At the time that the photo for the chart was taken (around 1977), she was secretary in the general office of Television Training Department, then based at Woodstock Grove. The training studio had one of the charts and I remember one of the VOs who came over to assist with running the studio commenting why we bothered – just get the real thing from downstairs!
Complete with black-level wig, was she not Ron Nether’s daughter? There was a fairly well known actress that used to sit in the CLUG’s chair from time to time, I think she had some connection with Roger Ordish.
Roger Bunce remembers that the Line-Up ladies (the live ones) were known as Studio Line-Up Girls – which is much less flattering than CLUG.
Peter Neill thought that when the CLUGs were real girls they were trainee makeup assistants. Patrick remembers the CLUG as being a (necessarily) pretty make-up girl who had to sit patiently with all cameras pointing at her for colour matching. Until she was replaced by a very expensive still with many degrees of colour.
Incidentally, the photo version is still in use at the BH newsroom to line up the balcony camera used for remote interviews. It may well be used in the other studios as well.
John Henshall
When I experimented using high powered negative focal length lenses in front of the camera in the 1960s, Paul Leverick (Peter’s mechanical engineer brother) made them up into a usable mount. Searching for a name for the attachment, Peter suggested ‘Wide Angle Negative Konvertor’ (the ‘K’ because the lens elements were German). Realising that everyone had one of these already (except 5% of Americans who claimed in a survey that they did not but were obviously lying), I tossed it away and instead opted for the name ‘Telefex Fisheye’. Anyway, the other name for some reason reminded me of a certain middle manager who had told me that my idea would not be acceptable as a Technical Suggestion. I left the BBC and soon made my first million. Unfortunately it was only in Turk Lirasi but nonetheless it was a welcome order from Turkish Radio and Television.
Mike Giles
There was an experimental audio data compression system imparting “Content Related Audio Patterning”. Certain persons were unamused, but others fell into paroxysms of mirth as it was right on the nail.
Warwick Cross
These entries remind me of an article I wrote for an in-house magazine (“Buzz”), reminiscing on 40 years spent in Television Centre. Here’s an extract:
Ian Hillson, Roger Bunce, Tony Crake
“TJ” stood for TeleJector – the precursor to the Cintel slide scanner (if you pointed a camera at it) – and also used for BP behind presenters. TJs – Upside-Down and White to the Light. We loaded them but were NOT responsible for them.
And the reason that Central Stills Library slides were in Leitz metal mounts – the plastic ones melted in the heat of the much-uprated lamp in studio projectors.
When Tony Crake arrived at TVC, one of his first programmes was “Grandstand” in Studio E. The Telejector Room was in the back of the Sound Gallery… “Upside down and White to the Light” did not always apply… One of the first slides on air was ‘UDWL’ but the caption came out at the top of frame which caused a lot of shouting from a large gent with a very red face and a very loud voice… So Tony decided to look at each caption very carefully and work it out… ! The man with the loud voice turned out to be Ginger Cowgill who seemed like a bit of a maniac.
Tony says: “.. I still have all these frames – they were Agfa re useable ones and have my colour slide film of the era mounted in them. Agfa transparencies were cheaper if the film was returned to you uncut ! “
Tony continues: “ ..The man with the loud voice turned out to be Ginger Cowgill who seemed like a bit of a maniac. Each week the VT Hotline Phone was slammed down SO hard it broke in two and at the close of play a Studio Engineer appeared and Araldited it back together! I also had to plug up Natlock Tones but I had no clear idea at the time what they did and I never did till I went to OB’s !”
David Denness
In the 1970s, BT Tower had two to three letter acronyms for studios and other sources of programmes. These included BH, TVC, WFS for TVi studio in Whitfield street etc.
When TVAM came on the scene they already had most of the obvious acronyms in use, so some wag at BT christened TVAM CAR as HOG. This is not immediately obvious, but stood for “Henly’s Old Garage” whose site the studios were built on.
Warwick Cross
Before the launch of BBC Knowledge (fore-runner to BBC FOUR), the channel team were very keen on a process of overlaying graphics at the end of programmes – more or less what has now evolved into end-credit squeezes (so you all have BBC Knowledge to blame!)
The working title by the channel for this process was TIM (‘That Infernal Machine’). However as we approached channel launch we thought we should formalise this. Our favoured name for this technical solution was Synchronous Overlay Device – so that we could have status indicators on the monitor stack saying either SOD ON or SOD OFF.
Sadly this was eventually vetoed!
Popular versions of the official acronyms
Tony Grant, Bill Jenkin, Phillip Tyler, Dave Jervis, Dave Buckley
| NTSC | Never Twice the Same Colour |
| PAL | Pale And Lifeless Pale And Lurid Pictures At Last |
| SECAM | System Essentially Contrary to American Method Something Essentially Contrary to American Method |
| P&ID | Panic and Indecision Department |
| DPTel | Department/Director for the Prevention of Television |
Other Phrases
Jeff Booth
| HoB(Tel) | Head of B*ll*cks (Tel). A fictitious (but amusing) job title! |
| Merry Christmas VT | Usually said by a Mr. N Edmonds after a cock up! |
