Tim Heath

I am a researcher at the University of London working on a project called ‘The Adapt Project’ investigating the history of television production technologies in Britain. My personal research focuses on the history of sound technologies for television from 1960 to the present day. As part of my research I am hoping to speak to those, retired or still working, who may have worked in any area of television sound to discuss their careers and experiences using historical technologies.

Note: For a formal response to this, please see Discourse on TV Technology over the years

Terry Meadowcroft

I worked on BBC radio staff for 5 years after leaving school, in London  (Bush House and Broadcasting House), and with BBCTV in Leeds for a further 7 years more. After a brief spell as Freelance Sound Recordist still at BBC Look North from Leeds (on news), and another brief spell as Head of Sound at Leeds University TV Service, I finally got into YTV as Film Equipment Officer then Film Sound Recordist doing mostly documentary work,  after working as Sound Assistant in Film Drama there. I then worked for a total of 20 years on YTV staff until Margaret Thatcher arrived and all went to pieces.

I then took redundancy from YTV after Granada took it over and remained Freelance Sound Recordist working mainly in Documentaries until the whole thing went completely crazy, 12 years later, and I could takes no more and retired at 64.

I’ve been through plenty of gear changes through those years, in both meanings of that phrase.

Now I am sad to see it has all but fallen apart, certainly as far as the BBC is concerned. It is in tatters and I nightly grind my teeth to hear how bad TV sound can get, to say nothing of camera work, with nobody on the tiller any more, and rich men’s’ daughters doing it all for nothing –  the wearing of many hats, and being the Master of no skills is the flavour of the day, and it continues to get worse as money is the only real master.

Tony Nuttall

(ex Crew 16, BBC MR and Border TV)

These observations on the destruction of Radio and TV Sound  ops. are spot on.

A friend who’s daughter wants to pursue a ops. career in Broadcast asked me to explain a couple of points from a BBC ACADEMY web page on Sound Recording with a single camera set up as per News gathering. This is the page:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/production/television/self-shooting/article/art20130702112136131

She could not understand what a TOP MIC was? Nor could I, then the penny dropped. The dear lady
who wrote the article for the BBC ACADEMY, Helen Hutchinson, was referring to the MIC on TOP of the camera!

The second penny then dropped; Helen Hutchinson was a journo who I used to work with at Border TV who left to become a lecturer at Cumbria College of Art here in Carlisle. Since working at the College of Art she seems to have become a specialist for the BBC Academy on Sound Recording, Period Drama, Social Media and the Law, Scriptwriting etc. etc. Such a vast array of Talent in one person!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/production/search?query=Helen+Hutchinson

I advised my friends daughter that she should try a little harder at Uni. and become a Member of either The Law Society or the British Medical  Association as they were the only two Trade Unions worth bothering with!

The Lunatics are in charge of the Asylum.

Terry Meadowcroft

I am so sorry that the BBC Academy is teaching such rot to these rich men’s’ daughters. Any sound recordist worth even the smallest pinch of salt would never, never use the ‘top mic.’ for anything,  not even for a backup. Useless – and for recording a group of people around a table, some of whom, as illustrated in the ‘Academy’ video, have their back to the camera! What?

If this is the best the BBC can do, well, it is best that the Government disband it! 

Any broadcasting organisation that shows an important press conference TO THE WORLD without so much as a mic to pick up the questions baffles me. I saw one such press conference which was televised, to the World, shown with a question, which must have been at least 15 seconds long, almost totally inaudible (and I really mean that – and I listen with very high quality sound equipment) – making a nonsense of showing it at all.

The BBC is b**gered. They make news broadcasts into light entertainment, use too much music and ‘splendid’ graphics, and lose the whole point of news broadcasting being a serious subject. And why? search me.

The technical abilities required of their ‘operatives’, as demonstrated by the standards of their so-called ‘Academy’ are below the lowest end of home sound recording standards – they can even – and regularly do –  get the studio sound on news broadcasts wrong. Badly placed personals, very often in the never, never area close to the vocal chords when the female news reader is wearing a high neckline, are as regular as clockwork, and the incidences of terribly muffled personals concealed deep in side a scarf or Berghaus jacket can be seen any day, sometimes for the whole of a programme.

The fact is that any Broadcasting organisation NEEDS someone, at all stages of the production of a programme, to look after the sound, and visual, quality, working as a team. These people, like you  and I and many others who learned their trade before the 1980s, were required by the BBC and others to know what they were doing to produce not just intelligible sound, but excellent sound.

Mrs. Thatcher, God rest her soul, set off the downward spiral to get rid of money wasters like Sound Recordists – and now, Cameramen, and left the future of our industry solely in the hands of money handlers many and varied, which is why the technical expertise has now wasted away to leave us with the lousy standards of sound and vision that we now put up with on our radios and tellies.

Sorry, thank goodness I am retired!