Authors: Roger Bunce, Mike Jones
Roger Bunce introduces:
Before he died, Mike Jones (my long-term enemy across the negotiating table) and I had a friendly exchange of emails on the history of Tech-Ops Management. I copied some of them into a document, for future reference. Unfortunately, I don’t have Mike’s original question, nor all of his replies. But, what I have is reported below. It only really deals with the Camera Section.
Roger asked Mike Jones:
“…Are you compiling a complete history of Tech. Ops. or just of the role of women in operation?..”
Mike Jones replied:
I’m writing a pretty factual account of women being allowed in and then refused admission to Television Engineering Division.
Just as a diversion, I think Bernie’s site [ed: this, the Tech Ops History Site] could do with a stab at mapping the managerial tree for Studios, if only because few people now remember, and in but a few years no-one will be able to look and find out.
If you look at two pretty competent websites, Martin’s on Studios and Bernie’s on the Tech Ops staff within those walls, Bernie could do with a sort of time-line. I won’t get it right, or complete, but it might be worth trying, and then let others modify it. What do you think?
Dudley (Darby) is researching very early peds! That is part of the female story, because however much you are convinced that the wartime women could have mastered the art of tracking and crabbing, the fact remains that the most pro-women EIC, D. C. Birkinshaw, was content to allow them gallery only roles after the war.
Roger Bunce replied:
Mapping management could be a project for you. I might be able to help with some of the camera names, but not much else. A group of us tried to remember all the Senior Cameramen/Camera Supervisors over the years, and their crew numbers. I don’t think we managed to get them all.
Presumably all these things are a matter of record, somewhere in TV Centre archives. But I’ve no idea how to access them. Maybe a Freedom of Information request?
We seem to have something in common. I too feel the need to arrange things in chronological order – probably because my brain doesn’t do it naturally.
Personally, if I ever finish my current batch of projects, I was planning a page on the now extinct ride-on camera cranes. I mean crane operators these days! They just sit at a desk and twiddle knobs – about as exciting as being an accountant! In the good old days, when a camera swooped, the cameraman swooped with it – feeling the g-forces, and the wind in your hair (when I had any), and the impact of skull against balcony at TV Theatre! That was proper camerawork.
Mike Jones replied:
Archives? Written Archives (Caversham) came to look at Head of Studio Management’s holdings and took nothing. So I have them back and pointed out interesting things, worthy things, historical things. They took one folder for consideration, and sent it back two days later. “Not of wider interest.” There is no other archive I know of, certainly nothing at Television Centre (TVC). The death of TVC will, I am certain, mean that no-one keeps anything about Tech Ops (maybe Personnel will keep staff files for a bit in case you get asbestosis and they want some defence material).
Give me the Camera Managers (4) and Head of Cameras which I feel came in about 1970 and died back to Head and Assistant Head about 1981 … Dave Bull, Tony Abbey, Laurie Duley, John Lintern … am I near?
Before that Frank Clarkson was “Crew Supervisor” and all other Camera matters seemed to be combined with Vision, two posts A (VT) to HTO and A (VF) to HTO. These, though I don’t know their names, compare with Sound in being a Training person and a Facilities person.
When I was young, working at AP, and felt that a girlfriend needed impressing, I came into the Centre and squeezed in as audience and watched something musical in TC1 involving a Transatlantic or Hercules Crane. There was an orchestra in a big circular set and, I think, Andre Previn conducting. It was VERY impressive with swooping in and swooping out shots … the set looked like an island atoll with palm trees made of light coloured abstract design pieces. As the memory stayed with me, unlike the girl, I share your enthusiasm, but remember life is not all Chapman, there’s also the motorised Vinten living in the pit at the Television Theatre (TVT).
Roger Bunce replied:
History is what you remember?
However, this is what my malfunctioning memory recalls of Camera Management. I can’t guarantee that it bears too much resemblance to history.
Managers I Have Known.
When I started in 1965, the Head of Vision was Dave Bull. He was at my initial interview.
The two managers who were responsible for us trainees were Laurie Duley and Keith Blair. They were a wonderfully mismatched pair, both in stature and manner. Laurie was short and rotund. He wore a bow tie and sometimes mispronounced his words (“Pitcher” for “Picture” and “Acrost” for “Across”). Keith was tall, slim, well-spoken and a classic English gentleman. I look back on them both now with great affection, but it’s difficult not to make comparisons with Capt. Mainwaring and Sgt. Wilson from “Dad’s Army”!
The 1967 Staff List, on page 18 of Bernies’s site, gives their official titles as:
D. Bull, Asst. (Vision) to H.T.O.Tel.S.
L. Duley, Supervisor (Training).
K. Blair, Senior Cameraman (Training).
In 1968 I was an Inlay/Overlay Operator (a job which was then part of a Dolly Op.’s (Dolly Operator’s) duties). I was involved in early experiments with Colour Separation Overlay (CSO). The Manager I worked with there was Gwillum Dann, who appears as E.G. Dann, Asst. (Vision Facilities) on that Staff List.
In the early 1970s, I was on light duties following an operation, working as assistant to the Vision Organiser – a chap called Wally Stacey. By this time both the Sound and Vision Sections had an “Organiser”, but there was no equivalent in Cameras. I shared an office with his colourful secretary, Pauline Riddout.
After a reshuffle, the Camera Section came under the leadership of a quartet of “Camera Managers” – Laurie Duley and Keith Blair were joined by two Senior Cameramen: the taciturn Tony Abbey and the affable John Lintern. They must have been in place by 1974/5 since the “Wise Old Camera Managers” appear as a distant silhouette in the “CameraMan” comic strip that I was writing at the time. Dave Bull oversaw them as Head of Cameras. Pauline Riddout became his secretary. I always reckoned that she was the real brains behind the outfit. If the Camera Managers annoyed me, I’d threaten to go over their heads – straight to Pauline.
When did the Duty managers first appear? You’d know the answer to that. And, is it true that designer stubble was an essential qualification? Prior to that, all Tech. Ops. management ceased at 5.30 p.m. – which is probably why most serious programme making took place after that.
As others left, Tony Abbey worked his way up to Head of Cameras, while John Lintern became the first Camera Organiser. John Barlow, who had spent most of his working life as a Union Rep., rather than an active Cameraman, became Assistant Head of Cameras.
One of the problems with management in the Camera Section was that active Cameramen were not interested in becoming Managers. It just wasn’t our idea of promotion. We all enjoyed making programmes too much. I mean, who’d want to give up all that art and adrenalin for a desk job? Did Rembrandt give up painting in order to sit in an office shuffling papers?
Thus, when Tony Abbey and John Lintern left, there were no Cameramen willing to replace them. Lynn Butterworth, former Allocator, became the new Camera Organiser. She had been very popular as an Allocator, but was less so as an Organiser. John Barlow moved up to Head of Cameras, and Alex McDonald, a former Sound Man, became his number two. Alex always admitted that he knew nothing about Cameras, but compensated for this by asking people, and bothering to listen – a very refreshing attitude for a Manager.
John Barlow was a skilled politician. With him at the head, the Camera Section prospered against its rivals – just so long as the interests of the section coincided with the personal ambitions of John Barlow. When he began to look elsewhere, things went downhill again. When Lynn Butterworth left to get married, she was replaced by Gordon Smith, a Scotsman, who first introduced me to Management-Speak.
I find it difficult to put dates to any of this. I have two of my illustrated Christmas S.O.D.S. (Studio Operation Duty Schedule) covers, dating from 1987 and 1988. They don’t name Line Managers, but they identify the then Duty Managers as John Mersh, John Walton and Jim Cook. They list the Vision Organiser as Ray Liffen; Camera Organiser as Gordon Smith, and Sound Organiser as Richard Green. …
Apparently there was a history of friction between the Heads of Cameras and Lighting. Higher authorities believed they could resolve the conflict by combining the two posts into one person. The first incumbent was, predictably, a lighting man: Dave Ogle, a dry Scottish smoker. Whereas Alex had known nothing about Cameras, and had been aware of the fact, Dave Ogle knew nothing about Cameras, but thought he knew everything. He revealed his ignorance in some memorable gaffs, and became a subject of ridicule. He was also the only Manager who whole-heartedly believed all the crap coming out of the Corporate Centre. He went on courses, learned all the jargon, and came back with homilies and parables with which to explain things: only to have them torn to shreds when he repeated them to an audience of Cameramen. After a while I began to feel sympathy for him. He never really understood what Cameramen were all about. I like to think that Howard and I, as Union Reps, were kinder to him than the rest of the section.
I must have been doing some moonlighting about this time (surely not?), working alongside a long-term freelancer. I told him that the BBC was starting to take on freelance Cameramen. He expressed an interest and asked, “Who is Head of Cameras at TV Centre? I suppose it must be someone like Ron Green by now.” I astonished him by explaining that, unlike the rest of the industry, a BBC Head of Cameras was purely a back-office role: that the current leadership had never operated cameras in their lives, and that someone as talented and well-respected as Ron Green wouldn’t dream of doing such a job.
Then, as if by magic, a Cameraman appeared – a rare type of Cameraman who didn’t mind becoming a Manager – Steve Cockayne. He became Head of Cameras and Lighting, and John Barclay became his Number 2. They’d probably have made a really good and popular management team, but for the stupid policies that were being imposed on them from above. They had the misfortune to be in place when the first compulsory redundancies were enforced (1992?). None of us blamed Steve. But, inevitably, the same fate was later inflicted on him. It was like one of those predictable B-Movie plots, where the Arch-Villain doesn’t commit the murder himself; he forces some sympathetic lackey to do it, then he kills the lackey to cover his tracks – all very unconvincing.
After that we seemed to rattle through a lot of managers – either that or I was getting old and my personal time was passing more quickly. First there was Adrian Corcoran, a young Engineer of obvious talent and intelligence. He went on to more important things. Then came John Waker, another Engineer whose colleagues had given him an unfortunate nickname. A nice enough chap, he suffered from being present during the BBC’s attempt to introduce “360 Degree Appraisal” (which should, of course, have been “180 Degree Appraisal”, but bureaucrats don’t understand geometry). The experiment didn’t last long. Managers soon discovered that they didn’t really want to hear what the staff thought of them.
Then there was Paul Houghton. I think he was a former quarry manager: very down-to-earth and practical. We liked him a lot. Then Kirstie Cousins – a tall Rock-Chick, clad in black leathers, with long blonde hair, and slightly too much facial piercing. She was great fun.
By now it was 2001. One of my annual objectives had been to stay in the BBC longer than John Birt. Having achieved that, I decided to take the money and run – (actually, take the money, run round the revolving door, and come straight back again) – and there was a lot of money on offer – including a full pension. The volunteers for redundancy greatly exceeded the number required, and there was a long queue in Personnel at break of day. But, when Debbie didn’t appear, my Post-It Note was the first one stuck on her computer screen.
Dudley and I reckon we made the fastest ever transition between leaving TV Centre as BBC Staff and returning as freelancers. On our last day as staff, we were working late, on “Match of the Day”. It overran, past midnight. As the clock struck twelve, and Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin, Dudley and I turned into freelancers – with a pause in our work.
I was now working for the most efficient, most helpful, most friendly and, above all, the smallest management team I’d even known – Alex Hambi and John Nixon, the two Sparks who ran the Keylight Agency. There were many pleasures to those days. Firstly, I was earning more money than ever before. Secondly, whenever irate Cameramen accosted me, demanding to know what the Union (and I personally) was going to do about the latest Management outrage, I could smile smugly and say that it had nothing to do with me anymore; they’d have to sort it out themselves: I now worked for a good employer. The only downside was having to attend the Sparks’ Christmas party, which was much more Bacchanalian than anything I’d been used to.
Now that I am well outside the Beeb, I feel I should be able to stop caring about what goes on there. But it’s not easy. The overpaid incompetence of the Senior Management still infuriates me. Abandoning TV Centre and moving to Salford is just wasteful madness (Dudley will tell you tales of the sheer buffoonery involved). I suppose I have been a loyally committed BBC person for far too long to stop caring just yet.
and Roger adds …
Trying to give dates to my partial history of Camera Management, I’ve been searching through old memos, minutes, application forms and other paperwork. (I haven’t deliberately kept such things. I just haven’t been very efficient at throwing them away. Nor do I have any concept of filing. This stuff is just scattered around my home in random folders, envelopes and heaps of paper! Most of the following has come to light while I was digging out old cartoons for Bernie’s “Art of Roger Bunce” page.)
The four camera Managers must have come into existence at some time after the 1969 Staff List and before 1974. They remained until at least 1981. I also have a memo dated 5th October 1978, signed by Dave Bull as “H. tel. Cameras”.
I have some unofficial minutes of a Technical Managers’ meeting which took place on 5th September 1980. They refer to changes which had previously taken place in “7th Floor Management”, but without giving details. The Camera Managers must have survived these changes. The last memo I have from Laurie Duley “Camera Manager”, is dated 6th October 1981.
At some point after that, and before 3rd June 1982, things changed. From that date Tony Abbey is shown as “H.Tel.Cameras” and continues in that role until at least 14th August 1984. One memo dated 6th October 1983 gives John Barlow as “Asst.H.Tel.Cameras.”
Between 14th August 1984 and 21st November 1986, John Barlow moved up to “H.Tel.Cameras”. The last document I have bearing his name is dated 14th February 1988. This one also identifies Alex McDonald as “Asst.H.Tel.Cameras”.
I have some minutes of a meeting to discuss “Management Reorganisation”, dated 13th December 1989. This seems to be the point at which Cameras and Lighting were being combined under a single head.
I have a diary entry to meet Dave Ogle on 6th June 1990, so he must have been in post by then. Memos etc., from 19th December 1990 to 19th February 1992 all name Dave Ogle as “H. Cameras and Lighting”. One from 18th April 1990 gives Steve Cockayne as “Asst. H. Cameras and Lighting”.
I don’t actually have anything signed by Steve Cockayne during his period as Head of Cameras and Lighting, but my diary records a meeting with him on 7th September 1992. I have a lengthy screed, on the subject of Camera NVQs, which I sent to John Barclay on 22nd October 1992. A report dated 2nd March 1993 gives John Barclay as “Assistant Head of Cameras and Lighting”, and my diary records a meeting with him on 22nd December 1993.
After that, Cameras and Lighting were, once again, separated under two craft heads, and job titles changed. A memo from 19th Dec 1994 gives Adrian Corcoran’s name as “Manager Studio Operations – Cameras”. Five documents from 3rd April 1995 to 1st August 1887 give John Waker as “Manager Studio Operations – Cameras”. After that, the paper trail largely dries up, probably because emails were taking over from written memos.
But I have a copy of “Focus”, dated February 1999, which gives the management team as:
Richard Philipps – Head of Operations
Paul Houghton – Manager Cameras
Mike Hawkins – Manager Sound
Derek Lancaster – Manager Lighting and Vision
Steve Jenkinson – Manager Engineering
plus some others.
I also have a memo signed by Paul Houghton, “Manager Cameras, studio and Location Group”, dated 29th March 1999.
