>What about IBA/CH4/BBC 2?

I recently saw a tape of a Thames closedown from around 1987. The in-vision announcer Tom Edwards rounded off the evening by saying, "That's all from us here at Thames. Here's a look at tomorrow night's line-up, and we'll leave you with another track from Kenny Lynch's new album. See you tomorrow".

It then cut to caption slides, white text on a black background, with the Thames skyline logo as a white silhouette at the bottom of the screen - it was obviously all hand-made with Letraset - giving the next night's line-up, and an "01" phone number to call for more details about programmes.

Meanwhile, Kenny Lynch was singing some God-awful easy listening drivel Dean Martin-style. I could hear the occasional scratch noise, so the music was clearly originating on a vinyl LP in the presentation sound gallery.

Then the music faded out, and the picture mixed to black. Suddenly, almost as an afterthought, the voice of Tom Edwards cut in again and said, "Goodnight from everyone at Thames, and don't forget to switch off your set."

I was laughing all the way through that tape - it couldn't have been more cheesy!

I have to say that I felt all nostalgic whilst watching Greg Dyke's speech on the BBC Internal TV system.

Before it started there was a caption on the screen saying somet like "Greg Dyke's Speech follows at 10am" with some music playing.

Now *that* was worth getting to the office early.

I enjoyed the 90's BBC 2 closedown sequences (before the learning zone made it 24 hours). There'd be the goodnight from the announcer, sometimes quite comical depending on who it is, over the clock. Then it was followed by the chance to see one of the idents and be able to hear the music without it being talked over. So you find out that "shadow" (or is it the water one, can't remember?) gets all Indian and "Powder" gets all scary. And "Silk" & "copper cut-out" had probably the best music from an ident ever but were always drowned out. Towards the end, they started using the short stings between the trails instead, particularly the one with the door closing. I also remember channel 4 closed down with it's clock followed by the old 80's logo breaking apart instead of coming together. Oh yeah, and 80's BBC TWO had the clock followed by the logo fading to white instead of out of it. Phew...

Where the hell do you guys get all this stuff? The short closedowns on BBC 2 now are either preceded by an LZ announcer wishing people goodnight, or a BBC 2 announcer with 2 ident. They tend to be shy about the fact they close down so they just say: "in half an hour, Learning Zone but until then we leave you with Ceefax" What did they say during the hols when 2 closed down for hours and hours at night? And did they show the BBC 2 clock? I aint seen that clock 4 donkeys.

Central used to have a sequence of a town with the lights turning off in a "Night Jimboy" kinda way.

HTV Cymru Wales had an elaborate film sequence of things in Wales, including the Welsh flag and Union Jack.

At the very start of C4, the announcer actually appeared on screen for a chat. I still have the one on Christmas Day, 1982, on tape.

>"That's all from us here at Thames. Here's a look at tomorrow night's line-up, and we'll leave you with another track from Kenny Lynch's new album. See you tomorrow".

No national anthem? On Ulster Television as it was then, there was always the anthem when they used to close down.

> At the very start of C4, the announcer actually appeared on screen for a chat. I still have the one on Christmas Day, 1982, on tape.

Remember for a while they brought in-vision continuity back to channel 4, except it director talking into a big microphony would be a sideways shot of the continuity thing.

>Remember for a while they brought in-vision continuity back to channel 4, except it director talking into a big microphony would be a sideways shot of the continuity thing.
>

TVS (South England) in the 80's would have announcer, then GSTQ with footage of the Royal Standard, the Queen strolling about looking regal, etc, whereas BBC played GSTQ with the spinning globe as the background.

And TVS would have in vision annoucers at Christmas, sitting in a sort of basic mock corner of a room, with a table and a Christmas tree. Usually, though, they'd do the continuity thing in sound only.

Or am I confusing the above with Southern TV in the 70's?

>And TVS would have in vision annoucers at Christmas, sitting in a sort of basic mock corner of a room, with a table and a Christmas tree. Usually, though, they'd do the continuity thing in sound only.
>
>Or am I confusing the above with Southern TV in the 70's?

No, I've got a link from TVS with Keith Martin, sitting in a mock living room set, not sure which year it's from though.

This is all good, but where does the little white dot come into this. Was it shown too?

>This is all good, but where does the little white dot come into this. Was it shown too?

What white dot? The cue dot?

-J/P www.ch4.homepage.com

The white dot that was shown after GSTQ. The Young Ones said, whilst watching TV late one night:
"What is that little white dot?"
"It's a little white dot."
"Oh, very clever!"
"I think it's a sign. I think it means, no more telly, its time to go to bed."

Any help?

>>Remember for a while they brought in-vision continuity back to channel 4, except it director talking into a big microphony would be a sideways shot of the continuity thing.
>>
>
>TVS (South England) in the 80's would have announcer, then GSTQ with footage of the Royal Standard, the Queen strolling about looking regal, etc, whereas BBC played GSTQ with the spinning globe as the background.
>
>And TVS would have in vision annoucers at Christmas, sitting in a sort of basic mock corner of a room, with a table and a Christmas tree. Usually, though, they'd do the continuity thing in sound only.
>
>Or am I confusing the above with Southern TV in the 70's?
>
>

what i want to know is why did TVS annoce a programme and then the Thames or LWT logo would appear i have seen this on real video on itv southern englands website

>what i want to know is why did TVS annoce a programme and then the Thames or LWT logo would appear i have seen this on real video on itv southern englands website

This happened because the ITV company which made a programme used to put their own ident on the front of their own programmes, and this went out in every region (and still does sometimes when the old programmes are shown overseas). This stopped in 1988. Bear in mind that many regions had in-vision continuity back then, so that there would not always be the two idents in a row situation you describe.

What happened on TVS when a TVS programme was being shown. Was the ident shown twice?

Nah. TVS would show the ident just the once. If TVS was networking their programme to the whole country, there would have been a slide showing a later programme (this was post-IVAs, by the way) with a comment at the end of the slide "but now on TVS, etc ...", followed immediately by the ident (shown to the rest of the network) going into the programme. Obviously this worked better when TVS (and Southern before it) used IVAs.

If Granada had made a networked programme, it would show its programme publicity slide, eg Coronation Street, with a voiceover introducing the programme. Then its hushed ident would appear on the whole network.
It used its own ident before programmes made by somebody else.
Although seeing the individual idents was good, ITV presentation pre-1988 could be a bit of a mess.

>Although seeing the individual idents was good, ITV presentation pre-1988 could be a bit of a mess.

On Ulster Television, they had in-vision continuity right through the eighties (and still have it now, though not as often).

They just went straight from IV to the company ident (or its own for a regional programme).

From 1988 onwards it put its own ident at the start of each programme, which confused me at the time.

3-2-1 was always memorable because of the Yorkshire logo plunging into Dusty Bin. But it finished in 1987. When, in 1988, they had a special compilation programme, I watched, hoping that they would show the logo, but they didn't.

But back to IV continuity. UTV have it less and less now, but this has caused a problem. The symbols they use aren't long enough to be talked over at the end. Sure, when they are going straight into a programme without talking, they are fine (often, especially during the day, there are usuallyno announcements apart from the one at 9.25 which is recorded and always uses the Giant's Causeway ident (without the fire!) - i.e idents go straight into programmes), but recently they have started taling over the idents, which means by the time they have finished talking the ident has finished and just freezes.

They presumably are getting new ones soon as they have had the present lot for 3 1/2 years and they are looking more and more dated.

The clock appears occasionally - I saw it a few weeks ago when they were early for the ITV Nightly News and put it on-screen for about 10 seconds but with no voiceover.

I remember YTV used to just shove a rather poor slide up before each programme, introduce it behind said slide then the ident would appear. No wonder non-IVA stations (ie the big ones) wanted shot of the idents. It messed things up.

Now on Tyne Tees on the other hand, this looked great because the announcer would at times make reference to the ident itself!! When the idents went TT would go into a programme by putting their own logo up, static, Granada-style. It was a very bad slide as well, scratched with what looked like bits of hair on it and sometimes lop-sided! For 1987 this looked downright shoddy!! It was a relief for all concerned when they got their computer on-line.

I did notice that UTV thing when I was over there. They would quite frequently announce the news, invision, then cut to the clock for 10 seconds in complete silence. Strange...

The old in-vision days were much more flowing than you get now, I find. The IV announcer would come on, introduce a piece of film which would show some programme highlights, then they'd cut to a menu screen with all the night's goodies on one easy to read page (2 if you were lucky!), then go back in-vision to introduce the programme, then go to the ident. You always knew exactly what was on the channel, and when, which is more than can be said for the modern way. Progress? Pah...

>I did notice that UTV thing when I was over there. They would quite frequently announce the news, invision, then cut to the clock for 10 seconds in complete silence. Strange...

Very strange - I have never seen this before. Was it before local or national news?
Was this recently?

That was about February 1999, so yes quite recently. Julian did it once on the Sunday then a woman on Monday did it again. I had thought it was a balls-up the first time...

>That was about February 1999, so yes quite recently.

It must have only happened a few times as I never remember seeing it then.

Julian did it once on the Sunday then a woman on Monday did it again. I had thought it was a balls-up the first time...

Knowing UTV it could have been a balls-up both times...!

Does any other ITV station (other than UTV) still have an in vision clock?

STV doesn't, but recently it has started showing transmitter info at 9.25.

I think this is new....

>>This is all good, but where does the little white dot come into this. Was it shown too?
>
>What white dot? The cue dot?

The white dot that is featured on The Young Ones is misrepresented :) It wasn't a broadcast, it was more a by-product of the old valve operated TVs, which when switched off, would continue to "run" for a short time, but without scanning the picture onto the screen. The result was that the cathode ray tube would still be shining onto the screen, into the centre, for 30 seconds or so, and slowly fade out as the valves and capacitors slowed discharged.

Does that sound plausable?

by the way, I was shocked to discover in the early 1980's that my parents rental colour tv, which featured soft touch electronic channel changing, had a grat many valves inside it!

Yes that sounds about right, from my rudimentary knowledge of how tubes work. They need lots of voltage so the old valves would discharge slowly. I remember we were the first people in our street to have two tellies, a Ferguson Colourstar in the sitting room and a Philips G5 (Pye design) in the back room. The Fergy's picture used to slowly get smaller and smaller until it eventually disappeared, and a farting noise came from the speakers (the latter being a trait that my new Fergy 32" widescreen still seems to have!!). The Philips' picture disappeared straight away, but a few seconds later a small red, small blue and larger green blobs would appear in the middle of the screen, and stay there for about 30 seconds. The colour equivalent of the little white dot?

I feel so young...