 |
| Noggin the Nog is shrunken by a voltage reduction, September 1965 or thereabouts. (Image re-created in photoshop… but we had that exact GEC telly). |
Some of my earliest memories of
television are of it going wrong. Whether as the result of an
unaccountable break in transmission, voltage reductions, or simply a
valve blowing in the back of the set, breakdowns were enough of a
regular occurrence to seem like a normal part of the viewing
experience back in the 1960s. Most people of a certain age will
recall the various apology captions used by broadcasters when, for
whatever reason, there was an unexpected break in transmission. The
usual message was: ‘We apologise for the loss of your programme.’
This printed caption would sometimes be reinforced by a voiceover
from the continuity announcer, leading to the inevitable: ‘in the
meantime, here is some music.’
Commonplace as such interruptions were,
it was frustrating when a favourite programme fell victim to a
technical hitch. On the evening of Friday January 12th,
1968, my brother and I sat down to watch that week’s episode of
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, a story entitled ‘Traitor.’ It featured the
first (and only) appearance in the series of the Spectrum hovercraft,
the sabotage of which formed the cornerstone of the plot. The episode
had barely got underway when, just as an ominous jet of oil had begun
to spray forth from the doomed vehicle, the screen went blank. Beyond
this, I don’t recall the exact details of the breakdown, other than
that the episode did not resume: I have a vague idea that an ATV logo
appeared on the screen, and there was probably some kind of
announcement and/ or apology to the effect that the break in transmission was as a result of industrial action. Either way, there was no Captain Scarlet that day.
Forever after, my brother and I recalled this occasion as the
instance when ‘the technicians went on strike.’
There was to be a more serious strike
later that year, affecting ITV in the aftermath of the franchise
reshuffle of July ‘68 (the point at which our local weekend
broadcaster, ABC, ceased to exist). But whatever pulled Captain
Scarlet off air in January was most likely a local dispute. True to
form, the indestructible man returned to complete his interrupted
mission, over three months later, when the episode was finally aired
on April 23rd.
The Captain Scarlet breakdown was by no
means the first technical hitch I remember. From quite an early age,
I was aware that television sets were prone to breakdowns, and
have memories of an overalled engineer tinkering about in the back of
the set whenever a valve went west. When the set was fully warmed up,
the valves generated a fair amount of light and heat which could be
seen through the ventilation slots in the back. The light from inside
the set helped to reinforce the childish impression that there were
little people inside it, performing, and I still remember looking
through the slots during an edition of Sunday Night at the London
Palladium to see if I could spot a tiny Norman Vaughan...
The early valve-driven TV sets were
much more prone to breakdowns, but even in the era of the solid-state
colour sets, there could be problems: I well remember the green
complexion of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s Admiral Harriman
Nelson when one of the ‘colour guns’ in the back of our set went
on the blink... and an equally annoying – and seemingly incurable problem arrived with the dawn of televisions with hi-fi sound: the
magnetic field from the speakers on either side of the set was prone
to induce areas of false colour in the tube. I was reliably informed
that degaussing would cure the problem. Getting another set was
simpler: we rented until well into the 1990s. In an era when the
technology was so prone to developing faults, this was a safe bet, as the cost of any remedial work was immediately covered: although it could
sometimes mean going without the telly for a few days while the
repair was carried out.
An earlier and almost entirely
forgotten technical phenomenon affecting one’s enjoyment of
television was that of the voltage reduction. These step-downs in the
local supply were well known during the 1950s and 60s but nowadays seem to
have been completely forgotten, and are neglected in all commentary on
the early days of television. The sole
reference that I’ve been able to find is one made by Tony Hancock, who offered the voltage
reductions as an argument in defence of the poor ratings for his ATV series
broadcast at the beginning of 1963. ‘All the viewers could see on
their sets was a postage stamp-sized Hancock’, he complained to the
Daily Express.
My recollection is slightly different:
a ‘postage stamp-sized’ Hancock suggests a small, square picture
in the centre of the screen, which may well have been the case on
certain occasions. But the instance that I recollect most clearly
came during a Sunday afternoon broadcast of Noggin the Nog (a
check on the BBC’s Genome website suggests this to have been Noggin
and the Firecake, broadcast on Sunday evenings during September
1965). During the transmission, the picture began to shrink... almost
as though it had been affected by an evil spell from Nogbad the Bad.
But rather than diminishing into a small postage-stamp sized image,
the shrinkage affected only the height of the picture so that, after
a short time, the end result was as per the image I’ve re-created
above. No amount of adjustment to the horizontal hold would cure the
problem, and this was by no means the only occasion on which it
occurred. Aside from that Hancock reference, I have never come across
anyone who remembers this happening, but happen it most certainly
did...
Since the dawn of home video, technical
breakdowns are occasionally preserved for posterity, as this clip of
Star Trek from January 1985 illustrates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8xLEl_Uh1Q And even in today’s
slick digital era, it’s not unknown for a station to drop off the air
completely for no apparent reason. But the 1960s and 70s are my
remit, and as far as I’m concerned most modern telly can happily
disappear off air forever...
No comments:
Post a Comment