The Television Industry is going through a revolution — a colour revolution. Just how the coming of colour will affect us no-one is quite sure. Some people, particularly in the field of Engineering Research, have been concerned with colour developments for a considerable time. But for many the difficulties — and the excitement — are about to begin. Bringing colour to the screens presents much more scope to departments other than the purely technical. We cannot hope to go into it all here. This feature looks at colour through the eyes of four people intimately concerned with the ultimate product of the company — the programmes as they appear on the screen: Technical Operations, Design, Production and Outside Broadcasts. While these may not be completely representational what they have to say is relevant to us all.

Bob Simmons
Senior Supervisor (Vision)

For Bob Simmons (below) and his team of Lighting Directors and Vision Engineers, colour technology brings the excitement and problems of using new and complex equipment and developing new techniques.

“The whole industry is going through a revolution and manufacturers are gradually catching up with our demands for new and better tools. In the field of lighting equipment there is still room for improvement. Smaller and lighter units, and consequently lighter suspension systems must come and our problem here is to order only the minimum number of units absolutely essential for the next stage of development, hoping a better unit will be available before the order comes through. In some cases we are ordering lamps still on the drawing boards.”

But Bob is optimistic about the future:

“There are no problems which cannot be solved and if present progress is anything to go by, solved quickly.

“For instance, in Studio One at Teddington which is now fully equipped for colour, we know we have got the best colour camera available – the EMI 2001. It has the two vital essentials: good engineering and good colour imagery. It is also very stable and has easy access for maintenance.

“We’ve got the right cameras, we’ve got the best available lighting: I know we’ve got the right people, and the right people have got and are gaining the right sort of experience. Already they are producing very exciting results.

“Because our team is relatively small and we have regular meetings to discuss all aspects of the operation, our rate of progress is very fast and our expertise is growing daily.”

As part of Studio One’s conversion a completely new area has been built at control room level – the Colour Set Up Area. Bob was photographed here and part of the new equipment can be seen. It looks very neat and deceptively simple in the photograph, but the job it performs is highly specialised. It is here that the electronic line-up and matching is done, and the one set-up area will eventually service all studios. It is centralised in order to keep to a minimum the lengths of cable handling timing pulses which demand a very high order of accuracy.

“Our past experiences have that shown the contribution which lighting can make to the finished product is even more significant than before and often overlaps the sphere of design,” says Bob. “This merging of areas of effectiveness leads to the necessity for close collaboration at all stages of preliminary planning and with this in mind the Lighting Directors have been rehoused in an area next to the Design Department.”

As a final sobering thought, though, he adds: “We must never lose sight of the fact that the large majority of our viewers for many years to come will see our product in black and white. Everything we do must be considered from that view-point.

There are no problems that cannot be solved – and if present progress is anything to go by – solved quickly

Many beautiful colour effects may have to be modified or jettisoned for the sake of the compatible signal.”

Pat Downing
Head of Design

According to Patrick Downing (below), the Design Department is well prepared to move into colour, for. obvious reasons: “Colour isn’t new to designers – initially they are all trained in colour. Although for the past few years Graphic Designers have got used to working with black, white and grey because it’s cheaper. Set designers haven’t because coloured paint costs the same as white paint.”

As far as he is concerned, colour is here already – “what we have been doing in the way of preparation for the past three months or so, is designing all our Armchair Theatres and one-hour dramas as if they were in colour.”

What he sees as the problem area is not the practical problem of colours coming out differently – “basically colours on the colour camera come out more or less as you would expect them to”, but – “aesthetically, it is going to be quite different.

“For instance in the ‘Armchair Theatre’ I am currently designing now with Voytek as Director (himself an ex-designer) and Louis Bottone as Lighting Director, we are working with a minute set – a hairdressing salon, itself quite a colourful set, but by the end of the play we make it less and less colourful, to make a dramatic point.”

A central problem of interpretation for Designers is that colour is emotional. There has been a lot of research on this point and the results can be seen every day in advertising and packaging. And there are social and cultural overtones. Patrick’s Departments are well aware of these.

“What you do at the moment if you are designing a flat for Vanessa Redgrave, say, who is playing a painter living in Central London, is to find objects and forms which simulate the contemporary London scene. With colour you will have much more freedom; the environment can be decorated to express all the emotions that she will want to express in that setting.”

Where once we might have tended to walk into the studio and done a lot of handwaving, we now have to be a lot more precise

This means that designers will have to start working much earlier than before, because they will have to consider the colour of the costumes and sets related to the emotions and actions of the play.

“Scenic Artists in particular will have a tougher job. Whereas before we might have given them a rough sketch or a photograph and said this goes outside this window on the ground plan, now we have to be more specific, and we now give them coloured drawings, not necessarily naturalistic, depending on the mood of the programme.

“The Design Buyer’s job has also become more involved. Now one must be precise and specific about the colours and the props we hire.”

Pat also sees closer ties with the technical side: “We have in fact become much more involved over the last few months. Where once we might have tended to walk into a studio and done a lot of handwaving, we have now to become a lot more precise.

“Again, whereas in the past one could always ‘wing it’ a bit in the studio – you can’t now have a standby painter slosh over a step or something like that because it’s a bit too dark. That will have to be decided beforehand.”

Reginald Collin
Producer/Director Drama

For Director/Producer Reginald Collin (below) the coming of colour means excitement. “It means that Producers and Directors are re-thinking their whole approach to television,” he says. “For us at Thames the light has changed from Red to Green, and what a beautiful colour that is.

“There will be problems; after all we will be new to the game. And there will be occasions when we will fall flat on our faces. But even that will be splendid, because I sincerely hope that we will not adopt an attitude of safety first.”

Reg echoes one of the points that Bob Simmons makes: “We have here at Thames, probably the best engineers in the business. They will deliver the goods. They will, I am sure, want us to experiment; they will want us to use their equipment to the fullest, and what is more important they are on our side. I know that we will try to produce superb programmes as much for their sake as ours. And we have the people who can do it.”

So much for the credit side, enthusiasm and talent; what are the problems?

“First of all there is the question of producing colour programmes that will, initially, be seen by the majority of viewers in black and white. What attitude do we take? In my view, we go bald-headed for Colour. Black and white is going to become extinct. The thinking must be colour, colour, colour.

“We cannot compromise. Then there are problems of matching film to studio and the speed with which colour film can be shot and processed and put into programmes. It would be foolish to dismiss these lightly, they are severe question marks: but they will be overcome. I know that the Film Department have been working on the subject for some little time, and their efforts will succeed.

“Finally, the universal problem, TIME. More time at all stages will be needed for colour. It may only be a matter of minutes here and there, but it will add up. It may mean that we all have to work just that much harder, but I believe the spirit is there, at all levels, to do just that.”

Apart from the enthusiasm and the problems, what about the challenge? What sort of programmes are we going to make and what colours will we use?

“Imagination will have free rein. For example, are we going to make programmes that look like our holiday slides, slightly larger than life; or are we really going to use colour to create atmosphere.

Think of ‘Callan’, a sort of downbeat, grotty, gritty series and you think of dirty browns and greys, not much colour knocking about. Then think of ‘Frontier’ and immediately the rich sparkle of military uniforms and the bright landscapes of India spring to mind.

“And it’s not just to make things look different or pretty. Colour will add to the emotional enjoyment of programmes; we may even be able to make people laugh or cry at home in a way that is almost impossible in black and white. And again, we will be able, on rare and subtle occasions, to use colour for its own sake; and why not?”

Colour means excitement. The Industry is ready for this shot in the arm

We are lucky to be in at the beginning, Reg concludes. “In a few years colour will become commonplace, but for us we have the joy of trying to make it work. This is what I think is exciting and why I think colour is exciting. I think the industry is ready for, and needs, this shot in the arm.”

Fred Atkinson
Technical Manager, Mobile Division

At the present moment the mobile division at Hanworth has ‘Unit Four’ which is equipped with two Mark VII colour cameras and they are hoping in the near future to start some form of operational training programme using this Unit. They are also waiting to receive from Ampex a delivery of a 1200E colour capable video tape machine, which will bring to the Unit colour recording capability.

The scheduled date for the completion of the first major OB Unit in colour which will be equipped with four camera channels is 1 April. The conversion of this Unit is taking place at the present moment at Hanworth. It is envisaged that by November Thames will be the possessors of two four channel Units and a two channel Unit.

Getting this equipment ready does present problems of course, but for Fred Atkinson (above) the exciting prospects of colour outweigh the headaches: “For instance, viewers will no longer have the problem of distinguishing one soccer player from another in almost identical grey jerseys, now they will be seen in true colour.”

And: “Horse racing in colour means being able to identify your horse before they get far enough down the field for the commentators to start to speak about it.”

OBs are very different from studio productions and they present their special problems.

“The difficulties are based on the requirement for long term stability of equipment necessary to guarantee consistent colour pictures, this within the limitation imposed by the required mobility of Outside Broadcast equipment. Unlike the studios the camera channels cannot be left on for 24 hours of each day. The warm up time and setting up periods needed on OBs will invariably cause a prolongation of the involvement of each unit in any OB. If we are to meet the load currently undertaken by the Mobile Division when colour arrives, the vacant days at present found between OBs will probably disappear altogether.”

Lighting on location also differs from studio conditions. “When an interior programme is considered the light level will be higher than that currently used in black and white, and since at present we are taking very near to peak load from the various supply connections used, the survey planners are going to have to look deeper into this matter to find more power.

“Colour also requires special handling: The human eye reacts to a very small area of action in the scene in front, whereas the television camera takes in a large area – an area which could, in the case of soccer or horseracing, go from brilliant sunshine to shadow in a very short space of time. So what might tend to occur is that one scene appears half sunshine and half shadow. And the two halves will appear in slightly different colours. When this occurs a compromise must be reached to present a viewable picture. The eye is much more discerning and reacts automatically, the TV camera needs fast, accurate controlling.”

Fred also points out that colours will be affected on OBs if they are taking place during early morning or late afternoon, since the colour of the sunlight at these hours is much different from that between 11.00 and 16.00 on a summer’s day.

Let the colours do some of the work and decrease the number of cameras needed

Fred does not see these as anything but temporary limitations. “The future holds a lot of possibilities for outside broadcasts. The present idea of holding a camera still and letting the subject move can now be extended to read: ‘Let the colours do some of the work and decrease the number of cameras needed’.

“The increase in subject interest created by colour television can overcome the need to decorate the picture with a multiplicity of cuts and mixes in an attempt to hold the viewer. If this can be accepted, the size of outside broadcast units can be reduced and the number increased, so giving way to more mobility and flexibility.”

Photographs by Gerald Sunderland

The post Forecast for colour appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The photograph above is indexed as follows: 1 is a rough ground plan for our new building; 2 is the ICL block; and 3 the Euston Tower. The illustrations below are marked similarly.

This photograph shows the shell of the studio and technical areas. While work goes on with the upper floors, the interior of this area will be finished. Already the studio floors and walls are made, windows are being fitted to enclose the operational areas and the ventilation plant is being installed.

The sketch shows the full depth of the building – longer than Television House – from the Euston Road front door to the back overlooking Drummond Street. The part built extends only to the first ‘roadway’ passing through the building and only goes up to the second floor ceiling.

It is this first section with office space for some 50 people (phase 1), which will be completely ready for colour in November – the whole will not be ready for occupation until June or July of 1970.

There is still some shuffling of office areas going on and will probably go on until May 1970, but the general layout is now settled.

The second floor, starting from the Euston Road end, has wardrobe office/workroom, Telecine, VTR, Sound Maintenance, the Telephone Exchange, Technical Film Department offices, and then the Film Department, taking the major slice, right to the end of the floor.

The Film Department also have areas on the floor below and a vault in the basement, all joined by a goods/staff lift.

The third floor is entirely Programme Department, except for a cluster of Preview Theatres and viewing rooms, and overflows on to the fourth and fifth floors too. The fourth floor is mainly Sales, complete with Press, Research, Promotion and other closely-allied departments. On each of these floors the Director in charge has his office and immediate staff – thus there is no ‘executive floor’ as such.

The fifth floor does have the highest executive concentration, however, for instance the Board Room and Conference Rooms are all up there. The Restaurant and Club take up about one-third of the area and should have a good view over the whole site. A lot of thought has been applied to finding a layout for this area in which the cross-traffic is reduced to a minimum, and our architects’ experience on previous jobs like the Hilton Hotel (if not the Bunny Club – another of their designs) is proving valuable.

“Three teams of architects are working on the project and the co-ordination of all the contractors and sub-contractors is quite a major headache” says Phil Berkeley Head of Engineering Projects for Thames. “Team One is designing the building shell for the development company, Team Two is adding the internal work to make it a Television Centre, while Team Three are looking after the Technical areas where all the acoustic and other specialised problems occur.”

Philip’s job is to find out what people in Thames want (or think they will want in 1970/75) and feed this information in architectural terms to these teams. And of course to keep a co-ordinating eye on all the Engineering Department people planning technical facilities in detail. Currently we have Bob Warren looking after the Master Control, Presentation and C.A.R. areas – the heart of the system, Gunter Karn looking after Sound and Talkback – the nerves of the studio complex, while Alan Blockley looks after Telecine and VTR area – the eyes and memory if you like. The sole survivor of Engineering in Television House, Len Sutton, is looking after Film Department equipment requirements, and pretty major their changes are for colour.

Dozens of other people are involved, adds Philip, and the number will increase as the months go by.

Ken Pike is involved in the internal telephone and intercom systems, Fred Atkinson and Mike Coxhill with the GPO lines joining us to the Tower (right opposite but still needing 18 months’ notice to get the cables installed) and of course Stuart Sansom keeps an overall eye on engineering principles, policy, money, the ITA requirements and such ‘seeing the wood from the trees’ matters.

This leaves out all those at TVH who are actively helping to define the requirements, lay old ghosts and warn of new developments – have a new look at the familiar problems and try to anticipate how colour will affect all this. As Philip says, “Colour does indeed penetrate almost every aspect of our work, and we are continually using Boris Townsend and his team as a sort of talking encyclopaedia and instant idea testing station!”

Their work is beginning to show results at Teddington, where Studio One is most of the way to colour operation.

The post Euston – a bird’s eye view appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

‘Know what a lens is lad?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Ever seen a television camera before?’

‘Er, I think so.’

‘Right. You start first thing in the morning.’

An occasional young cameraman might conceivably have started his career in television like this fifteen or twenty years ago. Recruitment into the industry then was sometimes a haphazard and irregular affair and even once in the job formalised training was not always available – you often learned as you went along.

Things today are very different. The video communications business has become a large and sophisticated industry. In addition to the broadcasting organisations and the host of small, private film and TV companies, virtually every university, technical college and art school as well as most of the larger education authorities have full-scale television systems in operation; the industry’s techniques and equipment have become highly advanced. Against such a background it was inevitable that regularised, planned training programmes, college courses and recruitment schemes should have sprung up. Young hopefuls entering the industry today will have to have at least some qualifications under their belts before they start and then after joining will more than likely embark on a planned course of learning and instruction.

In Independent Television, a number of the larger companies have instituted such schemes for all their recruitment and staff training. One company to have done this is Thames Television in London. Its training scheme began in its present form some three or four years ago and is still developing. Thames has set up a special Training Department with its own staff and its own Training Centre at Teddington studios. The centre includes a library of books, tapes and cassettes, a study area and special facilities which can be used as a lecture room, viewing room or television studio. The scheme has a number of sides to its operation and is not designed just for technical staff. There are courses for, among others, secretaries, programme directors and production assistants as well as staff from the business and administration sides. Recruits from both inside and outside the industry find they have a large number of courses available to them.

One of the most comprehensive training courses Thames undertake is the Technical Training Scheme. Student trainees in camera and sound work, operational engineering, film and other technical fields take one-year courses which include a period in the training centre followed by a period as operational trainees. The courses are devised on a modular basis covering a wide number of areas and each trainee follows the full course through. They begin to specialise during the operational phase and as vacancies occur are progressively absorbed into the company. The courses include lectures, demonstrations, visits and production projects, and a number of days a week working in a small closed-circuit studio and control room.

On the production side there are training programmes for production assistants and trainee directors, the latter spending most of their time working closely with other directors but also undertaking several weeks of concentrated instruction. In addition there are special courses for vision mixers, graphics department trainees, engineers specialising in quality control and digital techniques, plus external courses for VTR operations, lighting control, 16mm. film production and colour photography.

As well as the production and engineering courses, there are those catering for people specialising in the business and administration sides. There is a trainee secretaries’ course for recruits joining from secretarial college, and Thames’ trainee manager scheme covers most aspects of management and business administration. Short specialist courses for established managers cover labour relations, interviewing methods and industrial safety.

Another feature of the Thames approach to recruitment and training is the induction course. All new people joining the company go on a one-day induction course which includes a welcome from an executive director and tours of the Teddington and Euston centres as well as a look at some of Thames’ programmes and talks with personnel and welfare staff.

Yet another valuable and in some ways novel part of the overall scheme is the regular studio training sessions Thames organises for all its employees. These sessions are specially designed to give staff a chance

to do jobs they,would not normally do and so as well as being of great value they are needless to say great fun too. For some staff the sessions present a good opportunity to see if they really would like to be a cameraman or production assistant; others are able to test their prowess at such work as sound balancing, which a boom operator for example would not normally be able to do. Others find their experience usefully broadened by having to work in unfamiliar conditions and many of course appreciate the chance to sense the excitement of programme making. Anyone in the company from the newest recruit to the most established executive can apply to take part. An obvious advantage of the studio sessions is that they prove to some people that they will never make a cameraman, production assistant or whatever else it was they’d had ambitions for!

The broad thinking behind the entire scheme is one of fostering and developing talent. Young people coming into the industry are given the opportunity of receiving high quality training designed to suit specifically their talents. The right type of training must be given in the right areas. Care is taken not to deny job opportunities to those already in the industry, and those whose skills and abilities have been overtaken by technological change are offered re-training. The twin issues at stake in training are the short-term needs of individuals and the long-term needs of the industry.

The post So You Want to Work in Television… appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Associated Rediffusion took over the building in 1954, and began the conversion from what had been the wartime Air Ministry to the home of the infant ITV. Studios and technical areas were installed where steel shelters had stood for Winston Churchill and headquarters RAF staff. One member of the Marconi planning team which supervised the conversion was Phil Berkeley, now Head of Engineering Projects for Thames.

Since TVH went on the air on 22 September 1955, it has been the base of ATV, ITN, Rediffusion, Southern, Scottish, TV Times and Thames.

Now the building is to be ripped apart again, for IPC, and given a new name.

… and at the Lyceum

The Lyceum has been associated with staff parties for almost as long as TVH with television. Many Rediffusion parties were held there, and Thames continued the tradition for its first two years.

But now that Thames has moved to Euston, the Board has decided it would be inappropriate to hold parties there any longer. Chief advantage of the Lyceum was its closeness to Television House, particularly for staff involved in transmissions on the night of the party.

Announcing the change this week, the Managing Director stated “We will not have a Christmas Party at the Lyceum this year, but instead consideration is being given to either a summer or autumn function at a more suitable location within the Greater London area. A committee to plan this, and discuss the form and frequency of future parties, will be set up under the chairmanship of Colin Wills. It will consist of representatives of various departments of the company and members of the Social Club committee.’*

Euston move completed successfully

The careful and elaborate plans made over several months by Administration and Engineering Departments have paid off. The Euston move has been completed more or less without mishap and on schedule.

The last departments moved earlier this week, and all central London staff are now in their new accommodation — with the exception of Betty who opens the shutters of her new Club bar at 6.00 pm on Friday 13th!

Casualties of the move included Maintenance Foreman Derek Drury (slipped cartilage) and the electric typewriter of Sales Director’s secretary Betty Wilson (smashed carriage).

First reactions from the staff to their new home and to the smoothness of the move were good. Sue Mathiesen, Secretary to Sales Controller Jim Shaw: “There’s so much more space and light, and the cleanliness after Television House is marvellous. I used to work in the area before when I was with Rank Xerox, and I like being back. It’s so much easier to get to the shops at Oxford Circus by getting on the Victoria Line.” Bob Hurley was one of the team of duty officers who worked around the clock throughout the move. He praised the job done by Vanguard, the removal contractors. “They were ahead of schedule and goods were pouring into Euston at such a rate that we had to work hard to keep up with them.”

A last word from Colin Wills, who was in charge of the move. “The Executive Directors are most appreciative of the way in which the staff tackled this difficult changeover. Without their cooperation and readiness to roll up their sleeves to get on with the job, we should not have succeeded. I should also like to thank the members of the co-ordinating committee who planned the move.”

On the lighter side, Wanstead police telephoned on Monday, 2 November, to tell the company that old files were seen drifting down Wanstead High Street! In view of the recent council workers’ strike they are not pressing charges against Thames or against the refuse contractors who should have delivered them safely to a dump.

The post End of an era at TVH… appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

By Saturday night some order was beginning to appear out of apparent chaos. Operational crews reported early on Sunday morning and prepared for the full-scale dry run transmission in the afternoon. Concurrent with the activity in Master Control and Presentation similar scenes were taking place in Telecine, VTR and the mobile control room attached to Studio 5. Whilst Master Control Engineers were trying to locate all their pieces of equipment and set them up correctly they were also endeavouring to deal with such requests as, “Studio 5 – Master, can I have Telecine 7 please?” The usual reply was, “Yes, when I find Telecine 7.”

The fact that tempers did not reach boiling point, though they were sometimes slightly frayed, reflects considerable credit on the Canteen, which managed to cope with incessant demands for large quantities of coffee and tea.

The run-through started according to schedule and was going so smoothly that by 4.30 p.m. a secret decision was taken to create a breakdown since no serious problems were occurring as a result of the new installation. At 5 p.m. a mains failure “occurred” on the Presentation Mixer. We were “back on the air” in 33 seconds – under the circumstances a remarkable achievement. Included in the dry run was a ‘Today’ programme “live” from the Studio.

At 6.30 p.m. everyone retired to the Canteen for a well-earned glass of beer with the Managing Director. At 7.00 p.m. a meeting between interested parties took place in Studio 5 and as a result, Installation Engineers worked yet another night to correct minor discrepancies which had arisen.

Now, one week later we are firmly on the air and our audience have not noticed the minor faults which have caused major headaches for Presentation and Technical Staff. Considerable credit is due to all Thames Staff who were involved in making everything operate successfully on Colour Day.

The post First Colour Day at Euston appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

By Monday the building was transformed into an efficiently operating Television Studio.

Jane’s new reception area in the foyer is designed to impress. Jane, herself, describes it as, “Rather elegant.” The wall behind her is lined in sage-green suede. “The first few days,” says Jane, “have been hectic but fun. This area is still buzzing with workmen and the foyer becomes increasingly impressive daily as yet another section is completed.”

The new Switchboard (pictured above) under Mrs Laycock’s supervision is much more compact than the one at Television House. For the time being the Switchboard is operated by four girls – with Mrs Laycock in the photograph are Sheila Noonan and Christine Rayment.

The ‘Today’ team also appear delighted with their new wall-to-wall carpeted surroundings and their room is already well endowed with ‘Today’s’ unmistakable stamp of busy chaos.

Opposite ‘Today’ on the third floor, Graphics have a bright spacious office. It seems to have inspired an unexpected house-proud streak in Jim Bainbridge, which has even brought a smile to the lips on his wastepaper basket.

A temporary canteen has been installed on the fifth floor under the supervision of Miss Lovell. The canteen is catering for approximately 164 people but Miss Lovell is still trying to work out how that number consumed 400 cups of coffee on the first morning!

Much of the building is still incomplete as the bottom central picture of the fifth floor illustrates. The reaction so far from people now working at Euston has been one of approval. When the workmen have finished, the building will not only be functionally well designed but also an impressive showpiece.

The post Day Number One at Euston appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

On 7 July the Executive Directors visited the site accompanied by the two architects – John Ware, responsible for the Control Rooms and Studios; and Marshall Levy for the overall conversion of the building. Dave Dunn, in charge of the move, our Clerk of Works, Ted Mathews, and Philip Berkeley acted as guides to the Directors.

The tour of inspection started in the foyer – still a shell of brick and concrete. Marshall Levy had prepared perspective sketches showing two different colour schemes made after consultation with Alan Kaupe, and the choice was made on the spot. The second decision was how to use the small shop which we have, just adjoining the foyer, and this was much easier to visualise on the spot. It will become a newspaper, magazine and tobacconist’s kiosk.

The party then examined the dressing rooms, the two studios and so up to the Central Apparatus Room, where the installation of equipment racks had begun. The control rooms are planned very much like those at Teddington, but with rather more acoustic isolation because of traffic noise and the possibility of noise from tube trains running below Warren Street.

These air-conditioned technical areas, the vast telecine area with its open booths for the individual machines were very favourably compared with the cramped layout at Television House. The party then had a look at one of the office floors, still raw concrete but with the windows glazed. These again are a complete contrast to Television House but still difficult to visualise in their final form.

As the builders moved out, it became the responsibility of a team led by ‘Rick’ Rickards and Peter Smart to get the cables laid and the equipment installed and working. This will be one long rush job – as by 17 November colour programmes must pass through our new London Centre to the GPO Tower and the Croydon and Crystal Palace Transmitters. The whole technical operations staff of Television House will by then be working from Euston – together with a small film and administration group.

Phase II of the building scheme provides the additional accommodation for these people, including a temporary canteen and will be complete before November. It will not be until September 1970 before all the remaining office, film, restaurant and other areas are completed and ready for the final move out of Television House.

To look after administrative matters, Dave Dunn has been appointed Manager at Euston and took up permanent residence on 21 July, with Sue Shields as his Secretary – the first girl on site.

From the photographs it is possible to get a good idea of the extent of the building, the service roadways passing through it and the relationship with our new neighbours. There is no doubt about our proximity to the GPO Tower – the No.1 reason for choosing a site in that part of London.

The post Progress at Euston appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.