ATV is a public company which, under agreement with the Independent Television Authority, provides the television programmes in London on Saturdays and Sundays and in the Midlands from Monday to Friday.
ATV House, 17 Great Cumberland Place, London W.1.
AMBassador 8040 ATV House, 150 Edmund Street, Birmingham.
BIRMINGHAM CENTRAL 5191
Area ITA Channel Vision Sound Opening Date Population ITA Homes
Transmitter Frequency Frequency 000's 000's
Mc/s Mc/sLondon Croydon 9 194.75675 191.266 22nd Sep 1955 12,910 3,023
weekendsMidlands Lichfield 8 189.75 186.25 17th Feb 1956 8,850 1,765
weekdays
Directors
Sir Robert Renwick, Bt, KBE (Chairman); Norman Collins (Deputy Chairman); Lew Grade (Managing Director); Edward J Roth (Deputy Managing Director); JAL Drummond (Finance); The Earl of Bessborough; Ellis S Birk; Hugh Cudlipp, OBE; RPT Gibson; Prince Littler, CBE; Val Parnell; Charles Orr Stanley, CBE, Ll.D
Officers
JM Barham, FCA (Secretary); B Bibby (Production Facilities Controller); P Dorté, OBE (Midlands Controller); JF Gill, FCA (Group Accountant and Treasurer); M Gumpel (Director of Business Affairs); PJ Henry (Sales Director); L Lewis (Administration Controller); TC Macnamara (Technical Controller); S Mitchell (Chief Press Officer); K Rogers (Operations Controller); W Ward (Productions Controller).
Religious Advisers
The Rev. John Bebb (Roman Catholic); The Rev. Stephan Hopkinson (Anglican); The Rev. Caryl Micklem (Free Church).
Education
Sir John Materman (Chairman, Education Advisory Committee); James Cochrane Wykes (Senior Education Officer); W Hemingway (Schools Liaison Officer).
Staff
Total members of staff 1,379 (excluding ATV’s subsidiary companies). Production 622, Administration 289, Engineering 213, Sales and Research 83, Operations (presentation and films) 89, Accounts 62, Press and Public Relations 21. In addition, ATV employs some 3,300 artistes each year, as well as musicians and scriptwriters.
Visits to Studios
A limited number of tickets are available for audience shows. Applications, enclosing stamped addressed envelopes, should be made to the Ticket Office Supervisor, ATV Studios, Elstree, Borehamwood, Herts. The minimum age is sixteen.
Enquiries
Enquiries about artistes and programmes should be addressed to Viewer’s Correspondence, at ATV’s London or Midlands offices.
Submission of Scripts
Material required: 60-minute plays. These should be complete dialogue script of first form. Six- or seven-part children’s serials: completed dialogue script of first episode and detailed synopses of the remainder must be submitted. Unless Associated TeleVision has knowledge or experience of the writer’s work, no other form of submission will be considered. 30-minute situation and domestic comedies and documentaries are also in demand. There is very little demand for short plays, musicals, quiz games, panel shows, short stories and talks. All submissions should be addressed to The Script Editor.
Programme Journal
TV Times publishes separate editions for the London and Midlands areas giving details of the available programmes.
Studios
ELSTREE STUDIO CENTRE, Borehamwood, Herts (Elstree 6100). This 340,000 sq. ft. development is one of the most up-to-date centres of television production, studio and technical facilities. The working floor area of the studios total 31,680 sq. ft. as follows: Studio A, 80′ × 80′; Studio B, 84′ × 80′; Studio C, 116′ × 80′; Studio D 116′ × 80′. The technical facilities directly associated with these four studios total 26,736 sq. ft. Other premises include Studio Facilities (75,790 sq. ft.), Technical Facilities (20,043 sq. ft.), Transport and Workshop Facilities (40,951 sq. ft.), Administration and Rehearsal Rooms (81,500 sq. ft.) and Restaurant (16,500 sq. ft.).
WOOD GREEN TELEVISION STUDIO, Wood Green Empire, N.22. Working floor area some 4,250 sq. ft. Particularly suitable for large-audience shows with seating for 600.
FOLEY STREET (Britallian House) London W.1, containing ATV’s Master Control centre and a small studio of 814 sq. ft. used for presentation and some discussion programmes.
ALPHA TELEVISION STUDIOS, Aston, Birmingham, are owned jointly by ATV and ABC Television Ltd. There are three studios of 3,000 sq. ft., 1,200 sq. ft. and 380 sq. ft.
Technical Development
A great deal of the equipment installed in ATV’s Studios is fully transistorised. This includes pulse and vision distributing equipment employing semi-conductors throughout, and fully transistorised sound equipment. The studios are equipped for 405, 525, and 625 line standards.
Outside Broadcasts
ATV has four mobile control rooms, each with four cameras, and an additional two-camera unit. One of these control rooms is used in conjunction with a video-recording vehicle to form the International Mobile Recording Unit.
Programmes
ATV Productions include: News and News Magazines: Midlands News; Midland Montage; On the Braden Beat. Talks, Discussions and Documentaries: The Warning Voice; Dinner Party; Midland Farming; Midland Profile; special documentaries; Meeting of Minds; Forum; Look Around the Midlands. The Arts: Sir Kenneth Clark series. Science and Natural History: Threshold; It Can Happen Tomorrow; The Wonder of Man. Religion: About Religion; Church Services; Epilogues; A Box of Birds (for children). Children: drama serials; Seeing Sport; I Am Going To Be… Schools: French from France, Ici la France, Summing It Up, Auf deutsch, Chemistry for Sixth Forms. Adult Education: Mesdames, Messieurs… Plays and Drama Series: Drama ’63; regular contributions to the Play of the Week and Television Playhouse series; Emergency Ward 10; Harpers West One; Deadline Midnight; The Plane Makers. Variety, Light Entertainment and Music: Sunday Night at the London Palladium; Bruce’s Show; Startime; Arthur Haynes Show; Hancock; The Morecambe and Wise Show; Tommy Steele Show; Roy Castle Show; A Golden Hour. Entertainment Films: many TV film series produced by or in collaboration with ATV. Sport: wide sports coverage, especially on Saturday afternoons.
Camera crews in the studio. Granada
Operating the vision mixing panel in the production control room. ATV
An engineer in master control, the nerve centre of the technical area. Westward
Joystick controls are used by an engineer to balance the pictures. ABC
For the technical planner concerned with achieving national television coverage as economically as possible, London is the obvious point of departure. Within a radius of some forty miles from its heart live some twelve million people, almost one quarter of the total population of the United Kingdom. Topographically the London area presents no serious problem of propagation. It is relatively flat except for the North Downs some twenty-five miles to the south and the ridge of the Chiltern Hills some thirty miles to the west and north. Indeed, the difficulty is to find high ground close enough to the centre of London on which to construct a station. The choice rests between the 400 ft. ridges of Muswell Hill (Alexandra Palace) in North London and Sydenham (Crystal Palace) in South-East London.
Alexandra Palace was the BBC’s choice for their original Band I London station in 1935. Twenty years later, however, they were to move to a new station at Crystal Palace. In the interests of good planning the ITA decided to locate its first Band III station near this site, just a mile away on West Norwood Hill.
A suitable open space was found here for the construction of a small compact station which could be brought into operation with the least delay. The single 10 kW transmitter, the first Band III set constructed in this country, was a laboratory prototype and the aerial an experimental 8-stack omnidirectional vertically polarised array supported on a 200 ft. tower of virtually “stock” design. From this station on 22nd September 1955 the first programmes of Independent Television were transmitted. The effective radiated power was 60 kW (peak white vision), 15 kW (carrier sound). The potential population coverage was about 11 million people. After some months a second fully-engineered production 10 kW transmitter was installed as a standby. A little later, further equipment was installed to enable both sets of transmitters to be operated in parallel in order to double the station’s power.
It was realised that in due course the Croydon station must be given a higher tower and a new aerial system with directional characteristics tailored to give the optimum performance. Meanwhile, however, engineering effort was devoted to expanding the ITA network of stations to meet the fast-growing public demand for Independent Television programmes in other parts of the country. The completion of the BBC’s high tower at Crystal Palace allayed any fears that the mutual reflection of signals radiated from the two towers just a mile apart might be harmful to reception. Thus in February 1959 the Authority obtained Government approval to erect a higher tower and directional aerial at Croydon.
By the end of 1962 Croydon was transmitting from its slim new 500 ft. tower and radiating an effective power of about 400 kW directed to the north-west, with 5o to 100 kW e.r.p. in other directions, depending on the extent to which account had to be taken of the conflicting requirements of topography and co-channel interference with other ITA stations or with the television services of other countries. With its improved performance Croydon is bringing the programmes of Independent Television to a population of nearly 13 million in the London area, including some half a million viewers who have not before received any satisfactory ITV service.
Geographically, the siting of a station to serve the industrial Midlands proved fairly straightforward, because the service area of the BBC’s Band I station at Sutton Coldfield corresponded closely with that which the Authority also wished to achieve. High open ground in the area is scarce and, with reason, carefully protected. It was not therefore easy to find an acceptable site. A piece of land 500 ft. above sea level, about four miles north-east of the BBC station, was eventually secured. It lies near the Watling Street in the rural district of Lichfield, from which the station derives its name.
Initially, an available design of 450 ft. self-supporting steel tower was erected, carrying an omnidirectional aerial similar to the one used at Croydon but of twice the aperture. This enabled a service to be provided quickly. The station went into programme service on 17th February 1956 with a single 5 kW transmitter, giving an effective radiated power of 6o kW. A few months later the power was raised to 120 kW by paralleling two 5 kW sets into the split aerial. In November of the same year, after the main 20 kW transmitter had been installed, the power was raised to 200 kW e.r.p. This gave a population coverage of nearly 6.5 million within the o.25 mV/m contouur. From the start it was recognised that, because of the relatively low site, greater and more uniform coverage could be obtained with a higher mast and an aerial system with directional characteristics. Sufficient land was therefore acquired to permit this to be done later.
Early in 1961 it became possible to start the construction of a 1,000 ft. mast and an improved aerial. Both these were brought into service in July of the same year, thus allowing the original tower to be dismantled and re-erected for use at the Fremont Point station in the Channel Islands. The new aerial enabled the power radiated south towards Gloucester to be increased to 400 kW.
Towards East Anglia, however, the power had to be reduced to 100 kW to prevent harmful interference to viewers of the Netherlands Television Service on the Dutch coast. For this reason, the service to Midlands viewers living east of the station remained substantially unchanged. Over a semi-circle towards the north the radiated power was maintained at 200 kW. This was sufficient, with the higher aerial, to close the gaps between the service areas of Lichfield and the Winter Hill and Emley Moor stations. The effect of the new mast and aerial was a general all-round improvement in reception, both within the old service area and beyond. The predicted coverage is shown in the map opposite. The measured coverage has recently been completed and includes a population of 8.85 million within the 0.25 mV/m contour.
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