I suspect, being engineers not historians, they just thought of it as a lot of old paper cluttering the place up which they rarely if ever consulted.  And anyway there's no room for paper in the all-digital New Broadcasting House

-----Original Message-----
From: The History of the BBC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angela Smith
Sent: 22 August 2013 12:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways

Burning an archive????  No!!!!!  I've just been interviewed by local radio about the use of exclamation marks, so I do apologise but it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to express my horror at the destruction of an archive.  In 50 years' time we are going to be left with nothing at all to archive as it will all be electronic and thus deleted without a thought or even a match.   Might the BBC not consider donating such archives to academic centres for minions such as me to happily root through?  Failing that, preserve Nigel cryogenically for defrosting at some future date when a similar query arises?

Yours in despair,

Angela

Dr Angela Smith
Reader in Language and Culture
University of Sunderland
http://sunderlandcultureresearch.blogspot.co.uk/
http://sunderland.academia.edu/AngelaSmith
________________________________________
From: The History of the BBC [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Nick Higham [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 August 2013 12:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways

My pleasure.

Nigel tells me we could have checked his memory against the written records until a few months ago: BBC News Location Facilities burnt their paper archive before the move from TV Centre to New Broadcasting House.

N

-----Original Message-----
From: The History of the BBC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angela Smith
Sent: 22 August 2013 11:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways

Oh - the wonder of the long memory over the instant and inaccurate internet!

Many thanks for getting back to me with such a useful answer, Nick.

Best wishes,

Angela

Dr Angela Smith
Reader in Language and Culture
University of Sunderland
http://sunderlandcultureresearch.blogspot.co.uk/
http://sunderland.academia.edu/AngelaSmith
________________________________________
From: The History of the BBC [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Nick Higham [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 August 2013 11:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways

Hi Angela

Nigel Ealand, a BBC News location manager with a long memory, tells me signals were customarily brought back to the UK by national telcos (BT and its equivalents, like France Telecom).  He tells me (from memory) that the Paris studio in the 1980s had a coaxial cable permanently installed to a local TV facilities company which in turn had a permanent connection to France Telecom; FT would have sent the signal back to BT either via satellite, using one of their permanent ground stations, or using a cross-channel cable.  The BBC in those days didn't have its own satellite receiving dishes.

OBs from remote sites in France or Belgium would most probably have used the same technology as in the UK: landbased microwave links.  In 1992 Nigel helped organise the live coverage of the Maastricht conference.  For the live coverage he set up a relay of microwave stations (in the UK we used Land Rovers with microwave dishes on the top of extendable masts pointed at the nearest BT microwave receiver -- on the Post Office Tower or its smaller regional equivalents) to get the signal to the Dutch or Belgian telco.  Again the local phone company routed the signal onto BT, either from a satellite ground station or via cable.

Audio from the London studio would be routed to the reporter-presenter on the ground via an ordinary phone circuit, set up by the telco.

The other alternative was to take a "fly-away" satellite dish -- which travelled in several flight cases and was assembled on the spot.  That meant the BBC wasn't reliant on the overseas telco (though still reliant on BT at the UK end), but fly-aways were cumbersome and expensive to transport.

Hope that helps


Nick Higham
Correspondent, BBC News
W1 NBH 00A (Ground floor)
BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London W1A 1AA
+44 7850 929588

-----Original Message-----
From: The History of the BBC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angela Smith
Sent: 22 August 2013 10:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BBC-HISTORY] Outside broadcast and live two-ways

I wonder if anyone could enlighten me about the technology used by the BBC in the mid 1980s?  I am trying to find out how widespread the use of satellite broadcasting was in the case of live two-ways.  For example, would this have been the technology used to broadcast a live two-way between a BBC studio in Paris or Brussels and the London studios?  And would the same technology have been used to broadcast live two-ways that are outdoors in places such as Belgium, Holland and France around this time?

Many thanks!

Angela


Dr Angela Smith
Reader in Language and Culture
University of Sunderland
http://sunderlandcultureresearch.blogspot.co.uk/
http://sunderland.academia.edu/AngelaSmith


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