BBC100: Epilogue

Right at the beginning of this project, I gave a bit of context about who these pieces were originally written for. It’s worth adding a bit more clarity to this: it wasn’t actually for the BBC themselves, but rather one of their many service providers.¹

But the end result is the same: it was meant to be read by fellow colleagues in the broadcast industry, rather than archive TV nerds. Of course there are some who are both, including yours truly. But I couldn’t assume a huge level of knowledge about the intricacies of old television. Indeed, I couldn’t really assume that everybody reading it was in the United Kingdom.

With that in mind, here’s what I wrote as my introduction to this set of articles, when it was originally published.²

Working in television sometimes requires a special kind of double thinking. It’s both extremely important, and not important at all.

Take a typical Sunday night, when I sit down to direct a busy shift on BBC One. Firstly: there can be millions of viewers watching, so you’d better get it right. Secondly: thinking about that too much will make you so nervous that you can’t actually talk, let alone direct a television channel. For that reason, during huge events like a recent overrunning FA Cup Final, there were only a few people watching in my head… and they were all sitting right next to me. I’ll only think of the rest of the country on the train ride home, thanks.

And yet there is something special about sitting in BBC One’s pres suite, known as NC1. You are essentially transmitting a service which has run uninterrupted since 1946, when television returned to the UK after the Second World War. That’s over 75 years of continuous service. The weight of history occasionally hits you when you sit in that chair, whether you’re broadcasting the latest events from Ukraine, or Homes Under the Hammer.

NC2 is different, of course. BBC2 was launched in 1964, so that’s nearly 60 years. A mere drop in the ocean.

Of course, the BBC is even older than the above would suggest, when you take into account pre-war television broadcasting, and the early days of radio. In fact, 2022 is the BBC’s centenary year. And while I might try and ignore the BBC’s long history during stressful moments of directing, it’s nice to recognise it in some way here.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at some of my favourite programmes the BBC has made over the last few decades. Some of them are still well-known; others are less so. All of them mean a great deal to me, and stand as the reason why I’m proud to be a tiny part of this particular thread of history.

Because none of these programmes would have been seen by the nation, without people doing jobs like ours. And whatever part of the industry we work in, the same is still true today.

Reading it back, it does somewhat seem to be a rallying cry, doesn’t it?

But I post that introduction here because I want you to know. That despite the nonsense that inevitably happens, despite how stressful things get… there are people there who understand that when you’re in that chair, you’re part of something which stretches back over the decades. That your job is, as far as humanely possible, to protect something important.

And if that comes across as vaguely pompus, I’ll choose it over not giving a damn.

1. This isn’t a secret. ↩

2. Lightly edited to remove a specific detail. ↩

Read more about...

bbc100