Tag: Elsie Otley

‘This is the West of England Home Service…’

‘This is the West of England Home Service.’ Three voices, familiar to listeners in the Forest of Dean and the Channel Islands, in Penzance and Swindon, in Weymouth and Southampton. Daily the three announcers of the BBC’s West Region — Hugh Shirreff, Elsie Otley, and Douglas Vaughan — identify over the air the programmes which originate in the west country. Concerts, plays, and features, talks, news bulletins, church services, broadcasts from farm and factory and village hall, programmes for children: a complete radio service in miniature, reflecting the life of seven English counties and the bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey.

‘This is the West of England Home Service.’

‘THIS IS THE WEST OF ENGLAND HOME SERVICE’ – Douglas Vaughan launches a West Region programme on the air.

But what exactly, from the listener’s point of view, do those words mean? What have they got to do with the London programme and the other Regions, with the Light Programme and the Third? Which broadcasts are ‘regional’ and what is the point of them? The answer given by West Region’s Controller, Gerald Beadle, is that the regional contribution is ‘one thread in the whole pattern of British broadcasting’. A thread which adds distinctive colour and emphasis, is insufficient to stand by itself, but gives richness and variety to the whole.

How then is the pattern made up, and where do the several threads fit in? British broadcasting starts as a national service. London, as the capital and cultural focus of the country, originates a continuous service of programmes intended to have a nation-wide appeal, to be as intelligible and pleasing to Yorkshiremen and Cornish-men as to Highlanders or men of Kent. Saturday Night Theatre and Twenty Questions and ITMA are designed for all listeners who have in common the simple fact of being British (or, wider still, of understanding the English language). This London programme is fed out to a network of Home Service transmitters throughout the United Kingdom. With its allied Services, the Light and the Third, it is the staple of Home listening.

But it is not enough to satisfy all our needs. Few people are content to be undifferentiated ‘British’ all the time. We each have our national interests and our local interests. We want sometimes to be Scotsmen and Welshmen and north-countrymen. Even if we look a bit standardized it is no use pretending that a ‘Geordie’, a Cornishman, and a ‘Norfolk dumpling’ have identical ideas and hobbies and interests.

‘GIVE US SOME TONE, SOUTHAMPTON’ – Testing lines with outside broadcast engineers in the region. Hour by hour Bristol Control Room feeds out programmes to the transmitters.

Bristol’s Engineer-in-Charge, Gerald Daly.

As the ‘national’ programme spreads out from London, therefore, it is modified and adapted to local audiences. The thread of regional broadcasting is woven into the final pattern. In each region the programme planners discard those items in the national service which are of least value locally and replace them with regional material. If they plan well, they offer their listeners a blend of national and local interest—neither insipidly cosmopolitan nor narrowly parochial.

And so through the day the Control Room engineers switch to and fro, from the London ‘pipe-line’ to local studios in Bristol or Plymouth, or to outside points where West Region engineers have set up temporary microphones. The transmitters at Start Point and Clevedon and Bartley take up the result and spread it from Portsmouth to the Scillies. And what comes out of your radio when you tune to 307 or 217 is the West of England Home Service, addressed to you as a Briton and a westcountryman — as both.

Overture and Beginners Please

During that last run Brian Tate checks his timing of the programme with a stop-watch, jots down notes of any last-minute alterations and corrections he wants to make. At the finish he is still a minute and a half over length. Cuts to make, therefore, and a final inquest on everyone’s performance. ‘Speech 8 on page 14 can go. Rex, we’ll shorten the music link there too — come out where we marked it earlier. And we must cue-in the effects more quickly — we were losing time on them.’

‘QUIET PLEASE’ – The red light flickers. Senior Announcer Hugh Shirreff prepares to announce the programme. Reginald Redman waits for his cus.

The crisp, clean scripts of the morning are now rumpled and scrawled with deletions, amendments, and strange hieroglyphics. Everyone is beginning to feel weary. The studio air is dry and smoky. Ruth is relieved to hear at last the words — ‘Let’s break now till transmission’. Out in the fresh air for a bit, then a meal in the canteen, a drink at the BBC club, and it is time to go back to the studio. Now for it.

‘ON POINT DUTY’ – In the announcer’s continuity studio Elsie Otley watches the flow of programmes, fills each gap, and takes over if a programme line fails. A split-second job in which every decision has to be a quick one.

Nine minutes to go. An engineer is testing the studio, checking each microphone point and plug with Control Room, watching for the flick of the red light as each link in the circuit is approved. ‘Leads at the back’, he murmurs, fingering the mike terminals. Flick. ‘Plug in the Wall.’ Flick. ‘The time by the studio clock is seven fifty-one, and eighteen seconds . . . nineteen . . . twenty . . .’ Flick. To a broadcaster that familiar ritual is as evocative as the call-boy’s ‘Overture and Beginners Please’ to an actor.

CANTEEN CONFERENCE – Across the canteen table yesterday’s programmes are discussed and tomorrow’s are debated. Celebrities from different spheres meet together: Freddy Grisewood (left) has a cup of tea with Mrs. Good, mother of the Bristol quads. Opposite them are Rosemary Colley and Hamilton Kennedy.

The last minutes tick away. Everyone is keyed up now. Tate says ‘Good luck. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll be listening,’ and retreats into the control-cubicle. Beside the green light on the studio wall a red light begins to flicker — signalling that the studio is about to become ‘live’. There is a hush, and the red light stops flickering, steadies. The announcer raises his script and leans slightly forward.

‘This is the West of England Home Service. . . .’

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