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Sheffield Cablevision


mickjj

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My Dad was a presenter (i think!!) on this and me and my brother and sister used to go to the studio on Matilda Street in sheffield to join in with Hullaballoo- a forerunner of todays childrens tv. Not sure how long it ran for as a station but I think you had to have a set top box so that you could recieve it.

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Hi Fellow SHs I vaguely remember some company running cables between all the houses on my street under the gutters but i can not ever recall any one using the service.

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Guest wisewoodowl

We had BRW (British Relay) TV in the early 70's.

As far as I know, customers rented TV's from the cable company who then supplied a TV signal via cable. I don't remember much about the local station other than it featured an "Indoor League" type programme of pub games between Sheffield pubs and WMC's.

I think that the company went bust. The infrastructure, small cable boxes with covers about 450x250mm, could be seen in the footways of Sheffield for years after.

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My parents had Sheffield Cable when they lived on Taplin Road.

The local stuff was pretty useless the only good feature was that apart from Yorkshire TV

you also got ATV midlands which for 2 years was the only place you could get to see Tiswas.

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I was the presenter/producer of this programme. My co presenter was called Ruth who was a teacher at the time. I worked on all sorts of programmes outside this. I have some videos still of the output and one day I'll post them somwhere. I went onto work freelance with radio Sheffield with Winton Cooper on his Saturday morning show.

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I was the presenter/producer of this programme. My co presenter was called Ruth who was a teacher at the time. I worked on all sorts of programmes outside this. I have some videos still of the output and one day I'll post them somwhere. I went onto work freelance with radio Sheffield with Winton Cooper on his Saturday morning show.

Please try to upload them somewhere, I for one would love to see them. I'm sure my brother and a friend of mine would too as they both worked for British Relay as TV Engineers

b.t.w.,You didn't work with a machine at Radio Sheffield called "Herbert" did you? If so LO2U lol

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I appeared on it when it visited my son's play group at the Clock Tower building at Firth Park in the mid 1970s to film the playgroup. We appeared on TV several times as it tended to do more repeats than the BBC at Xmas. I put my head down every time the camera panned my way so all you saw of me was a flash of long red hair holding a child on my lap doing the actions to the Wheels on the Bus..............

Lyn

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The pictures all all video stills taken from a reunion video I co-produced for a reunion party of as many people involved as we could find.

The pictures are of people like John Lane and John Lane (same jacket - no wardrobe budget!) with John Cornwell I think, anyway the person seated worked I think for the publicity department of Sheffield council.

The pictrure with the camera in shot has the ex Station manager John Brand in the shot along with the studio audience at the closedown, which was at the start of 1976, not 1977.

When you click on one of the photos it opens another image, that is a guy at a map, from the AA (road) (although we did consume lots of pop) He is called Frank Moss. The one of kids includes Ruth previously mentioned in a thread.

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Guest alan_taylor63

I lived on Penistone Rd next to Hillsborough Park and we had the cable fitted back in the mid 70's as did all our neighbours I think as a council experiment in social community TV. It was a right load of old rubbish even by the standards back then. I remember Hullabaloo soley because someone I knew at school regularly appeared on it as one of the extras, he used to go to the studio on a Saturday, and even as a child I knew it was rubbish. (Though maybe a kind of forerunner of Tiswas and even YouTube)

I now live near Hillsborough Park and still have the old cable connection in my living room, a strange square box with lots of parallel slots in it hidden behind my new LCD TV.

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I lived on Penistone Rd next to Hillsborough Park and we had the cable fitted back in the mid 70's as did all our neighbours I think as a council experiment in social community TV. It was a right load of old rubbish even by the standards back then. I remember Hullabaloo soley because someone I knew at school regularly appeared on it as one of the extras, he used to go to the studio on a Saturday, and even as a child I knew it was rubbish. (Though maybe a kind of forerunner of Tiswas and even YouTube)

I now live near Hillsborough Park and still have the old cable connection in my living room, a strange square box with lots of parallel slots in it hidden behind my new LCD TV.

1976 and Dykes Hall Road, we had Cable.

Penistone Road, Taplin, Dykes Hall - was this a Hillsborough experiment ?

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Not an experiment as far as TV signals go. Cable, British Relay provided service to places where the might of Emley Moor could not reach with its transmissions. As Sheffield is relatively low down in a bowl like situation, it was the only way in the late 50's that TV signals could be received. It went on to be developed to change to 625 lines, the standard we have today and then inthe late 60's went colour. Crosspool repeater only allowed some of these homes to receive signals when it started in the late 60's

It passed 100,000 homes approx 1/5th of the housing stock in Sheffield. It had an agreement with the council known as the blaock tarrif agreement I think. That way all the 'new' flats and council houses were prewired with the multipair cable. A 4 pair cable that had the capacity of 4 radio channels and 4 TV channels. It's hard to remember but in those days, TV finished just after midnight and there were only 3 channels BBC1, BBC2 and ITV (Yorkshire). British relay in Shefield had over 30,000 subscribers and mainly rental TV's. Assuming 2.6 people per house, that meant 1/5th of the City's population at the time received their TV via cable.

So que Cablevision. The government of the day allowed a local TV channel to be created. It had to serve the community and had very little budget. It started with a staff of just 7 and when it ended had been allowed to carry adverts to subsidise the income. The staff then had risen to 15, with a whole team of volunteers. The programme's content could only be with a Sheffield bent and had to be approved by the home office 1 month in advance, a Miss Wombwell was the person there.

Cablevision in Sheffield was just one of 5 in the country that put out programmes. It produced around 1 hours original material each day and had a repeat of the previous days output for shift workers at 11 and again at 3.

To produce so much TV in conventional broadcast terms would have needed a crew of 3 or 4 hundred. So it's not surprising that some programmes were less than top notch. But we did do some ground breaking and innovative stuff.

British Relay got took over by Llyods and Scotish insurance in 1975 and along with I believe politics, looked at its 'profits' and decided after just 4 months of taking adverts the station would close.

It was to the credit of British Relay that it was started in the first place.

Finally, -for now, the network that carried the Cablevision signal, the 4th pair rf Channel, had been used in the 60's to carry a pay TV experiment and after the closure it carried ATV an out of area signal. Not sure what happened to the network, it had lots of valves in it...KT88's and the like

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Guest alan_taylor63

Yeah, thanks for the technical info Malc.

It's so long ago and I didn't mean to be disrespectful as I see you were involved in its production. We had a black and white TV at the time and everything in retrospect looked rubbish! It certainly was innovative and as I pointed out it was a forerunner to other more mainstream programming.

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No offence taken. It was great fun to be involved and paid (lowly) for doing it. I started as a volunteer, the station couldn't have run for so long without the dedication of the many people who freely gave their time. It gave me a whole career and an experience you couldn't get today. There is so much rubbish on the box these days. I do have as I said in an earlier thread have a complete programme, a christmas special we shot in October 1975, that was transmitted in Dec 1975, just before we closed down. I will get that onto a site one day. This has Russ Abbot and the Black Abbots appearing at Baileys.....

I do feel so for the guys in the BBC right now, who are employed in Radio 6 and the other asian network they are going to close, it's not a nice feeling. I was redundant at the start of 1976, but luckily stepped right into another job, they won't be able to do that now.

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No offence taken. It was great fun to be involved and paid (lowly) for doing it. I started as a volunteer, the station couldn't have run for so long without the dedication of the many people who freely gave their time. It gave me a whole career and an experience you couldn't get today. There is so much rubbish on the box these days. I do have as I said in an earlier thread have a complete programme, a christmas special we shot in October 1975, that was transmitted in Dec 1975, just before we closed down. I will get that onto a site one day. This has Russ Abbot and the Black Abbots appearing at Baileys.....

I do feel so for the guys in the BBC right now, who are employed in Radio 6 and the other asian network they are going to close, it's not a nice feeling. I was redundant at the start of 1976, but luckily stepped right into another job, they won't be able to do that now.

Okay this is a bit of a long shot to say the least but I did wonder if anyone remembers a particular broadcast in the early to mid seventies. The crew from Cablevision came and interviewed a gang of young lads at a local adventure playground I use to go to on Pearl Street in Sharrow, Sheffield. I remember chatting to the guy holding a microphone in my face about the things we got up to on the playground and after going home to tell my mum the news that her little boy was going to be on telly, she took me on the bus all the way over to the other end of town where my posh auntie lived (and had Cablevision) at Southey Green, Sheffield. As we sat down to watch it, within a few minutes sure enough up I came to the mike with my mop of curly black hair and scruffy face and said a few nice things about the playground. It was smiles all round in my auntie’s house at the time. Fame at last. That was until I climbed down from the small platform and not realising the camera was still on me, I turned to a couple of other lads waiting to get up and have their say and told them, in no uncertain terms, to f%*& off! …Turned out not to be such a proud moment after all. lol.

If anyone knows if film of old programmes like this one will have been saved or if it’s possible to view them again, I love to see that moment again, it was priceless.

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Okay this is a bit of a long shot to say the least but I did wonder if anyone remembers a particular broadcast in the early to mid seventies. The crew from Cablevision came and interviewed a gang of young lads at a local adventure playground I use to go to on Pearl Street in Sharrow, Sheffield. I remember chatting to the guy holding a microphone in my face about the things we got up to on the playground and after going home to tell my mum the news that her little boy was going to be on telly, she took me on the bus all the way over to the other end of town where my posh auntie lived (and had Cablevision) at Southey Green, Sheffield. As we sat down to watch it, within a few minutes sure enough up I came to the mike with my mop of curly black hair and scruffy face and said a few nice things about the playground. It was smiles all round in my auntie’s house at the time. Fame at last. That was until I climbed down from the small platform and not realising the camera was still on me, I turned to a couple of other lads waiting to get up and have their say and told them, in no uncertain terms, to f%*& off! …Turned out not to be such a proud moment after all. lol.

If anyone knows if film of old programmes like this one will have been saved or if it’s possible to view them again, I love to see that moment again, it was priceless.

Welcome to Sheffield History bbwn.

We will have to see what we can come up with on this one.

But lets get this straight,

1 )

Swearing on television and publically digraced in front of your own family for it :o

2 )

Then, dispite the disgrace and embarassment, you want to find it and watch it again! :blink:

If it was in the public domain and we found it would we be able to post it on a nice family site like this :unsure:

I'm sure we will try our best on this one lol

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Hi,

Sadly I can't remember this episode, but I CAN SAY that the video has suffered the bulk erasure in the sky. I have all the footage that was salvagable and your particular bit wasn't/isn't there.....

Tape was a high running cost and we had to re-record over the tapes. They were only kept for 3 months unless by accident there were kept longer. We did have some stuff we kept on a reel, but I never came accross that tape. It will by now have suffered 'long chain polymissation (knack**ed!) where ever it lays.

We had some classic stuff on there, one of a guy who in the '74 power cuts was sleeping with a couple of 6 foot boa constrictors, to keep them warm. When we were interviewing him in the studio, the hot lights got the snake restless and it did a number 2 on the guys best whistle and flute. When we played the tape back, we also heard a noise just after that , when we slowed it down we could hear it was the snake passing wind!. When the presenter, John (Piggy) Lane, said 'can we kill it', the owner thought we meant the snake!, not the recording..... Lost forever.

Back to your question sorry that it isn't there. .....

Malc

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Hi,

Sadly I can't remember this episode, but I CAN SAY that the video has suffered the bulk erasure in the sky. I have all the footage that was salvagable and your particular bit wasn't/isn't there.....

Tape was a high running cost and we had to re-record over the tapes. They were only kept for 3 months unless by accident there were kept longer. We did have some stuff we kept on a reel, but I never came accross that tape. It will by now have suffered 'long chain polymissation (knack**ed!) where ever it lays.

We had some classic stuff on there, one of a guy who in the '74 power cuts was sleeping with a couple of 6 foot boa constrictors, to keep them warm. When we were interviewing him in the studio, the hot lights got the snake restless and it did a number 2 on the guys best whistle and flute. When we played the tape back, we also heard a noise just after that , when we slowed it down we could hear it was the snake passing wind!. When the presenter, John (Piggy) Lane, said 'can we kill it', the owner thought we meant the snake!, not the recording..... Lost forever.

Back to your question sorry that it isn't there. .....

Malc

was looking at the photo links originally posted by mickjj both my brother and sister (tsavo's) children were on the last clip. Happy days :P

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Guest plonko51

Does anyone remember when Sheffield had its own film channel - 21 years ahead of Sky Movies? PTV piped movies into people's homes via British Relay cable and cost six old shillings (30p) to watch a scheduled film. We lived on Winn Gardens estate (from new) with a British Relay TV (I'm sure was supplied by Wigfalls) that gave us ITV as well as BBC for the first time. At our previous house we could only receive BBC (that's just the one channel) and had to watch Yogi Bear and Robin Hood at a friend's house over a mile away. We now had 2 or was it 3 TV channels (another poster mentioned ATV) and I am sure also some radio stations (i think Radio Sheffield in 67 but not certain on that one) In 1969 we were able to watch Granada when Yorkshire TV was taken off air when Emley Moor collapsed and then as this post has charted, Sheffield Cablevision was born. When you consider the current government's plans for local TV, you can see how far sighted John Brand and his team were in making local TV happen - 40 years ago.

Anyway back to the PTV film channel. We had a box connected to the TV set that had a coin slot and to watch the films you inserted 3 two shilling coins. I have no idea what happened to the money accumulated in the box. Did someone call round and empty it? I was too young to take much notice of how it worked. It seems incredible now with all the technology that provides movies on demand even on our mobile phone to think it was quite an occasion - so much so we would invite the neighbours round to watch (not sure if they split the cost of the film). We would select the film from the PTV programme booket - see the photobucket album for pages from my only surving programme from 1968) and be ready to insert the 6 bob, which I guess must have been a fair amount to pay when it only cost 5 shillings to go the the Pictures and see the latest release and in COLOUR. We did not have a colour TV till the early 70's so all these films would have been viewed in black and white. Amazing when you think about it.

Here is a link to the PTV programme guide for October 1968.

http://s168.photobucket.com/albums/u191/plonko51/British%20Relay%20PTV%20film%20channel/

It would be interesting to hear if anyone else remembers PTV.

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