Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
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Post by Sparky on Jun 3, 2021 13:28:07 GMT
Industrial Unrest at an ITV station? Blimey that never happens.... In that particular edition of Deadline, I remember a brief shot of a cartoon someone has stuck on the office wall at YTV. The caption was something like, "After years of loyal service, Albert was disappointed with the manner in which he was made redundant" and showed a chap opening an envelope with a note inside with just two words... the second word being "Off". You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards.
When Carlton cut 300 jobs - they sat everyone down in a Studio in front of the big screen and showed them a short film - virtually telling them they had lost their jobs. (Just as tactful as Boris's "You're all going to die - Happy Easter" speech of March 2020) Any who didn't make the grand showing were sent a VHS video to watch in the comfort of their homes - while they still had a VHS recorder and a home that is.
John Cleese sent Carlton a letter saying "F**k off you jumped up caterers"
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Post by Dirty Epic on Jun 3, 2021 14:16:13 GMT
In that particular edition of Deadline, I remember a brief shot of a cartoon someone has stuck on the office wall at YTV. The caption was something like, "After years of loyal service, Albert was disappointed with the manner in which he was made redundant" and showed a chap opening an envelope with a note inside with just two words... the second word being "Off". You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards.
When Carlton cut 300 jobs - they sat everyone down in a Studio in front of the big screen and showed them a short film - virtually telling them they had lost their jobs. (Just as tactful as Boris's "You're all going to die - Happy Easter" speech of March 2020) Any who didn't make the grand showing were sent a VHS video to watch in the comfort of their homes - while they still had a VHS recorder and a home that is.
John Cleese sent Carlton a letter saying "F**k off you jumped up caterers"
That's class Sparks. They should have given him a gig to develop comedy at Carlton can't have been any worse than much of what they did develop after picking off the carcasses of Thames and Central!
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Nightfly
Screenwriter
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Post by Nightfly on Jun 3, 2021 14:20:05 GMT
In that particular edition of Deadline, I remember a brief shot of a cartoon someone has stuck on the office wall at YTV. The caption was something like, "After years of loyal service, Albert was disappointed with the manner in which he was made redundant" and showed a chap opening an envelope with a note inside with just two words... the second word being "Off". You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards.
When Carlton cut 300 jobs - they sat everyone down in a Studio in front of the big screen and showed them a short film - virtually telling them they had lost their jobs. (Just as tactful as Boris's "You're all going to die - Happy Easter" speech of March 2020) Any who didn't make the grand showing were sent a VHS video to watch in the comfort of their homes - while they still had a VHS recorder and a home that is.
John Cleese sent Carlton a letter saying "F**k off you jumped up caterers" It's as bad in radio. There was a major commercial station with studios up until the 90s which looked out onto a big square in the city centre and had huge 10 foot photos of the presenters in the tall windows. One guy found out he had just done his last show when he looked up from the street to find a couple of guys removing his photo and replacing it with his replacement !
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Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
Posts: 2,784
Online Status:
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Post by Sparky on Jun 3, 2021 18:09:15 GMT
You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards.
When Carlton cut 300 jobs - they sat everyone down in a Studio in front of the big screen and showed them a short film - virtually telling them they had lost their jobs. (Just as tactful as Boris's "You're all going to die - Happy Easter" speech of March 2020) Any who didn't make the grand showing were sent a VHS video to watch in the comfort of their homes - while they still had a VHS recorder and a home that is.
John Cleese sent Carlton a letter saying "F**k off you jumped up caterers" It's as bad in radio. There was a major commercial station with studios up until the 90s which looked out onto a big square in the city centre and had huge 10 foot photos of the presenters in the tall windows. One guy found out he had just done his last show when he looked up from the street to find a couple of guys removing his photo and replacing it with his replacement ! Not that well up on Radio Politics - apart from all that at Radio 1 in the 90s. As I understood it, most - if not all Independent Radio Stations are owned by one or two large broadcast companies - all the music is played from via a central server - so whatever station you listen to, you end up with variants of the same playlist.
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Post by Sam Tyler on Jun 3, 2021 20:46:40 GMT
You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards. That takes me back a few years! Such issues aren't just related to the TV and radio industries. As some here on the forum know I have worked in the rail industry for many years (as have others on here) and in a previous role we were enforced at one stage to go through a customer service instruction where we were instructed that "Customer service" should be at the forefront of everything we do and that nothing else mattered. We were continually bombarded with "The customer comes first". Whilst I would agree up to a point I rebelled and stated that rail safety comes first because if you don't have a safe railway then you won't have paying customers (or living ones either!). Sadly that didn't wash with the powers that were in place then and they had a word in my 'shell-like' to ensure that I toed the corporate line, basically saying that the customers took priority over everything and everybody even company staff. To cut a long story short it wasn't that long afterwards that the following appeared on numerous notice boards around the place: Now I'm not sure how they got there ( ) but they were torn down, replaced, torn down and replaced again before being torn down a final time whereupon a missive was issued. Sam.
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Sparky
Producer
Status? Would that be Credit or in Society?
Posts: 2,784
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Post by Sparky on Jun 4, 2021 6:48:37 GMT
You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards. Sadly that didn't wash with the powers that were in place then and they had a word in my 'shell-like' to ensure that I toed the corporate line, basically saying that the customers took priority over everything and everybody even company staff. Well done Sam for keeping your cool. If it had been me, I'd have been out on my backside for sounding off.
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Post by Sam Tyler on Jun 4, 2021 14:30:58 GMT
Sadly that didn't wash with the powers that were in place then and they had a word in my 'shell-like' to ensure that I toed the corporate line, basically saying that the customers took priority over everything and everybody even company staff. Well done Sam for keeping your cool. If it had been me, I'd have been out on my backside for sounding off. For another couple of reasons it wasn't much longer after that for the second time in my entire career I just quit the job. Sam.
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Cartman
Producer
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Post by Cartman on Jun 4, 2021 16:57:13 GMT
I quit a job once, this cruddy legal expenses claims place. It was just unworkable, they were obsessed to an OCD degree with data protection, to the point where you weren't allowed to have any paper on your desk, and you had to hand your phone's in and they were out in a locked drawer just in case you took photos of files. I got moaned at once for being 3 minutes late back from lunch.
I lasted 6 weeks there, to quote Derek and Clive it was "the worst job I ever had !"
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Post by Dirty Epic on Jun 4, 2021 17:46:21 GMT
You should have seen the noticeboards throughout the Central TV studios in Birmingham in 1997. They were full of cartoons, innuendo and notices from shop stewards. That takes me back a few years! Such issues aren't just related to the TV and radio industries. As some here on the forum know I have worked in the rail industry for many years (as have others on here) and in a previous role we were enforced at one stage to go through a customer service instruction where we were instructed that "Customer service" should be at the forefront of everything we do and that nothing else mattered. We were continually bombarded with "The customer comes first". Whilst I would agree up to a point I rebelled and stated that rail safety comes first because if you don't have a safe railway then you won't have paying customers (or living ones either!). Sadly that didn't wash with the powers that were in place then and they had a word in my 'shell-like' to ensure that I toed the corporate line, basically saying that the customers took priority over everything and everybody even company staff. To cut a long story short it wasn't that long afterwards that the following appeared on numerous notice boards around the place: Now I'm not sure how they got there ( ) but they were torn down, replaced, torn down and replaced again before being torn down a final time whereupon a missive was issued. Sam. Like it Sam. I think I might send one to my boss...
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Nightfly
Screenwriter
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Post by Nightfly on Jun 18, 2021 12:13:23 GMT
Here's something that might interest the techies, a showreel which is more like a documentary from 1980 from Molinare. They were a major producer of TV commercials and pop videos and the reel features clips from Gary Numan, Suzi Quatro, The Rezillos and Blondie. I believe Molinare are still around.
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