BBC News - behind the scenes (26th Oct 1989)

Following a typical day in the life of a BBC newsreader (Michael Buerk). It seems like a slow news day but then the Chancellor of the Exchequer resigns. Look out for the reaction to the minister chosen to replace him.
Also look out for Michael quacking!
Clips shown in the programme 'Open Air' from 1989 - repackaged and shown in 'Short Cuts' made by BBC Education in 1996 - and repeated here within the BBC Learning Zone on BBC2 in 1999.

[@97channel]

It's truly outstanding how Michael Buerk casually strolls into the one o'clock news studio with only five minutes to air, is given an absolute cul-de-sac of a show to present, has frantic messages in his ear, whilst reading the top story, about how he's about to crash into a brick wall because nothing is ready to run, and a doesn't even break into a sweat. The viewer would just never know. A professional of the highest order at work, very impressive.

[@closetotheedit1561]

Well, clearly a sh*t-show going down on the 4th floor in RCR! 😬

[@moshodi100]

Agreed

[@davidevans3227]

is it a bit different now? thought i heard someone talking about how amazing these live directors were, but it's not like that now?

[@juliam.mallen9019]

Beautifully articulated 👌

[@sporkfindus4777]

He's in the thick of it before actually presenting. As a kid I thought that Michael Buerk WAS the news. He was the most authoritative presenter.

[@smokerlad]

Michael Buerk, what a legend

[@elbecko7969]

I always thought Michael Buerk was the most serious, authoritative news presenter.

[@ajs41]

Agree 100%. Still listen to him on The Moral Maze on Radio 4.

[@RexRobins-z6y]

He was the King of the News in my eyes and never bettered, and yes he's still great and commanding on The Moral Maze.

[@andydavy99]

'Charisma' was the DVE (Digital Video Effects) device in use.

[@Robert_Manners]

Yes it was the newest tool after quantel video editor in the early 1980's

[@elbecko7969]

This is mental!! I can't believe how fast-paced and pressurised the whole process is, and yet on screen it's silky smooth and polished. Well, it was in the 80s and 90s. Now they make balls-ups more often. I suppose there's no threat of Norden's Laughter File. Fantastic to see Michael Buerke preparing in amongst the team rather than lounging around or being a prima donna. He was one of THE news presenters.

[@lipkinasl]

There have been several references to the director's instruction "zoom 5 and animate charisma". Zoom 5 means Camera 5 zoom in and animate charisma means press the animate button on the digital video effects machine called charisma. If you look at what happens in the small image showing transmission in the box, you'll see the effects occurring. The programme starts on VT (video tape), finishing with an all white screen, the director calls MIX, to gently merge in the charisma generated image of the white from VT spliced with the feed from camera 5 showing red desk and presenter. They then perform a pre-programmed zoom (yes they had robot cameras in the news studio even in those days) and a pre-programmed charisma generated wipe out of the VT, the effect looks like the camera is flying in from above, the reality is the camera just did a zoom and someone did some very careful pre-programming of digital effects into the charisma machine............ pretty hi-tech stuff in those days, especially in live TV. The next animate charisma cue, pulls a played in VT out of the TV screen with the logo on behind the presenter during the headlines...... also looks very clever stuff, but easy if your camera can always be guranteed to be in the same and correct position (a benefit of using robot cameras). Hope that explains it to everyone!!

[@martinjohnston4274]

+lipkinasl and before we had 'Charisma' there was the dreaded 'E-Flex' !! ;)

[@robertbilling6266]

I designed a lot of the workings of Charisma. It was intended for on-air use, once it was set up you could simply press one of 40 preset buttons, wait for the green light then hit TAKE or move the transition lever and off it went.

[@mrb.5610]

And a 'ped down' of the camera as well. You could set shots on a memory system and it could move between them quite cleverly so that all the moves - pan, tilt, zoom etc - would start and finish at the same time to give a smooth transition.

[@billyh88uk]

Judging by the logo at the top left, this programme was still being repeated as recently as the late 1990s, which seems astonishingly late given how quickly technology changed during that time - even by 1999 this would have seemed ancient history.

[@kyle8952]

​@PeckyThePigeon There's no monitors in the video, those are terminals for a mainframe computer. They're also doing linear tape-to-tape video editing. Both of these technologies were completely ancient history by 1999, replaced by networked PCs and video editing done non-linear on computers instead of tape.

[@peterwilliamskelhorn6675]

@@andymerrett the news bulletins were from the 80s (1pm 6pm and 9pm) but shown with bbc Learning Zone in the 90s (i think)

[@ajs41]

I don't think this would have looked particularly out of date in 1999.

[@danyoutube7491]

The technology wouldn't necessarily have changed much - if something works well and people are familiar with it, there is little incentive to update to something that might cause unforseen problems, and I wouldn't be surprised if the tech and process behind the late 90s news reports looked little different. That's why it's only in recent years that, for example, the US department in charge of nuclear weapons stopped using floppy disks. But in any case, even if they had moved on from the technology in this video by the late 90s, it could still be of interest to viewers who wouldn't know what things looked like behind the scenes.

[@HighTen_Melanie]

Amazing work behind the scenes. Must have been even more challenging before mobile phones and the internet.

[@ryansmyth7703]

well the internet made everything easier but mobile phones weren't really an issue. the BBC had a very extensive phone system with a telephone on virtually every desk. When out filming a report, they would have used radio (walkie-talkies) to communicate, which they still do today.

[@ajs41]

@@ryansmyth7703 Although loads of people in central London had mobile phones in 1989 anyway. I remember using one that year because my mum was working as a GP in the West Midlands and they got handed one when on call. It was simply known as "The Vodafone".

[@johnking5174]

Thursday 26th October 1989 - Apparently they had to delay the broadcast of Blackadder Goes Forth episode "Plan E" that night, which was due to air at 9.30pm, but was shifted to a later slot due to the breaking news of the day.

[@heene]

2:43 Michael Buerk spoke too soon and got his wish for a busy day!

[@flyc3]

A sad time nowadays when the viewer is encouraged to gather the news for the channel. The internet, social media and rolling news has tarnished what was once a quality, trustworthy, unbiased corporation.

[@mided2119]

I was just over a year old when this was broadcast. Thanks for this.

[@fraserkatie]

Brillaint! It's great to hear and see what happens in the gallery with a programme.

[@sunkkist]

Amazing insight, simply riveting. I wish they had also filmed one when Thatcher resigned. Mark Damazer is pretty extraordinary, fully on top of it, delegates all the tasks and then: -Right, scatter on that! Also pretty revealing is the team's reaction to John Major's appointment - which gives you some semblance of the BBC's confidence in his credentials to lead the Treasury.

[@closetotheedit1561]

Mark D was a w**nker

[@RBenjo21]

The Biased Bolsheviks at it again! Impartiality, eh!?

[@michaelwincott]

@@RBenjo21 shush, you silly person.

[@Soulspoon1]

Fascinating watch, thinking on their feet

[@anthonyglee1710]

Amazing how focused these professional journalists are, not reliant on Twitter or Facebook. This news article was about running around London.

[@clarissamcpigeon7857]

Nigel Lawson was replaced with some guy named John Major, and the rest is history.

[@video99couk]

These days if a key figure in the government quits, it's hardly newsworthy. If we can even call Johnson and Cummings a government.

[@angelacooper2661]

I remember both Messrs Lawson and Major. Here I was nineteen and old enough to vote in any General Election (the last one in 1987 I was seventeen and so a year too young to vote!)

[@applemask]

Major had only months earlier become Foreign Secretary, more or less out of nowhere.

[@johnking5174]

He started off in 1981 as a PPS to Patrick Mayhew and Tim Raison at the Home Office. Then promoted to assistant chief whip in 1983, and then promoted to Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Dept of Health in 1985, and then promoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987, and then Foreign Secretary in 1989, before a quick stab at Chancellor in 1989, a rapid succession of constant promotions in the space of 9 years, so hardly out of nowhere.

[@applemask]

@@johnking5174 As far as normal people are concerned.

[@frazzleface753]

Live TX news when so much can go wrong, and it's testament to the beeb that it rarely did.

[@javiergomez9970]

Andy Taylor is the announcer when the 9 o clock news starts

[@WorldNews92]

@Visonu When he said: "the former Leader House and Chief Secretary", he meant Biffen was the former Leader Of The House and a former Chief Secretary, rather than being the current Chief Secretary who had previously been Leader.

[@GorilieVR]

Equal parts exhilarating and exasperating 😅

[@2001JamesTV]

Couple of shots of people smoking in the newsroom there, seems quite shocking it was still allowed at late as 1989!

[@solojinglesradio1]

One presenter, presenting two editions at same day? and not recorded

[@TheZacDJ]

Brought back some memories seeing them all working on BASYS terminals - the first newsroom computer system to be deployed across the BBC. It looks old and clunky by today's standards, it ran on its own proprietary system, and all it did was take in the wire services and provided a very basic 'word processor' for writing scripts. We didn't get PCs (running Windows and ENPS)) at BBC GLR until about 1998. ENPS itself is itself now being replaced.

[@OC35]

Zac Daunt-Jones I worked at ITN which also used BASYS. I believe they actually bought the company. A number of their staff moved to ITN.

[@TheZacDJ]

Yes, funnily enough now you mention it, I think ITN did buy BASYS. I know that BASYS was eventually bought by AVID and if you use Avids Newsroom computer system it does look very similar to BASYS.

[@Fedaykin24]

One thing of interest, this was a slow news day (albeit it got exciting). This is before the world of 24 hour rolling news! Gives a real idea of the problem that 24 hour rolling news presents in an editorial sense!

[@sillygoose635]

Uhh... CNN was only 9 years old and it's sister network CNN Headline News was only 7.

[@baseballfan99]

Stevie A more pertinent point to the U.K. was that Sky News had started earlier in the year. However most people still watched Network News at that time.

[@mrb.5610]

Up to a point. The thing about rolling news is there's no deadlines -if something doesn't make its slot, run it later. Not the same with a single bulletin - if you were cutting a package, it had to make its slot. That puts on a lot more pressure.

[@dirtymashups33]

... and then 2 weeks later, they were all on flights to West Berlin ...

[@stormendless552]

0:59: Intro

[@johnnyballenatl]

Over on ITV...who anchored News At Ten that night (and did they extend their broadcast like the BBC)?

[@jameswindle77]

Yes, I've done work experience with the BBC and 'charisma' is just a fancy name to describe graphics. They often use names like Vera, Charisma, etc.

[@dunebasher1971]

Charisma was actually the official name of a digital video effects unit, sold by Questech. It's not a name that the BBC invented.

[@MarkPentler]

@michaelsouthwest This is indeed correct.

[@davidevans3227]

preferred the intro music back then..

[@mubd1234]

I am very confused. At the start, it is 11:30am and the BBC news team are preparing for the 1pm news. Then at 00:20, it says 12:30am.

[@johnking5174]

12.30pm they meant

[@sutchsteve]

AM and PM don't match the periodicity of the hour number on a 12 hour clock - it changes from AM to PM and vice versa when the time hits 12, not 1, so those times are right. It would be more logical if we numbered the hour 0 instead of 12

[@SuperActionForceGo]

Love the fact it took 10+ years for the original comment to get a reply.

[@mubd1234]

I'm a very patient person

[@atmakali9599]

Horrible job sitting in a room with no daylight watching multiple screens counting the seconds away. Nightmare.

[@markmcloughlin3945]

12.55 AM ?????????

[@Matpat112]

Yeah, that was a scary omen of things to come. nah, he would never last as chancellor, year and a half tops, to number 10 with you and an electoral defeat that gives the other side with a majority bigger than your entire group of MP's

[@phillipecook3227]

Mm. You've casually omitted the fact that (a) he " didn't last" as Chancellor because he became PM and (b) he won the next 1992 election in the face of every single poll predicting a defeat. Oh, and by the time he lost in 1997 the Tories had won 4 elections in a row and been in power for 18 years. It follows that by 1997 Jesus Christ himself couldn't have won an election for the Tories. In Major's own words by 1997 the Tores had stretched the electoral elastic to breaking point.

[@mahadevnagvekar9551]

Good

[@TheMarkos1982]

who is the director?

[@johnking5174]

0:30 - Bit of a waste of studio space, having a special set just for the One O'Clock News. Today one set is used for all national bulletins.

[@IanBeaumont128]

Back then, each individual bulletin had separate production teams, within News & Current Affairs. The One, Six and Nine were very distinct and different bulletins. Today, The One is now part of the BBC News Channel in terms of production team, and I believe the Six & Ten are a separate production team, but much more closely integrated than they were before.

[@johnking5174]

They all use Studio E at New Broadcasting House now for the main BBC One news bulletins.

[@Joyousmicor]

@@johnking5174 But before that, BBC News used studios N1 and N2 for 1pm, 6pm and 10pm news (Breakfast News was at TC2), in 1993, all national news programmes (except for World Service TV) moved to N2, when BBC World studio was N1, before move to N9 [which is at Stage 5], following the open of Stage 6 News Centre, then both studios [Spur, 6th Floor] are closed and renamed as TC10 and TC11, Breakfast News moved out of N2 to TC7 in 1997, same story with Newsnight, moving out from TC2, and TC7 was studio of BBC News up until 2013, when move to new extension of Broadcasting House in Central London was getting underway, N6 was studio for national BBC News bulletins on BBC1 and BBC2, in 2006, it became a BBC Breakfast studio, until move back to TC7, in 2008, the home to the BBC News Channel, when N9 was mothballed, and N8 occupied by BBC World News, that was until 2013. And now BBC World News at Studio C, at NBH (London), BBC News Channel and National News are at studio E, Studio B is now home to Newsnight, GMT and Global (except for BBC Breakfast, it moved to MediaCityUK, Salford, [2012] along with BBC North West Today/Tonight, from NBH in Manchester [2011])

[@johnking5174]

@@Joyousmicor All I was saying was that one studio for one news bulletin, was a bit of a waste. Look at the studio, there is only one set in it. The One O'Clock News set, not the Six or Nine back in 1989, unless I can't see the Six set in the same studio?

[@francisyebra8824]

3:59 Wait A Arcade Screen

[@pigeonshouse]

I think if the Cameras weren't on them they would not be so 'charged' as this. It's like when I used to work on IT and one of the servers went down and the whole office used to look at us. My superior was like: "QUICK! RUN AROUND TO VARIOUS CABLE ROOMS AND LOOK LIKE WE'RE FIXING IT!"

[@dunebasher1971]

You've clearly never seen a newsroom when a big story breaks with only a short time to get it on air, then. The adrenalin really pumps.

[@airsupremacy]

Back in the day when the BBC could command some respect from the licence-fee payer..

[@RBenjo21]

The BBC’s anti-Thatcher agenda in full view here - laughing at the appointment of John Major, talk about impartial!?

[@michaelwincott]

What ARE you taking about? John Major was not seen as a serious candidate for chancellor by anyone. You’re showing your ignorance, not any anti-Thatcher bias.

[@sanchoodell6789]

This a fascinating insight into TV news production at the BBC back in 1989. It still feels modern. Interesting show how BBC journalists cover stories concerning Packed Faced politicians.

[@Jibbs1980]

Classic Eighties news room! Striped shirts, white collars, braces, ties loosened! It's pure theatre. Love it!

[@juliam.mallen9019]

Awesome video I love BBC I'm always in awe of our superheroes behind the scenes 👌 Thank you for sharing this gemstone!

[@Mortimer50145]

Was it pure chance that this programme was recorded on a day of such momentous news, or did the crew follow many days until something earth-shattering happened to occur. Was it also chance that the camera just happened to catch the impromptu discussions between the programme editors? All very seat-of-the-pants. I wonder how common it was/is not to have *any* of the reports for the four leading stories as the programme went on air.

[@HOCKEYTOG]

It's common for the running order to change once on-air, but in the few short years I was vision mixing for BBC SouthEast, I only had one news bulletin where the titles were running and we had no idea which story (if any) was going to be ready. The whole bulletin went like that with stories popping up ready just in the nick of time.

[@ajs41]

If you like this, there's a similar programme all about 1st November 1988.

[@TDKiller415]

At 2.31 Michael Buerk mentions John Biffen as the chief secretary of the treasury. I thought Norman lamont was the chief until the 1990 cabinet change

[@jameskvo]

Back when Britain and its internal politics was a big deal on the world stage. Nowadays, not so much.

[@jameswindle77]

Is the director called Leon? There is a talkback clip on here from an earlier edition where the director is referred to as Leon. Any sign of Mike Broadbent who was the producer?

[@ravensmead]

...i'm glad ....dosen't look like you get it very often !!!

[@craigcraig6638]

Do u think I wasn't watching

[@jacksugden8190]

They spent hours planning this, they agreed at a production meeting the content, what did it go to pot on air where nothing was ready. Bloody stupid if you asked me?.

[@dunebasher1971]

You've never worked in broadcast news, right? It's not at all unusual for news programmes to go on air without anything ready. You can plan the content as much as you like, it doesn't mean that all the material will be neatly lined up in a row before the show starts - interviewees can be running late, equipment can fall over, stories can develop in unexpected ways in the time between the planning meeting and the broadcast, insert packages can still be being edited right up until seconds before they are needed.