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CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
There's no voiceover or sound, but the pictures say a lot. It's hard to imagine now putting together a TV newscast with typewriters, filmed footage that needs to be manually cut and edited, huge VTRS that need to be cued up, weather sets with magnetic pieces on a background map and graphics crafted by hand or cut out of specially designed Letraset.
Not to mention not a computer in sight.
It was shot at CFPL in London almost 50 years ago and it's a fascinating 2 minute blast from the past which you can see here.
- Shorty Wave
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
It is a wonder they ever made it to air on time! Love the large ashtray in the meeting shot, those were the days! Thanks for sharing RA. BTW, there’s a few other vintage clips on this page worth a look.
- unclefester
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
Some familiar faces in that clip including Ted Kostecki, Jack Burghardt, John MacDonald, Frank Kovacs & the elusive Bill Hutchings
Last edited by unclefester (December 26, 2024 9:09 pm)
- Dale Patterson
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
It seems like yesterday, but the analog era was so long ago. Computers were just coming in when I first worked in a newsroom in 1974-75, but there were still traces of the old era, with operators still typing out stories direct to the wire. I'm glad I got to experience both the analog way of doing things and the digital.
"Life without echo is really no life at all." - Dan Ingram
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
When I first started at Newsradio at CKEY in 1977, they had what I guess you could call an old word processor. It wasn't exactly a computer. It was white letters on a green screen that you could cut and paste in whatever order you wanted.
But you still had to print it out on a teletype, which in those days, made a lot of noise.
Feeds from CBS Radio, which CKEY owned the rights to, were edited using a 7" reel to reel, a grease pencil and some splicing tape.
We have come a very long way since then.
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Thread Starter- MJ Vancouver
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
unclefester wrote:
Some familiar faces in that clip including Ted Kostecki, Jack Burghardt, John McDonald, Frank Kovacs & the elusive Bill Hutchings
I think I spotted George Clark briefly as well.
Interesting seeing Fahrenheit on the weather map. It wasn’t long before Canada switched to metric.
- MJ Vancouver
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
There’s a second video CBC posted, which is primarily showing downtown London as it looked in 1975 but also includes a CFPL-TV reporter and cameraman doing interviews of passers-by on the street.
They were still using 16-mm film; ENG was a new technology that was only just starting to appear in TV news - from what I’ve seen on YouTube, WXYZ in Detroit was dabbling in ENG in 1975, and a couple years later CityPulse came along in Toronto with a fully ENG newsroom.
It’s amazing how fast technology evolved. Colour television had only existed in Canada for 8 years at that point, and approximately 8 years after this footage CFPL-TV (and most other television stations) had fully converted to ENG and abandoned film.
Last edited by MJ Vancouver (December 26, 2024 6:02 pm)
- unclefester
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
Some familiar faces in that clip including Ted Kostecki, Jack Burghardt, John McDonald, Frank Kovacs & the elusive Bill Hutchings
I think I spotted George Clark briefly as well.
I didn't notice Mr. Clark
There is a gentleman typing at the 1:15 -1:18 mark in the video. I believe that is Darrell MacInnis. And at 1:37-1:38 we get a brief closeup on the copy he is working on. The story is about Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assasination.
Last edited by unclefester (December 26, 2024 9:21 pm)
- newsguy1
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
Wonderful piece of newsroom history.
I hate to admit it but when I started in newsrooms in around 1979 we still used those Olivetti manual typewriters.
Of course a couple of years later they were replaced with Brother brand electrics!.
My first use of a computer to put together a newscast? About 1983.
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
Have to say there was a real skill in editing tape as opposed to computer editing. If you learned to do it well - and by the time I got to CFTR, I'd become very good at it - it was almost an artform.
There's no question computer manipulation is easier, but it's sad that the ability to create that kind of magic is long gone, never to return. Anybody still have a razor blade and an editing block lying around? I have both upstairs somewhere.
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Thread Starter- MJ Vancouver
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
Some familiar faces in that clip including Ted Kostecki, Jack Burghardt, John McDonald, Frank Kovacs & the elusive Bill Hutchings
I think I spotted George Clark briefly as well.
I didn't notice Mr. Clark
There is a gentleman typing at the 1:15 -1:18 mark in the video. I believe that is Darrell MacInnis. And at 1:37-1:38 we get a brief closeup on the copy he is working on. The story is about Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assasination.
It’s the man in the middle at 0:50 that I thought might be George Clark - but I could be wrong too.
- unclefester
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
I think I spotted George Clark briefly as well.
I didn't notice Mr. Clark
There is a gentleman typing at the 1:15 -1:18 mark in the video. I believe that is Darrell MacInnis. And at 1:37-1:38 we get a brief closeup on the copy he is working on. The story is about Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assasination.
It’s the man in the middle at 0:50 that I thought might be George Clark - but I could be wrong too.
That gentleman is the late Frank Kovacs. And that cigarette in his left hand is a Pall Mall plain. Just thinking about that brand of cigarette starts me coughing
- newsguy1
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Re: CBC Unearths Old Film About Putting Together A CFPL Newscast In 1975
I still have a couple old china markers, also known as grease pens lying around.
Remember you had to use different colours depending on the colour of the quarter inch audio tape. so that the markings would be easy to see in contrast.
Like some tape had black backing so you would need to use a white marker or maybe yellow, whereas some tape was light brown so you'd use red.
around.