This morning my American wife asked me why Gordon Brown has the power to hold the general election anytime between now and the 3rd of June.
I’m afraid I couldn’t give her an adequate answer. In America, presidential terms are fixed to end every fourth November. As a result neither political party has an advantage over the other by choosing an election day to suit their own fortunes. Jo says our system is crazy and unfair. I have to confess she’s probably right.
The question arose because I said over breakfast that if I were Gordon Brown I’d call a snap election right now and have the voting in April, just as the daffodils will be at their best. Why wait till May, when things are hardly going to get better?
With the policyless Tories in disarray, I doubt there will be a more auspicious moment than now. Perhaps, with the Ides of March just one week away, Brown should hire a soothsayer to foresee the outcome. Have an augurer cut open a stray pollster and check the vital organs for signs of the public mood: frankly, with the polls the way they are, it’s anybody’s guess what will happen after three weeks of campaigning.
You can be sure of one thing: in BBC Television Centre they are already building the scenery for the election night programme. In fact, they will have been designing, planning and rehearsing it for much of the last five years. I know this because it was once my job. In 1979, just after Margaret Thatcher came to power, I was told I would be the director of the next election, whenever it happened.
It’s one of the plum jobs in television. The programme starts after News at Ten and goes on until the new prime minister is installed in Downing Street late in the afternoon the following day. It’s a grueling 20-hour marathon that takes five years to plan and rehearse.
How do you rehearse an election? With a lot of money, that’s how. You could run BBC 6 Music for a couple of years on the budget they gave us to make that one show on election night.
It didn’t just take place in a single studio: we were given almost every resource in Television Centre. One huge studio was used just for a rest area for all the staff. I designed my set by drawing a large question mark on the back of a menu card in the BBC canteen. They built a giant version of it fifteen feet in the air, so that we’d have room for hundreds of backroom staff underneath. It took two weeks to put up and another week to take down.
We’d constructed a new computer with which, for nearly two years, we’d rehearsed every conceivable outcome, from a Conservative landslide to a hung parliament. The computer was clunky and slow at first, and so unreliable that we had a hundred volunteers with bits of paper to run a backup service in case it crashed.
On election night my question mark set looked suitably quizzical, with David Dimbleby on one side and Robin Day and his guests on the other; my control room looked like a super-sized Starship Enterprise, with images from 250 cameras in 55 locations. Returning officers combed their hair in readiness for their little moment of fame.
As it turned out, it was no contest. With the SDP/Liberal alliance fracturing Michael Foot’s Labour party, our computer graphics showed a blue victory for Thatcher from the very first result.
This time I’m looking forward to watching a multi-coloured cliffhanger: the timing may not be fair, but at least the television programme will be exciting.
Showing posts with label Robin Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robin Day. Show all posts
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Monday, March 31, 2008
The Great Cock-up
It was shambolic, embarrassing and a national disgrace. However Chief Executive William M Walsh (“Willie” to his friends, or “Wally” to his customers) passed it off as “not BA’s finest hour”.
This has got to be the most inept understatement in the history of PR. The last four days have been disastrous for the company that used to call itself “The World’s Favourite Airline”. British Airways wisely dropped that epithet as its popularity plummeted in line with its declining service. I wish they’d drop the “British” as well. I can’t imagine many experienced travellers fly BA by choice. Of the dozens of BA flights I’ve taken in the last year, only one touched down on time. On that occasion, the pilot seemed so surprised by this unusual turn of events, he positively crowed as he announced the good news before landing. Only to return sheepishly to the microphone a few moments later to inform us that, because no domestic gates were available, we were trekking to an international one and would have to wait for a pair of steps and a bus. Last year British Airways was forced to admit that 23 out of every 1000 bags it handled went missing. That’s without the 15,000 stuck inside Terminal 5.
On Friday, Mr Walsh said he had no intention of resigning. I’m pleased about that, because it gives the board the opportunity to sack him. If I were his Chairman, I’d make Wally earn out his notice period in the bowels of Terminal 5 personally loading each of the missing bags into the boot of his company limousine and delivering them with a handwritten note of apology. After all, he did say “the buck stops with me”. Not the big bucks, I bet – his contract is bound to guarantee him an enormous payoff.
What amazes me is that, with so much at stake, the new system at Terminal 5 wasn’t properly tested. I work in an industry where there are no second chances. The launch of a new television programme is a do or die event. Particularly live television.
The first one I ever worked on was called The Great Debate, a live programme about Europe hosted by Robin Day. It was in 1972, the year before we joined the EEC, and as a student I’d managed to get a holiday job as a “runner”. I had two key roles: running for the tea, and then, on the big night, running the result of the vote to Mr Day himself. All round the country people sat in BBC studios waiting to vote and, most exciting of all, the result was going to be generated by a computer, the first time such a thing had been used on TV. After two hours of the most mind-numbingly boring debate, the votes were fed into a machine the size of a lorry and I positioned myself by the printer waiting for the outcome.
Robin promised the viewers that, owing to this miraculous new technology, we would have the result in less than a minute. The seconds passed. Nothing happened. I stared at the printer, willing it into life. Five minutes, still nothing. After a quarter of an hour, Robin Day asked the voters for a show of hands.
Finally, the computer spluttered out: “?”
Thousands of pounds worth of technology, days of rehearsals, all for one solitary question mark. My job was not to comment but to run, so I dutifully rushed the “result” to Mr Day. That’s when BBC1 viewers heard the immortal line: “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Great Debate has turned into The Great Cock-up”.
The computer, of course, was fired on the spot. Not so Wally Walsh, I suspect. He’ll be uttering phrases like “British Airways needs to deliver” till the next great cock-up. And, as usual, only the passengers will suffer. As well as Britain’s reputation.
This has got to be the most inept understatement in the history of PR. The last four days have been disastrous for the company that used to call itself “The World’s Favourite Airline”. British Airways wisely dropped that epithet as its popularity plummeted in line with its declining service. I wish they’d drop the “British” as well. I can’t imagine many experienced travellers fly BA by choice. Of the dozens of BA flights I’ve taken in the last year, only one touched down on time. On that occasion, the pilot seemed so surprised by this unusual turn of events, he positively crowed as he announced the good news before landing. Only to return sheepishly to the microphone a few moments later to inform us that, because no domestic gates were available, we were trekking to an international one and would have to wait for a pair of steps and a bus. Last year British Airways was forced to admit that 23 out of every 1000 bags it handled went missing. That’s without the 15,000 stuck inside Terminal 5.
On Friday, Mr Walsh said he had no intention of resigning. I’m pleased about that, because it gives the board the opportunity to sack him. If I were his Chairman, I’d make Wally earn out his notice period in the bowels of Terminal 5 personally loading each of the missing bags into the boot of his company limousine and delivering them with a handwritten note of apology. After all, he did say “the buck stops with me”. Not the big bucks, I bet – his contract is bound to guarantee him an enormous payoff.
What amazes me is that, with so much at stake, the new system at Terminal 5 wasn’t properly tested. I work in an industry where there are no second chances. The launch of a new television programme is a do or die event. Particularly live television.
The first one I ever worked on was called The Great Debate, a live programme about Europe hosted by Robin Day. It was in 1972, the year before we joined the EEC, and as a student I’d managed to get a holiday job as a “runner”. I had two key roles: running for the tea, and then, on the big night, running the result of the vote to Mr Day himself. All round the country people sat in BBC studios waiting to vote and, most exciting of all, the result was going to be generated by a computer, the first time such a thing had been used on TV. After two hours of the most mind-numbingly boring debate, the votes were fed into a machine the size of a lorry and I positioned myself by the printer waiting for the outcome.
Robin promised the viewers that, owing to this miraculous new technology, we would have the result in less than a minute. The seconds passed. Nothing happened. I stared at the printer, willing it into life. Five minutes, still nothing. After a quarter of an hour, Robin Day asked the voters for a show of hands.
Finally, the computer spluttered out: “?”
Thousands of pounds worth of technology, days of rehearsals, all for one solitary question mark. My job was not to comment but to run, so I dutifully rushed the “result” to Mr Day. That’s when BBC1 viewers heard the immortal line: “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Great Debate has turned into The Great Cock-up”.
The computer, of course, was fired on the spot. Not so Wally Walsh, I suspect. He’ll be uttering phrases like “British Airways needs to deliver” till the next great cock-up. And, as usual, only the passengers will suffer. As well as Britain’s reputation.
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