- Alan Yentob visits Alexander Palace and looks back at it's first high-definition television broadcast in 1936.
- Alan Yentob (BBC Creative Director) celebrates the 70th anniversary of the world's first scheduled high-definition television service, by the BBC from Alexandra Palace in 1936. Members of the Alexandra Palace Television Society (APTS) held their annual reunion at Alexandra Palace to reminisce about their working life in the building. Alan Yentob attended the 2006 reunion and decided their working history would make an ideal episode for the Imagine series. A few months later in November a group of society members met at Alexandra Palace and were interviewed by Yentob in Studio A, the original studio where the Marconi-EMI system was based in 1936. Bob Mears recalls being an engineer in the pre-war days of television at Alexandra Palace (1936 to 1939), Beryl Hockley remembers her job as Vision Mixer (and being the person that faded up the output from Studio A on 7th June 1946, the day television returned after its wartime closure). Sylvia Peters recalls her time as a continuity announcer, including such things as the impromptu breakdowns which occurred almost on a daily basis. Richard Baker introduced the first BBC television news broadcast on 5 July 1954, and retired as a newsreader in 1982. Richard recounts his days of reading the news from Alexandra Palace and on one occasion having a studio manager clasp his hand over Richard's mouth while he was talking as the script was too long for the televised image! Marguerite Pattern regales the trials and tribulations of cooking on live television. Such as receiving a telephone call from the BBC before her first television appearance informing her they didn't have a cooker for her to use in the studio. Fortunately they offered a boiling ring as an alternative, so she cooked her doughnuts on that - and this was still during the period of food rationing. Other contributors to the programme were Richard R Greenough, the scenic designer who joined the staff at Alexandra Palace after World War II in 1947, Sir Paul Fox, who began at Alexandra Palace as a script writer for Television Newsreel. Later he became the Controller of BBC1, a post he held for six years, overseeing the transition of BBC1 into colour in the late 1960s. Various film material held by the Alexandra Palace Television Society was used to illustrate the pre-war era of BBC Television, originally filmed by Desmond Campbell, senior lighting engineer, who was given the unofficial title as the "Father of Television Lighting", who had originally worked with John Logie Baird during the late 1920's and into the 1930's.
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