£45,000 Mobile TV Studio For City
The Press 11 January 1963,
A chunky bus worth £45,000 is expected to be trundling down the main highway from Picton on Sunday, bound for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation's garage in Lincoln road.
It is the new mobile television studio imported from Britain for Channel 3. With it, the station will be able to give complete coverage of sport and other public functions, beginning with the Royal visit to Christchurch in February.
The bus and its ancillary vehicles make up the outside broadcast unit, and the pictures taken by its three cameras can be transmitted to the public as they are taken. The van is a complete studio and control room.
Flexible Cameras
It will transmit its pictures to the Channel 3 transmitter in Gloucester street, and if it is not in line-of-sight with the transmitter it can use a link stationed near the Sign of the Takahe. It is not limited to outside functions either, because the 1000 ft of camera cable will give the cameras plenty of flexibility.
Events which cannot be shown to the public as they happen for one reason or another can be recorded on video-tape as the picture is received at Gloucester street, and shown at any time. Mr R. G. Tulloch, the Broadcasting Corporation's regional engineer, said yesterday that an outside broadcast unit with video-tape included would have cost an extra £30,000.
Because of the complexity of television transmission, preparations for any event to be televised direct from the O.B. unit would take at least a week, said Mr Tulloch. ‘This may well involve a special staff of at least 12 to 16, three-quarters of whom would be technical people.
The technical producer may have to arrange authority for supply of power, access to grounds. Post Office lines for communication, a scaffolding tower for the radio frequency link, and in some cases even arrange for a nightwatchman to guard this costly equipment if it is set up a few days in advance."
The van itself weighs 7 tons, and is 25ft 6in long, 8ft wide and 11ft high. There are four other vehicles associated with it. Two are link vans, and there is a 3-ton truck and a station waggon.
The crew comprises three cameramen, two camera control unit operators, a technical director and his assistant, a sound mixer, a link operator, and an intermediate link operator. Then there is the production team—the producer and his assistant, two commentators and two floor managers.
Best Available
Mr Tulloch said the equipment, including the cameras, was the best available anywhere. The three Marconi Broadcast Camera cameras were the best in the world, and included in the equipment was a zoom lens for close-ups of distant events, costing £l6OO. The cameras are portable, and yet robust enough to stand the constant handling and setting up needed for outside broadcast work.
The link equipment in separate vans is used to beam the selected picture to the Gloucester street transmitter. It is fitted with a specially designed, very high frequency transmitter and a dish aerial which is highly directional.
The main control van is with an air conditioning refrigeration unit to keep the technical equipment at a reasonable operating temperature because of the several kilowatts of heat generated by the equipment.
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