23 thoughts on “An interlude”

  1. Cute! So glad they put the huge INTERLUDE sign in the middle:-). Wonder what it was an interlude from?

    1. In the 1950s the UK had only one TV channel and there was more time than programmes. The ‘Interlude’ films filled the gaps. There were at least two others, Swans (the excitement!) and The Potter, in which we saw a pair of hands sensuously forming a ball of clay into a pot on a wheel, 40 years before Ghost was released.
      When considering some of the output on TV these days, one can’t help but wonder at what we’ve lost along the way.

    2. I believe the purpose of it was to fill up time that on other channels would be given over to adverts. Since the Beeb was non-commercial, if it screened overseas (e.g. US) programmes that were 55 minutes long (or if the Beeb made programmes for sale overseas) then that left a 5-minute slot to be filled – hence the Interludes.

      1. At the time, there was very little international trade of programming. What there was, was done by printing to film, posting the film across the Atlantic, then projecting that into a TV camera. By which point, you’d have literally left the adverts on the cutting room floor in a different country.
        Over the last few years Auntie Beeb have got into the habit of sticking a 7-10 minute “making of” piece onto the end of their hour-long documentaries, which I presume is to allow the “making of” to be trimmed off and assembled into an additional episode or several, and then advertising can be shoved into the programme to ruin it and pad the episode back to an hour. I haven’t inspected closely enough, but I’d guess that these programmes are co-productions with some country with advertising-funded TV.
        Not having to watch psychological warfare assaults on my mind (adverts) costs me about a pint of beer a week. Cheap at twice the price.

  2. It’s a shame that TV no longer has interludes of kittens playing with string, but instead has commercials screaming at you to spend more money. I think we’d be so much healthier as a society if we ditched the commercials for kittens….

    b&

  3. Some guy (probably a Republican) said the BBC was biased to the left a week or so ago. Whilst our dear Beeb is probably the least biased programme maker on the planet it is showing bias here – pro-feline – what about us dog lovers? Rarely catered for and I bet there was no dog equivalent.

    2. Ah I think you are forgetting Crufts coverage every year (no cat shows), and of course the ineffable ‘One Man and his Dog’, not to mention ‘The Wonder of Dogs’ this year . . .

      1. The BBC doesn’t broadcast Crufts anymore because of controversy over the breed standards and inbreeding leading to unhealthy dogs.

  4. This reminds me of the hr interlude cats
    http: // youtu .be/ H1QEHE5fl3U

    The kitties in the film were rescued from a local animal shelter, they were about to be put to sleep. Since the rescuer worked for the hr-tv station, he and his daughter came up with the idea to make a low budget interlude film. It became an instant success. After it was broadcasted for the first time many people called and all cats found new homes.

    Another result was the development of several tv-shows to find new homes for animals in shelters.

    2. There is also now a synchronised set of the same run side by side – 1953, 1983 and 2013. I won’t attempt a link

    3. Not long enough… Real Salmon of Norway.
      The trick to not embedding without knowing HTML is after pasting the link in the comment go to the first letters, “http://,” and delete them. readers can just copy paste the resulting letters in their browser and see the intended target.

      1. Lovely old railway technologies on show: semaphore signals (still to be found on lesser lines), Pullman cars and of course … steam. I did look to see if there were any water troughs but saw none – unlikely on a relatively short run.

        1. That would have been on the Brighton line (LBSCR – London Brighton & South Coast Railway). I believe they never used troughs because their main line – featured in the video – was just 50 miles long. As you say, a short run. They also used express tank engines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_locomotive
          unlike any other main-line railway, for the same reason, the tanks could hold enough for the journey.

          By the time the ‘four-minute’ run was filmed, the line had long since become part of the Southern Electric system (you can see the third rail in the video), the Brighton Belle consist was I believe the only electrified Pullman cars ever built.

  7. Matthew
    And there was the test card to allow you to adjust the positions of the little magnets around the neck of the CRT to correct the display.

    Plus at the end of transmission, the collapse of the picture to a white dot in the middle. This was followed by a mush of interference patterns that I am told includes elements from the dawn of our universe, the cosmic microwave background.

    1. The peak of the CMB spectrum is actually just above 100 GHz, a significantly higher frequency than what TVs use. But, yes, the long tail of the CMB extends into the megahertz range of television broadcasts. You wouldn’t see much of the CMB on your TV, but you’d see a bit.

      Cheers,

      b&

    2. Just checking if I had mis-understood the part about CMB & analogue TV.
      From:

      http://planck.cf.ac.uk/science/cmb

      “The CMB is so bright at millimetre-wavelengths that if you de-tune an old analogue TV to show the snow-like static, a few percent of the signal your TV is picking up will have come from the start of the Universe.”

      1. No, you’re absolutely right. Some of the CMB is present in the static on your TV. Just very little of the static is from the CMB, and the CMB is brightest at a different frequency. But, yes, there is a little bit of overlap.

        Cheers,

        b&

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