Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Ham and High Broadway: Comment: "Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all"
YESTERDAY's Ham and High Broadway carries Jacob O'Callaghan's featured, double-page spread, Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all.
The article is now available online here.
Their front page carries a note to it: Ally Pally's plan for BBC studio renews debate.
More and more I have come to value the Fourth Estate.
LIke Harringayonline, the Ham & High continue their tradition of providing a genuinely independent platform for debate and discussion, uncontrolled by the authorities. That function was immensely valuable in 2007, when the Council tried every trick in the book to dispose of our Charity's asset to a former slum landlord ... including the suppression of key information, especially the Lease.
In an effort to balance, the H&H also carry an official PR statement from AP management that contains the remarkable – if not astonishing – claim that The studios will be restored ...
Tags for Forum Posts: Alexandra Palace, BBC, Let’s conserve birthplace of television, warts and all, TV Studios, demolition
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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As you may know Alan, I persuaded our Trust's Board to adopt, as a long-term goal, the seeking of UN World Heritage site status for Ally Pally's south-east wing. If unamended, the current proposals would place that in jeopardy.
If in future, part of our Charitable Trust's building does become London's fifth World Heritage site, I hope that it would recognize and describe the developments in television technology elsewhere in the world at the time, especially Germany (also the United States and Russia).
I say that, even though the German engineers' technical achievements were then closely associated with political propaganda and a repugnant regime. There is no denying the accomplishment of the broadcast, in a limited way, of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic games.
Indeed, that event was one of the spurs to the much superior system ... developed in our backyard!
Later, it was a German company – Telefunken – that was responsible for the development of the best colour analogue system (PAL, Phase Alternating Line).
PAL was adopted by all countries who were late adopters of colour TV, including Britain and New Zealand.
The industry reverse-engineered the acronyms:
- NTSC (American) = Never Twice the Same Color
- SECAM (French) = Something Exceedingly Contrary to the American Method
- PAL = Peace At Last
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Yes Alan, that is exactly my point, which I've expressed before here. It certainly is all a bit too insular for me, as well as the fact that the 'High Definition Regular Service at Ally Pally' wasn't the beginning of the story, so calling it Birthplace is also a bit rich.
Clive, the fate of most German scientists and technologists of the early 1930s, was that the 'repugnant regime' came to power, took over and started to direct all the on-going technologys for it's own military aims. Rocket, Jet, Nuclear as well as TV technology were all advanced and like all scientists do, the Germans jumped at the chance of increased financial support. Wouldn't you at Ally-Pally? That they allied themselves with the devil, can only be judged in hindsight. Some of course, were nationalists and supported the regime, some were not. That's still no reason to ignore their acheivements, pretend it didn't happen.
As for a 'regular service' - Wikipedia states that the service in Germany started in 1935 and ran three times a week. If that's not regular, then I don't know what is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television_in_Germany
Thanks for pointing that out Alan. You know me well enough to know that I support all attempts to conserve historical locations, buildings etc, etc. I'm just not happy with Ally Pally's big selling point as 'the first in the world'.
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Permalink Reply by Straw Cat on
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But you're making a logical error here. To say something was the birthplace doesn't imply the nationality of its parentage! Everyone knows the development of television was international. The leap forward into a real, watchable system was the decision to gamble on 405-lines (the Nazi system was I believe 180-line, only just enough to make out Adolf ranting). That the birthplace happened to be an underused Victorian exhibition building was in many ways fortuitous. So is the location of many historical events, like battlefields, whose sites are remembered and protected.
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Haha, you can try and justify as long as you want. I'm still not convinced.
I suppose I'd expect the odd Hitler gag to be thrown in too. We are of course, talking about Germany. But German TV was more subtle than just showing Hitler's speeches. It showed the same format of variety and information that the BBC followed. Nevertheless, if you can understand German, you can feel the sinister tones of the language of the reports and the sly smile of the announcer. It couldn't have been much fun living under a regime like that. Very frightening I'd imagine.
The 180 line looks good to me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMecO38MZCc
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I'm reading a new book Teaching: notes from the front line by Dr Debra Kidd. (Thanks, Big Green Bookshop for getting it so quickly and efficiently.)
Debra Kidd advocates: "an educational system [that] would facilitate the building of dreams". She suggests it could follow models like: "Apple or the Eden Project where creativity, passion, the generation of ideas and an acceptance of difference are deemed to be important elements of the working culture".
She quotes Tim Smit Founder of the Eden Project. "... there will be millions of other people who will also see the magic in what you love... The only problem you will have is in finding a way to tell other people about it. Tell another person ... human beings must have hope."
I doubt that: "everyone knows the development of television was international". For many people who - we hope - will visit the studio, the early Twentieth Century will be history before their grandparents. And it seems that the story has the magic, excitement and inspiration of scientific discovery and dream. But along with elements of the nightmare - use of new technology to wage deadlier wars.
So shouldn't that be the accurate warts-and-all story that's told? What happened in this specific place and time which became part of what was happening across the world?
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Permalink Reply by Lynne on
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Alan,
The propaganda story is dark and could have ended up being darker, many lives still shed after the war to end all wars, many people displaced around the planet over decades after as a consequence. Chilling to see the clip in 1940s, thanks, and the warts and all is not just the story but the history, and the studios are the physical embodiment of that, all that s left. The whole thing should be told and felt, disappearing fad digital show ain t enough. Lest we forget, and its repeated.
L
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I think we agree, Lynne. And a warts-and-all approach would mean raising serious issues about the misuse and potential dangers of new scientific discoveries. (Einstein warned that a Fourth World War would be fought with rocks.)
And while that includes TV - and its propaganda uses - I wouldn't want people to avoid visiting a refurbished Ally Pally studio because the history presented is relentlessly dark. And expecially not to discourage young people from feeling a little of the magic and creativity of the TV pioneers.
There's light and sweetness as well as bitterness and shadows in the history. Did you see the article by Timothy Garton Ash about the fall of the Berlin wall? (He was there.) It seems TV played a part in helping to undermine that totalitarian regime. He wrote that "Western broadcasts reached most of East Germany apart from a remote corner, popularly known as the Valley of the Clueless)"
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Thanks for the link Alan. I hadn't read that article, but as an ex-Harringay/Tottenham boy who also witnessed the fall of the Wall in Berlin. I find Garton Ash's article, much too flowery. Yep, he always knew how to sell himself well. I believe I met him once.
Funny, you mentoned the 'Valley of the clueless', sometimes the U.K. feels like a bit like 'der Tal der Ahnungslosen' too, at least when it comes to Germany, it's history, it's borders, it's people and politics.
But I'm wandering off 'off topic' so will end it there.
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Hmm. Interesting, Stephen. What's your view of Tony Judt, Garton Ash's predecessor as the Director of the Remarque institute? Do you think he was someone who was less clueless?
Perhaps as a boy you may have shared his view about the freedom of travelling on London greenline buses on a Rover ticket?
To quote a bit more Debra Kidd: "As a species", she writes, "... we attempt to ensure that our future looks like the best aspects of our past. We think we are marching forwards, but we are looped in longing for that which is gone. Attempting to make this loop look like a line is getting us into all sorts of trouble".
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potential dangers of new scientific discoveries. (Einstein warned that a Fourth World War would be fought with rocks.)
A more sanguine forecast was made in 1930 by a friend of Churchill's (F E Smith, later Earl of Birkenhead) and reported today (below).
The impact of television on politics was foreseen, even though TV had yet to start.
I was not surprised to see the influence of John Logie Baird. It seems a pity that the council intends to demolish what is left of his television studio.
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Hi Alan,
Thanks for the article, dramatic reading, like the man said it did change everything not just for the residents of either side. I remember
relations with Eastern Europe got confused and changed overtime, freedom and choices took some getting used to.
I m not sure it would put people off, the dark side is a part of the history, along with there seems to be an appetite in peacetime
for the gothic and gory viewing judging by the current prime time light entertainment. People really do need hope, and AP
is such a great symbol playing it's part in the war, as did broadcasting during the oppressive Cold War and as does the internet now.
It's a tragedy if all this heritage is blandised by a refurb of magnolia and a digital show (some in the know would say this is passé exhibiting- an Observer article recording the gaffs of HLF) never mind knocking down parts of the studios. The misconceived young architect of the studios must think visitors will flock to buy a ticket from their Central Line Hotel, leave their nearby attractions with a view, travel for an hour to throw out the balcony doors (with what was part of the studios) and shed a gasp over the view, and then of course place the necessary 5 star review on Tripadvisor, hmm.
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Is this article by Rowan Moore the one you meant, Lynne? If so. I missed it, and I'm glad to catch-up. Thanks.
I'm a complete amateur in all this museum/exhibition stuff. But when I'm enjoying, for example, a place or an exhibition somewhere, I tend to take notice of the "how" it's presented as well as the "what".
I'm curious about the signage, the maps, the explanations. How the staff relate to visitors. And how well the people designing and running the "show" are communicating their own excitement and pleasure to a wide range of visitors/customers.
Including local people who tend to be taxed to subsidise it. (With Ally Pally a whopping subsidy.)
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