HOW
A TELEVISION STATION WORKS
 TELEVISION
- The Universal Medium
What IS
a Television Picture?
Getting a Program to Air
NEWS - A Window on the World
Studio
Control Room
The Studio
Master
Control/Network Control
The People Behind The Scenes
THE O.B. Van
Satellite TV
TELEVISION
- The Universal Medium Television
is the world’s most powerful form of communication. Every day itreaches out
to millions of people to entertain and inform them with "real life"
images of the world around them. In
Australia, almost every household owns at least one television set, and almost
every Australian watches television some time during the week. Domestic
communications satellites and microwave and fibre optic circuits mean that television
can now reach Australians in even the remotest settlement. The
process of getting a news report, football game or a feature film onto a TV set
in your living room is a complex one, involving sophisticated equipment and highly
skilled people - as this folder will explain.
What
is a Television Picture? Television
pictures are generated electronically and are transmitted to our homes by radio
waves. The colour
television camera begins the process of creating a picture on your television
screen. The camera lens focuses the image onto television pick-up devices which
convert light energy (the picture) into electrical signals, the television signal.
The colour television camera has three pick-up devices - one for each of the primary
colours - red, blue and green. Television
pictures are like movie pictures, in that whilst our eye sees a continual moving
image, they are really thousands of sequential still images. In Australia,
the TV system uses 25 still pictures each second to create the illusion of the
moving picture we see on the screen. Unlike
movie pictures, which are whole screen images, television pictures are made up
on horizontal lines. Each line is transmitted one at a time in a process called
scanning. In Australia, each picture is on your screen for 1/25th of
a second and is made up on 625 lines. So,
to get the moving picture you see on television, the colour television camera
has to scan 625 lines in every image, 25 times every second. It takes the camera
just 64 millionths of a second to scan across each line in a single picture. The
television signal is send from the camera either to a video recorder or direct
to the transmitter. (Because stations carry many networked programs nowadays,
a signal originating in Sydney may pass via satellite, microwave or fibre optic
circuits to transmitters all over the country). The transmitter sends out radio
waves to be picked up by your television antenna. The TV set then coverts the
radio waves back to the original red, green and blue colour signals ( and of course
the associated sound). The red, green and blue signals are combined onto the colour
picture tube which forms the full colour image that you view. Getting
a Program to Air The
picture you see on your screen can come from several sources. Some programs are
transmitted live from a studio or outside broadcast van. Others are pre-recorded
on videotape. NEWS
- A Window on the World Most
Australians rely on television for news about the world. Australia and their local
community. Every station runs a news bulletin in the main evening viewing period,
and this usually attracts more viewers than most other programs. Smaller stations
often produce only local news, and take a full news bulletin on relay from a city
station. In some regional markets, not all stations cover local news.
The Newsroom is where the news is written and compiled for the station’s
bulletins. Under the control of the Director of News, Journalists and Camera
Crews cover stories throughout the day. In
bigger stations, the day-to-day management of news staff is the responsibility
of the Chief of Staff or the News Producer. She/he may also assign
news crews to particular stories, monitor the progress of stories throughout the
day and work with the Director of News to decide on the order in which stories
will go to air. News
happens 24 hours a day, so news reporting goes on round the clock.
News from overseas arrives
via satellite. Networks subscribe to worldwide TV news gathering services and
also maintain their own news staff in some of the world’s major centres.
News from other cities in Australia arrives by satellite or by microwave or fibre
optic circuits.
Local news is shot using very portable hand-held video
cameras and recorders. The tapes are then transported back to the station for
editing and transmission. In the bigger cities where news is very competitive,
stations use vehicles equipped with microwave radio links to get the story back
to the station with the least possible delay - it may even go live to air. One
of these vehicles will probably be a helicopter, giving both fast transport and
a very good platform for the microwave radio link.
Studio
Control Room The
program is put together in the Studio Control Room which is usually alongside
the studio with windows looking into it. In
the Studio Control Room the pictures from the different cameras are mixed and
interchanged according to the director’s instructions, and material from
other sources such as videotape or outside broadcasts is also inserted. The
Studio Director works from the Studio Control Room, where she/he can look
directly into the studio and also view on special monitors the pictures coming
from each camera and from outside sources.The
Studio Director is able to communicate with studio crew by way of headphones,
and instructs the audio and camera operators on where to move their microphones
and cameras and get the shots that are needed. Also
working in the studio control room is the Technical Director, the Camera
Control Operator who has technical control of the cameras, and the Lighting
Director who co-operates with the camera control operator to ensure that each
scene is correctly lit. The Lighting Director has a control panel which allows
him/her to switch and fade the studio lights. The
Audio Director works from a mixing desk in the audio room, mixing sound
signals from different sources and switching from one source to another. The microphones
used in a studio can be a tiny unit clipped to an announcer’s tie or pocket,
desk mounted units or very long boom-mounted units which can be moved all over
the studio. Just
as the Audio Director mixes and switches sound sources, the Vision Switcher,
who also works in the studio control room, follows the Director’s commands
to mix and switch all the picture sources which make up a program. The
Vision Switcher is also responsible for creating most of the special effects seen
in television productions. Most of these effects are produced electronically by
the vision switching unit or an associated digital special effects system. The
Sound Control Room is part of the Studio Control Complex. This room
contains a mixing desk, which mixes sound signals from different sources to ensure
that the sound signal transmitted to your TV set is correctly balanced and audible.
The
People Behind The Scenes Sitting
at home watching your favourite TV program you may think that only actors and
presenters are needed to make a television program. In
fact, the task takes many highly skilled people.
Of
course, there are the actors, presenters, newsreaders and reporters, but before
they appear in front of the camera they are fitted with the right costumes or
everyday clothes by staff in the Wardrobe Department and they are made-up by Make-Up
Artists. Even some of the people being interviewed on the news are made-up
before going on air. Every
television station has a Program Manager whose job is to supervise the
scheduling of all programs, to oversee on-air promotions for the station itself
and to ensure that weekly television program details are provided to newspapers
and magazines. 
The Program Manager’s
most important task is to place programs in time slots where they will appeal
to as many people as possible. So, the Program Manager has to be very skilled
at anticipating viewer tastes and trends.In
the Production Department, the Production Manager supervises the station’s
own local live programs and works closely with the Producers and Directors
who are in charge of the station-produced programs.
The
centre of a TV station’s daily operations is the Videotape department. Typically
this is divided into an "on air" area and a number of rooms called edit
suites. The on-air area contains machines for replay to air of program material,
commercials and program promotions. Most programs are pre-recorded in bits and
pieces, either in a studio or on location. These programs are finally put together
in a video tape edit suite. The
Presentation or On-Air Control Room is a special room used to assemble
(produce) the on-air program from inputs from Studios, Videotapes, Outside Broadcasts
and Satellite feeds. In a commercial station, this control room also inserts the
commercials and program promotions into the final on-air program. The
Tape Librarian has the job of filing and storing all the program tape, commercial
tape from advertisers, slides, cassettes and videotapes which are made and collected
by the station. Each day the Librarian receives a transmission schedule and for
this she/he selects the material needed for the day in question. In
every commercial television station a very important group is the Sales Team.
Commercial television stations get their income from selling commercial time to
advertisers. Sales Representatives prepare proposals to attract advertisers, and
so must have a good understanding of both the advertiser’s product, marketing
and merchandising plans and also the station’s programs and audience profiles,
and its production facilities. The
Studio An
important part of any television station is the studios and studio facility areas
where programs (and often commercials) are staged and recorded. Each
studio has at least three cameras recording the studio action from different angles,
so that the Program Director can switch or fade between shots as the creative
aspects of the program demand. On
the studio floor the person in charge is the Floor Manager, who is responsible
for ensuring that the Camera Operators, the Audio People who operate the
microphones, and the Lighting and Stage Crew all follow the Program
Director’s instructions. The
Floor Manager is the line between the Director and every other person in the studio.
She/he is always in touch with the Director by means of headphones with in-built
microphone, and provides the signals or "cues" for actors and presenters. Studio
facilities include the make-up and wardrobe area, where performers are prepared
for their on-air appearance. There is also a graphic arts department where station
and program logos and material such as the weather maps and sporting results are
produced, using computer-like devices called Graphics or Character Generators
and "Paint Boxes", on which still pictures are created by the graphic
artist.
Master
Control/Network Control Thanks
to the facilities provided by modern telecommunications, television stations are
now much more closely interconnected with each other and the world. The Master
Control Room is where incoming and outgoing signals are monitored, switched and
when necessary adjusted to produce the best quality picture and sound.
The O.B. Van
Many
television programs, especially sports and concerts, are transmitted live or pre-recorded
from venues away from the station’s own studios.
These programs
are made possible by the use of Outside Broadcast (or OB) Vans which are really
studio control rooms on wheels.
The picture and sound signal from the OB van can be transmitted back to the TV
station by a microwave radio link, by satellite or by fibre optic circuit.
Satellite
TV The development
of satellites which can receive and transmit television signals has added to the
variety of programs we can receive on our television sets. Australia
is able to receive direct telecasts from most parts of the world via many international
satellites located above the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Programs and
news reports can be beamed live from overseas television stations to their Australian
counterparts, and sporting enthusiasts are able to watch major sporting events,
such as Wimbledon tennis or World Cup soccer, while the games are being played. Because
terrestrial television signals are sent from the station’s transmitter to
your television set as radio waves, they may be blocked by geographical features
such as a mountain range and they have a finite reception distance limit because
they can’t follow the curve of the earth’s surface. This meant that
people in the more remote parts of Australia had no access to television programs
until recently.For these
people, the most important television development in recent years was the launching
of Australia’s own domestic satellites. Currently, there are four domestic
satellites in orbit. These
satellites allow special commercial and non-commercial services to transmit programs
to people in remote parts of the country. People in these regions receive the
satellite signal on a special "dish" shaped aerial. This is pointed
at the satellite which is in orbit near the equator, some 36,000kms above the
Pacific Ocean. | 
