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.
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