England's History of Space Broadcasts

From Robert Law, over at Yahoo Group's Inside_KSC,
), here's an interesting look at the history
of England's coverage of America's space program.... Jim Burns
____

36 Years Ago Today, Robert Law


SPACE REPORTING FROM ACROSS THE POND

During the Apollo Program hear in the UK we only had 2 TV stations BBC
and ITV both provided coverage =A0 The BBC began with Cliff Michimore
who was more famous for the Holiday Program to anchor there coverage
along with a panel of experts which included Patrick Moore (who had
contributed to Lunar Mapping pre space age) They built a big space
studio to present there coverage behind the desks suspended from the
ceiling was a huge moon globe. one rumor about this globe was that
originally it was a prop for 2001 which had been rejected because Stanly
Kubrick thought the craters where to deep !. The BBC used the theme
music of 2001 to introduce these programs. During the coverage of the
Apollo 8 mission in 1968 at the most critical moment when the astronauts
where about to fire the SPS for the journey home the BBC cut the program
to show Play School ! as the Apollo program progressed the BBC decided
to get a space corespondent this was James Burke who had been on the
science program Tomorrow's World , more recently he has done Connections
which is shown on the Discovery Channel, I thought James Burke was
excellent and so was Patrick Moore

The Space Studio also imputed to the News programs The BBC sent there
Air correspondent Reginald Turnhill to cover these mission from the USA
( I had the Honor of Meeting Reg in 2003 ) Reg is a real expert in
spaceflight he also flew in the early test flights of Concorde and is
famous for his observers books of spaceflight , more recently he has
written The Moon landings which tells the story of his space reporting.
he was the first reporter to Brake the Apollo 13 story ! as the Apollo
program continued these programs got better and for the final Moon Shot
James Burke and Patrick Moore went to Florida to cover the flight from
the USA via Satellite , these programs broke many firsts in broadcasting
technology in the history of British Broadcasting.

Unfortunately very Little remains as the BBC scrubbed most of the tapes
to re use for sports coverage =A0 =A0 .

ITVs coverage was provided by ITN the ITV system consisted of lots of
regional company's in those days this caused problems for ITN
(Independent Television News) as they had to fight to get to show the
space coverage , for Apollo 11 it was awful they had a verity night from
a theater hosted by David Frost only cutting to ITN as Armstrong stepped
of the ladder ! The First ever News at Ten in 1967 had coverage of
preparations for Apollo 7. but like the BBC as time went on ITNs
coverage improved There space expert was Peter Fairlie who always talked
about the Moon Ship etc where as James Burke was fluent in NASA , CM
etc. ITNs studio was a lot smaller than the BBC and there programs where
introduced by space sounding music which I preferred rather than the
music the BBC used.

I was very young back then 9 in 1969 ! but unfortunately space has never
had the same level of reporting since =A0 a few more comments


SKYLAB


There was very Little coverage I remember watching the Saturn V launch
live after that very Little, ITN covered the story of Arabela the Spider
! and Patrick Moore had James Burke on his Sky at Night Program to talk
about Skylab.


APOLLO SOYUZ


I was 15 and it happened during the School Holidays in fact 30 years ago
this week i think ! The BBC had excellent coverage of this with a space
studio , The Moon Globe had been replaced with a Large globe of the
world and models of Apollo and Soyuz suspended from the ceiling ! again
James Burke the music to introduce these programs was "Fanfare for the
common Man" Arron Copeland. This was the first space flight I had seen
in Colour as my friend Eric's parents had just bought a new coulor TV.
this of course was also the first time we had live coverage of the Soyuz
launch , in the UK this happened in the morning and Apollo went about
7PM again the BBC coverage was far superior than ITNs because they had
more time. one of the highlights for me was when the sports program was
cut for space ! I think this was the docking.


VIKING


The BBC did a live program on July 4 1976 for the mars landing and James
Burke reported live from America unfortunately the Viking landings where
delayed and this spoiled the program as there was no pics from Mars !


SPACE SHUTTLE


In 1981 both ITV and BBC covered the Launch of Columbia and this time
ITNs coverage was far superior than the BBCs . ITN constructed a Space
Studio the programs where anchored by Sir Alister Burnett (News at Ten)
and in the studio with him was Dave Scott of Apollo 15 The program was
introduced with fireballxl5 type space music. there was coverage of the
launch then a shorter program with coverage from orbit and news reports
on the ITN news from the Space Studio and coverage of the Landing.

The BBC coverage was done by the Tomorrow's World program I was
disappointed that James Burke was not doing the coverage. for the
opening music again Copeland was used "Rodeo" the next track on the LP
from Apollo Soyuz !.


STS 2


ITN again provided coverage from there space studio this time with Dick
Gordon APOLLO 12
The BBC was reduced to coverage of the launch on Radio 2 Pathetic !


SPACE SHUTTLE ERA 1982-2005


From STS 3 until Discovery's return to flight in 1988 we had no live
coverage and had to make do with the ordinary news reports I bought a
VHS video for sts 1 and have a huge collection as I record and watch all
space missions (Apollo has a lot to answer for !) By the Time of the
first Shuttle flights Reg Tunrnhil was forced to retire from The BBC due
to his age and became a freelance space reporter (see his book Moon
landings ) he began to provide live reports over the phone to the
children's news program =A0 Newsround these where more accurate than
what we where getting in some of the main news programs. In a rare event
in 1983 the ITV breakfast station TVAM covered the first Night Launch of
the space shuttle Challenger , which was the start of lots of space
items on this program over the years sadly in 1991 they lost the
franchise

Over the years ITNs reporting was away ahead of the BBC which tended to
be very negative in 1985 ITN even arranged a schools experiment in Space
which sadly was delayed by the Challenger accident. The BBC Newsround
program was on air but not showing live pictures of the launch but after
the explosion went to it so they broke the story in the UK.


RETURN TO FLIGHT (1988)


The BBC provided live coverage of the launch of STS26 they had James
Pike reporting live from KSC since 1988 the BBC has now moved ahead of
ITN in its space reporting which douse not seem to be bad as it was in
the 80s . with BBC NEWS 24 they can now cover launches live . there was
no live coverage planed for Discovery last week but we now have the 24
hour news channels for that.
CNNI

In 1991 I got a Satellite dish installed for CNN which covers the
Launches in the 1990s we had John Holiman who I thought was excellent as
a space reporter he was full of enthusiasm he would keep going when they
tried to move on to the next item!. when I heard the news that John had
been killed in a car crash it was a very sad day for me ,like the
Challenger Disaster or the loss of Columbia.

Unfortunately over the Year's CNNI has less US programing and we do not
get the same amount of coverage as CNN USA we do not see much of Miles
O'Brien in fact Deep Impact was covered from London by the Technology
Corespondent.

Nowadays it is the INTERNET and Broadband if only we had that in the 70s
!

Robert Law

In message
(Jim Burns) wrote:

From Robert Law, over at Yahoo Group's Inside_KSC,
), here's an interesting look at the history
of England's coverage of America's space program.... Jim Burns

Very inaccurate, and it's a shame his writing ability hasn't improved
since 1969.

Anthony