Thursday, September 10, 2009

Broadcast Service Centre

Today is my birthday - I'm 42 (the age Elvis was when he died!) and so it's twenty-one years since I started at the Beeb. As I think back over my time as a broadcast engineer I can honestly say the most intellectually challenging time was when I worked in maintenance at BBC Television News and spent a lot of time fixing VTRs/cameras/monitors/DVEs etc. There is a sense of real achievement when you get a VTR making good recordings and send it back on it's way to studio/editing/graphics/transmission department. I never understood electronics as well as I did then and although things are generally more interesting (video compression is definitely up there) I rarely feel that satisfaction whereas in 1990 it was a daily occurrence.

Anyhow - Broadcast Service Centre is one of the mainstays of the industry - if you don't have in house engineers who fix VTs (and I don't think many firms do now) BSC are good guys - properly trained engineers who do a good job quickly. Looking around their website I felt a pang of envy! David Reid who runs BSC is a nice guy as well. They also do sales and service of other equipment.

1 comment:

Tim Burton said...

Happy Birthday, although be it very late.

Share the day with my sister.

T