Rhodesia Television

Rhodesia Television (RTV) was a live-broadcast, television station operating in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a private company. It was established on the 14th of November, 1960, first in Salisbury (now Harare), with transmissions in Bulawayo beginning seven months later. It was only the fourth TV service in Africa after Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt, and the first such service in southern Africa, since South Africa did not introduce television until 1976.https://lowvelder.co.za/239861/history-television-sa/The History of Television in SA - The Lowvelder

__TOC__

Rhodesia Television (Pvt) Ltd RTV broadcast on behalf of the then Federal Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), with its major shareholders being South African companies, including the Argus Group of newspapers, parent company of the Rhodesia Herald,Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman, Geoffrey Nyarota, Zebra, 2006, page 45 and Davenport and Meyer,Viewing the Foreign and the Local in Zimbabwe: Film, Television, and the Shona Viewers, Katrina Daly Thompson University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2004, page 125 which also operated LM Radio, based in Mozambique. Broadcasts started on 15 November 1960. RTV was funded by advertising, sponsored programmes and a television licence fee. Television reception was confined mainly to large cities, and most viewers were whites. In its first decade, broadcasts were received in Salisbury on channel 4 and Bulawayo on channel 3. Umtali (now Mutare) only received television in 1972, by which time it was estimated that more than 90 per cent of the white population had access to the service. By 1973, RTV was broadcasting 42 hours a week from three transmitters.

Before launching, there was skepticism over the types of programmes, but eventually it became a commercial success from the beginning, having sold all of its commercial airtime for its first year on air. Television sets were imported from Europe for the purpose, within two weeks from launch, there were an estimated 4,000 sets installed in Salisbury. By then, it was building its second television station in Bulawayo and was in the preliminary stages for a third one in the Copperplate area.

After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, the country was no longer able to openly purchase British or American television programs, but was able to continue obtaining them through other methods. By the early 1970s—when television in South Africa did not yet exist—50,000 televisions existed, ten times more per capita than in all of Africa.

The station originally provided live monochrome news and entertainment and was instrumental in maintaining public morale after the nation's UDI and during the subsequent Rhodesian Bush War, when the country gained its independence. The first programming created for the majority black viewership was introduced when RTV was taken over by the Rhodesian governmentMedia, Public Discourse and Political Contestation in Zimbabwe, Henning Melber, Nordic Africa Institute, 2004, page 15 in 1976, becoming RBC TV, when the Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation (RBC) initially acquired a 51 per cent stake in the service.

Salisbury

Occupying a position high in the hills above the Salisbury racecourse, the Pockets Hill television station was built just a few metres away from its original 'Alexandra Palace-style' transmitter mast. This was later replaced by a much taller, guyed structure. The HQ of the Rhodesian Broadcast Corporation occupied the nextdoor building.

Engineering Operating in a country under United Nations International Sanctions from 1965, which prevented free trade with the major broadcast manufacturers of the world, RTV electronic engineers had to be particularly resourceful to keep the station on air. This led to constant sanction busting by the directors to ensure that vital equipment could be replaced and that a good stock of spares and consumables could be maintained.

Programmes The station initially operated 'live-to-air' as it had no facility for videotape recording. Imported light entertainment and documentary content, Zimbabwe's Cinematic Arts: Language, Power, Identity By Katrina Daly Thompson, page 49. was sourced from 16mm film and broadcast live from Rank Telecine units. As a result, in the early years, viewers were familiar with seeing the caption 'Please Do Not Adjust Your Set. Normal Programming Will Be Resumed As Soon As Possible' when the 'technical gremlins' upset the broadcast flow.

A small group of programme Producers and their Director/Vision Mixers organised weekly and sometimes daily studio productions. Transmissions opened at 17:00 and ran until just after the late-night news. The British national anthem would be broadcast at station opening and again at closedown.

The studio production crew most often consisted of three cameramen, a single audio operator and two African floor managers. There was also the small set design and creation team in the props area. On occasion, the station would host a broadcast from the Prime Minister, other government ministers, or foreign dignitaries, whereupon the studio staff would turn up in jackets and ties in stark contrast to the regular shorts and tee shirts.

As this was live TV, the crew would sometimes build a set at one end of the studio, in absolute silence, in readiness for an upcoming programme, whilst another completely unrelated live programme would be playing out at the opposite end of the studio. Pressures became even more complicated with the addition of live commercial breaks from the same studio area.

Its initial line-up largely consisted of old US series (The Life of Riley, The Jack Benny Show, The Loretta Young Theatre, Wagon Train, The Roy Rogers Show and Highway Patrol), employed the British advertising magazine concept (ten minutes), conventional spot advertising (every fifteen or thirty minutes) and refused sponsoring programmes. One viewer complained to the Evening Standard about the quality of the programmes, mostly second-rate American material, and the nasal accents, thinking they were unintelligible.

Studios Based around a single studio and a small news and continuity announce booth, each studio was equipped with a complement of tungsten luminaires suspended from an overhead lighting grid and controlled by a small board of analogue dimmers. These luminaires included 2kw fresnel spot / key lights, 1kw 'scoop' fill lights and backlighting from banks of 5 Par38 type lamps. Microphones were connected on wall-mounted or multi-core terminated stageboxes. The latter being bulky (clumsy but indestructible) Philips connector strips.

Early monochrome cameras were mounted on three wheeled dollies, but these cameras were later replaced with RCA or Bosch monochrome cameras with image orthicon tubes, mounted on gas powered studio pedestals. The oldest camera was usually designated as Camera 3, with its turret of fixed focus lenses, delegated to holding wide shots and for shooting the caption stands. Cameras 1 and 2 had more useful zoom lenses, so were at the heart of programme production. These old cameras often ran very hot and were often operated with both side covers left open in an effort to assist with cooling. There was a mobile video monitor used not only for lighting reference, but also to provide a location for the studio countdown clock.

Audio foldback and talkback monitors were overhead above the lighting grid. There were caption stands for each camera to hold title captions, photographic images for news and simple commercial-designed images.

The cyclorama did not have an 'infinity curve' until the mid-1970s and was painted a basic pale blue, which equated to a mid to light tone grey for the monochrome cameras. On the unused studio wall were racks for camera and audio cables, as well as double-glazed viewing windows to connect the technical areas visually with the studio floor.

Control Room

One single room held production, vision mixing and audio mixing areas, with no partition. All cues were verbal although intercoms connected both video and audio desks with Studio, VT (video tape) and Telecine areas, as well as with the Master Control suite next door. Camera direction from the control room, in the very early days, was via a radio transmitter up in the lighting grid and with cheap domestic medium wave transistor radios strapped to the heads of the crew members. This system was replaced by cabled 'Cans' which plugged directly into the camera, receiving its signal from the multi-cored camera cable. Each camera was also able to talkback directly to the director if necessary.

The early vision mixing desks were rudimentary and home-built, in front of an array of wall-mounted CRT monitors. New vision mixing consoles were installed progressively, that could also provide basic dissolves and keying functions.

A Studer 12-channel stereo audio mixer was added to the sound mixing suite in 1972. This controlled a wrap-around console incorporating: two EMT broadcast turntables, two Ampex quarter-inch full-track tape recorder / players, and two Spot Master cartridge players for instant playback of theme music and stings. Microphones were mostly AKG D202 and Beyer M 201, with bulky RCA Lavalieres. A couple of AKG C414 and one Neumann U87 mic was added for higher quality use. There was only one handheld VHF Telefunken wireless microphone. This had a 50 cm long flexible antenna cable that would often be ripped off accidentally during transmission, causing an explosive cacophony of white noise.

Recording to videotape

Telecine content was upgraded with the coming of the videotape era in 1975, using man-sized RCA Quad video machines that consumed 10½" spools of 2" magnetic tape. These were still monochrome machines, but enabled advertisements to be inserted at will – lengthy pre-roll times permitting. These huge machines, operated by dedicated 'VT Girls', were the workhorses for recording of entire TV and current affairs programmes. As there was no post-production editing available on the Quad machines, all content had to be pre-compiled from the studio floor and control room.

Under the guise of RBC TV in 1976 the station joined the 'video cassette' era when Sony Umatic 'low band' recorders, cameras and an edit suite were installed. This in turn progressed to the 'high band' Umatic recorders and edit suite. In 1979 / 1980 the station took delivery of its first Sony 1-inch 'C Spool' edit suite – and the earliest content was shot and produced in colour, though still broadcast in monochrome. RTV was one of very few stations worldwide still broadcasting in black and white.

Telecine units, videotape and camera control

There were two Rank telecine units, each comprising: 16mm projector (optical and magnetic sound), 35mm slide carousels and epidiascope (for caption cards), transferring to video cameras. These units fed imagery to both the studio and transmission control areas, so both must always liaise closely to gain their use.

The VT room had four of the aforementioned Quad recorders where two girls usually operated and cued tapes for recordings or transmission. This room was heavily air conditioned to keep the machines cool and so it also housed the archive / main store for videotaped content. Contained also within this technical area were the camera control units or 'CCUs', where a duty engineer would manage the video signals from studio and telecine cameras.

The newsroom