“Let’s Go”

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Behind the scenes at Alpha’s Saturday sports and entertainment strand

POPULAR I.T.N. newscaster Huw Thomas helped to introduce ‘Let’s Go’ throughout the afternoon, and reads all the sports results at the end of the programme.

EVERY Saturday afternoon Studio ‘A’ at the Alpha Television Theatre becomes the nerve centre for the biggest networking operation attempted on British television.

From one o’clock until five, “Let’s Go” is on the air to all television areas in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Producer Alan Olivers with his director, lead a team of technicians, sound and camera crews, telecommunication engineers and outside broadcast crews who may be stationed anywhere in the country, sending back to Aston sound and vision signals showing the country at work and play.

Every Saturday four or five Outside Broadcast units are out and about covering events which appeal to all members of the family.

  • For Mother, a fashion show, or Joe Loss playing for lunchtime dancing in Coventry.
  • Father is taken on a visit to a boxing or wrestling match, a race meeting and perhaps a bathing beauty competition for good measure.
  • For the youngsters it may be a pantomime, an ice show, or a visit to a busy locomotive depot.

Finally, at 4.30 p.m. “Let’s Go” provides a full service of sports results — football, rugby, racing and summaries of the big sporting events of the afternoon.

IN THE STUDIO, Oscar Heidenstam conducts the weekly Keep Fit classes. A willing guest pupil who appeared in “Let’s Go” recently was Miss Jayne Mansfield, pictured here.

Over twenty cameras, five complete mobile units, and over 400 technicians are working throughout the day in all corners of the country, bringing the world to Aston.

Inside the studio control centre, Alan Chivers and his team work with split second precision, passing on this ambitious kaleidoscope to the viewers at home.

FOCAL POINT of ‘Let’s Go’ is the specially designed control panel which you see from time to time during the actual programme. At this control panel, the production team is in continuous contact with all the Outside Broadcast units based hundreds of miles apart.
AS THE racing results come in, they are marked up on the board ready for the full service of results at 4.30 p.m.
ONE OF the mobile Outside Broadcast units at work outside an hotel in Coventry from which a variety show is being televised. The picture signal is sent back to Aston from the Outside Broadcast point by micro wave radio links.

About this author

'Behind the Scenes' is a booklet produced by Alpha Television Services in 1963 to mark the enlargement of the studio site in Aston, Birmingham

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