When I’m asked what my job is, I reply “I watch TV for a living”. Like a lot of people at Red Bee Media I do a job that’s complicated to explain, so I make light of it.

But directing a channel can be broken down into 3 main responsibilities,

  • Transmit the schedule correctly
  • Make the channel flow as nicely as possible
  • Protect the channel from breakdowns

That said I do watch a lot of TV in my job!

15:00 I’m the late BBC One Director and the first thing I do when I arrive is get briefed by the early Director. I then print off the schedule and go to the handover meeting. At the meeting I hear about issues like the late delivery of Silent Witness.

16:00 I take over responsibility of directing BBC One. The BBC One schedule is complicated. It contains hundreds of events, each with numerous elements, so errors can creep in. The bread and butter of my job is to stop the errors getting to air.

The most likely place for errors are junctions. These are the bits in-between programmes and are normally made up of trails promoting upcoming programmes and symbols which ident the channel and are voiced by Announcers promoting the next programme. I preview the junctions many times checking every element is factually correct and making sure the channel looks good.

16:29 The programme Perfection finishes and it gets busy, I do a round-up to the BBC Nations. I then give sound to the Announcers. I give a 2 minutes warning, 1 minute. I give timings of the end credits. 30 second (30”) warning. I cue the Announcer. They do their voice over. 10”, I point to the next trail in 5,4,3,2,1 cut.

We are in our first trail. I point to the next trail. 10”, 5,4,3,2,1 mix.

Second trail now. The Symbol is next. 10”. “The symbol in 5,4,3,2,1 cut”.

I count backwards through the whole of the symbol “16,15,14,13,12,11,10,9,8”. The Announcer says their announcement. “7,6,5,4,3,2,1, mix”. The next programme is on air.

16:30 From this point on I concentrate on previewing so any issues can be raised with the BBC before they go home.

17:40 I contact the 6 O’clock News and confirm on air times, duration and presenters name. I pass this onto the BBC Nations and Regions so they can name check the presenters on their local symbols. I also patch the news gallery to them so they can hear the News Directors’ counts into their Regional News opts. I confirm with our Engineers that they are happy with pictures and sound from the news studio.

19:40 Silent Witness turns up, it’s a late delivery. We don’t like playing programmes off tape as they are less reliable than servers, (a server is like the hard disk you have in a PVR, but much bigger). We also like to have programmes on 2 servers in case something goes wrong with the first server. It’s 1 hour 20 minutes before it’s due to go on air and that’s cutting it a bit fine.

21.00 Silent Witness is now on one server, but isn’t on the second one. I’ll have to play the safety copy off tape, which is not ideal as I have to run it manually.

23:36 My most difficult junction of the night is between Question Time and This Week, both are live. This Week want to know their on air time. All I can give them is their scheduled on air time, since Question Time is live I can’t guarantee when they will finish.

Question Time finishes 3” late, not bad. In a junction of two 15” trails, a 30” trail and a 15” symbol, I do the normal backward counting, I give This Week their final on air time, then a 1 minute warning, 30” and 10 – 0 count. It is a really busy 1 minute 15”.

01:00 The shift finishes and I hand over to the night shift.

Richard Ellis-Jones, Playout Director