Basys – What Was Pebble Mill?

Midlands Today newsroom

Photo from Jonathan Dick, no reproduction without permission

The Midlands Today newsroom at Pebble Mill from the early nineties.

Cathy Houghton in the foreground and David Davies in the background, at BBC Pebble Mill, Birmingham. The computer system was BASYS, which Cathy apparently excelled at!

Thanks to Jonathan Dick for sharing the photo.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Malcolm Hickman: ‘As a Comms engineer, we sometimes had to see Gwen Smith when there had been a problem with the Saturday results feed. Her bark was always greater than her bite. When you got it wrong, she gave you a tongue lashing, when it went right, she sent out a hero gram. A lovely lady.’

Jane Partridge: ‘I remember when Phil was doing a Saturday Comms shift and I was away (possibly at Guide Camp in those days) he took our eldest daughter into work with him, she was 5 at the time (so 1989-90) and he was heavilly involved in setting up the BAYSIS system. She was used to using the BBC Model B computer we had at home, so going into the newsroom with him, she perched on a stool and was happily occupied tapping away on a keyboard…. the report I got was that there was a newsroom of open-mouthed journalists nervously attempting what this 5 year old didn’t bat an eyelid at.’

Diane Kemp: ‘I remember when BASYS came in. There were some ‘super users’ who taught the rest of us. Jane Green was one, I think??’

Midlands Today Newsroom

This photo of the Midlands Today newsroom is from Maureen Carter, who is seen here producing. You will also notice the Basys newsroom information system being used.

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Newsroom – Maurice Blisson

I came across this old photo taken in Pebble Mill newsroom, in the early 90s at a guess. I am in the foreground and also on it are Harvinder Singh, a newsroom stalwart who still does news shifts at the Mailbox, and Bob Sinkinson, Network News reporter, now retired. It looks like it is the old assignments desk, with me as intake editor and Harvinder on Camera Diary, controlling the movements of the crews and reporters. The early computers were the Hewlett-Packard BASYS system and were very rudimentary. There is the reflection of a red light at the end of the newsroom, indicating transmission.

Maurice Blisson

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

Becky Land: ‘Ah BASYS, that takes me back. I went from an electric typrwriter (ILR) to Basys and Rip n Read and thought I was in vanguard of technological age. Cart anyone?’

Peter Poole: ‘Maurice was a great character. The BASYS system could be logged in to remotely using a dial up connection. Somehow the modem phone number, user name and password was leaked. And a person who was due to be interviewed hacked into BASYS. And was able to read the scripts for their interview.’