What happened to channel 40 TV station pilot scheme in Milton Keynes?

Answer 1

The station was set up with joint funding by both the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and Post Office Telecommunications (which preceded BT) at a cost of £300,000 for three years from August 1st 1976 to July 31st 1979.

I was employed as a community programmes producer and took over from Dusty Rhodes when he decided to venture out as a freelance news and documentary cameraman.

The station was radical in that it used videotape for all its programming (no film involved at all) and the operation was based upon the emerging Sony U-Matic 3/4" professional videocassette format. It had one of the first 3/4" video editing systems in the UK and benefitted from multi-skilled employees who had to be able to do everything from camera operation, studio direction, technical set-ups and videotape editing in addition to overseeing transmission of programmes from the studio base at 161, Fishermead Boulevard.

There were seven full-time staff, all of whom wandered off into other media-related jobs after Channel 40 closed through MKDC not committing to further funding. Cliff Evans, the BBC-trained Technical Manager, is often credited on broadcast TV programmes these days (2009), Ray Price is now working in the USA, Andrew Bibby is an author living in Yorkshire, where Cathy Denford was last know to be based (York?). Dusty Rhodes is a freelance news/documentary cameraman/director based in Prague. I'm a freelance author and video-maker based in Milton Keynes where I work mostly on corporate projects.

Colin Barrett