jarwoodHP's blog

Edna Owen or Miss Owen as she was always known by when at ITN. Virtually employee number one Edna Owen was there from the very first night of ITN when ITV started in September 1955. An interesting insight into those very early days. She recounts the day when the training days were over and the group of employees would be split in to two shifts. Potentially to not meet anymore. A formidable manager who made sure all were doing their best.  

David Hamilton was a continuity announcer for ITV . I remember him most when he played football for the ITV team. Turning up at Brockwell Park council football pitches with his boots in a bag. Unlike most of us he arrived in his Rolls Royce! Very likeable fellow footballer on the day. Mostly know as "diddy" no doubt for his size although I never remember him being very small.Worked with many other famous people at ITV like Eamon Andrews. 

The use of Speechmatics to obtain a printed text is a great saving on employing a stenographer to do the work. I have experimented with different files to obtain the most correct printed text from the voice. Speechmatics themselves say that a good level is essential for the system to work. Strangely the results do vary enormously.. One male voice can sound very similar to another but the resulting text print out can be totally different. By way of experiment I recently tried a female archive voice and only used one side of the recording. The result I think was slightly better in that A) The female voice works better with Speechmatics anyway and B) The use of one side of the recording produced near perfect results especially when there were few technical terms and/or proper names. It is always worth an experiment to do a short before getting the whole interview processed.