Foreword

Barry Nancarrow entered television almost at its inception in Newcastle. Grounded in early studio operations, his steadfast aim was to become a news cameraman. Although studio cameras were essentially electronic, as were the videotape recording and editing machines, he already saw the paradox that television’s content - commercial, entertainment, and news - was still acquired and played largely from celluloid film. And that medium, even as a high school student experimenting with 8mm gear, was his consuming passion. 

That Barry left the industry at the very moment it was adopting electronic news gathering (ENG) is our gain. For his storytelling, undistracted by that arcane technology, gets on with the job of describing the world, his world, of cinematography in celluloid.

[Although] 16mm cameras were considered amateurish... their relative economy and portability saw them unashamedly adopted as the primary news recording medium that reigned supreme well into the 1970's when lightweight video recording technology started to assert itself in the news domain.

By claiming that "The World is Only 16mm Big" I am simply suggesting (somewhat tongue in cheek) that people's view of the world as it was initially presented on television came from the frames of 16mm film and therefore the world was consequently only 16mm big.

Barry’s reportage is a valuable time capsule of Newcastle’s television news history. He wields the language as a professional scribe yet speaks the generational vernacular of the time: that late-20th century era of motoring and adventuring that the youth of this parochial little Australian city so thoroughly revelled in. But none, according to these exploits, more than him. 

For Barry Nancarrow this was not work, it was a most enjoyable calling.

I would like to thank Barry for allowing Newcastle on Hunter to host his work. Although a relatively minor historic document, it stands large as a portrait all Novocastrians know, and is emblematic of an entire industry's learning years.

Several reasons led me to ask him for permission. His original might be lost should the book hosting company fail. His story deserves a higher profile, more easily found by Internet searches for NBN Television. Finally, Barry’s narrative perfectly fits similar memoirs in Newcastle on Hunter’s NBNTV section.

If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is sacred from loss, nothing is forever. Though this book has been at its original site - Blurb.com - for the past fifteen years, the stroke of a corporate pen might erase the site and its contents in an instant, without explanation or reason. If you can, do buy a printed copy from his Blurb.com page. 

As curator of the NBN Television articles on this website, reading Barry's book reminded me that although hundreds of reporters passed through NBN’s newsroom over sixty years, this might be the only account of the station’s news operations. Despite that considerable journalistic experience, this memoir comes from the most capable pen of a (dare I say humble) news cameraman.

~ The Editor