ABC TV Collectors Show

Hello to all visitors,

At 8pm on Friday June 2nd, 2006 the football card collection which this website is based upon, and its collector, were featured in the 'My Obsession' segment of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Collectors Show (www.abc.net.au/tv/collectors). The experience was a fun one for me, so I thought I'd build a web page to tell you how it happened and to give you an insight into how the show is made.

How it all began The popular ABC show sent me an email, via this website, in early February 2006. In the words of the email 'We are always on the lookout for people with great collections'. They asked me to contact them, which I did. They agreed that English Football Cards would make an excellent feature for the show, and they agreed to schedule a production crew who would come to our home to take some footage of the collection and of me talking about it. Production shoot A crew of three, producer, sound man and camera man, turned up at our house at 9 o'clock one morning in early March. They stayed for 5 hours (including a very pleasant lunch) and took footage of cards, albums, other memorabilia, me, my computer and this website. As you would expect from the ABC they were very pleasant and professional people who knew what they wanted for the show. The main question I had was how they planned to make football cards look interesting for TV.

Do you know who played for Australia in the 1974 World Cup? Click the image above to view the squad in football cards. The images are from the 1974 FKS World Cup album.

The idea of the show is that the owner of the featured collection talks about their collection. In reality the producer sits across from you in a chair and asks you questions, which you then respond to by repeating his question. So, if he asks 'How did your collection begin?' you answer 'My collection began when...'. The ABC then edits out the producer's bits and leaves just you talking about your collection.

Studio shoot

After your home shoot the show invites you to Hobart where the show is made. We already live in Tasmania, so for us it was a three hour drive one Thursday in early April. The ABC put us up in a hotel overnight, ready for shooting the next day. You were asked to dig out some of your favourite items and take them along to the studio for the shoot so I took along some items which I thought would look good on TV.

They make two episodes on a shooting day. We arrived after lunch and were invited to sit quietly in the studio, watching a segment with the other avid collector being featured on our shoot day. It was Nick Hunt, the helixophile, with his collection of corkscrews. For my wife and I it was good to watch someone else shoot their segment before I got my turn 'on the couch'.

You get to talk to the panel in the 'Green Room' before you go back into the studio to film your segment. The panel members seem genuinely interested in us collectors and our collections, and with the studio producer we talked about the sort of things which we might highlight in the panel discussion. Andy, the host, and the panel were just great. They, and all of the production crew, seemed endlessly patient with the task of producing a high quality TV show. I find it hard to believe how much time, patience and commitment to quality it takes to produce something which is all over in a few short moments when it is screened.

Just before you get to talk to the panel they show you the footage from the home shoot. It's honestly quite weird to see and hear yourself on a big screen. I was also amazed at how much footage ended up on the cutting room floor.

Professor Adrian Franklin turns out to be a Tottenham Hotspur fan, while Gordon Brown was interested to know whether there were ever Scottish football cards. Nicole Warren thought that football cards were a 'boy thing' (which they are), but really liked the concept of this website.

The big day

On the day of the studio shoot the ABC can tell you pretty much when your episode will be broadcast. For me it turned out to be almost 2 months from the date of the studio shoot. During this time I guess that they put together the home and studio shoots, add some background music, factoids, graphics etc.

Just prior to the screening date the ABC contacted me to do a 'live to air' radio interview with ABC Radio Southern Queensland.

And then the big day....

I'd like to thank the ABC for asking me to appear on the show, and to thank the Collectors panel and staff for being nice people to work with. It was a very enjoyable experience appearing on the show, one which I would recommend to any collectors.

If you want to contact this site to discuss any aspect of football card collecting or just to talk about the Collectors show please click on the envelope .

Nigel

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