Peter Bale
Renowned filmmaker specialising in outside broadcast, Peter Bale joined the BBC in 1943, aged 16. He worked his way up from probationary technical assistant to become series producer for BBC1's long-running natural history strand Wildlife on One. After working as a news reporter for radio in the early 1950s, Peter moved into television, organising the first live natural history outside broadcast from Slimbridge in 1953.
In 1976, Peter produced the first night shot of foxes, by using an old black and white camera mounted on an electronically controlled panning head, working more like a very primitive infra-red camera due to its sensitivity to the infra-red range. Soon after, the BBC developed the idea of doing a live show using this equipment. Using two cameras, one on a wide angle and the other zoomed in, Badger Watch was born. Peter was fascinated by outside broadcasts and their power to raise important issues, "With their special feel of now rather than history".
Wildlife on One gave Peter the chance to reach his audience in a different way, with its formula for telling a good story in an exciting way after, of course, "Having the right gear, in the right place, at the right time".
View the oral history of Peter Bale
Badger Watch (1977)
