The most frequently broadcasted face in television history isn’t a renowned actor, a well-known news anchor, or a long-standing celebrity. In fact, it’s someone unfamiliar to most.
Carole Hersee accumulated over 70,000 hours of airtime from 1967 to 1998, becoming a TV icon without even moving.
This was because she was the face of the ‘test card’ on UK television sets, an emblematic image that appeared whenever broadcasts were interrupted.
With only three channels available and 24-hour programming not yet a reality, Hersee’s face became a familiar sight to every Briton over the years. She appeared on screens overnight and during the scheduled breaks in daytime programming.
Hersee wasn’t a glamorous model or a recognized figure; she was simply an eight-year-old girl helping her father, George, a BBC engineer. He was responsible for updating the test card system, crucial for Britons to adjust their new, cutting-edge purchase—the color TV.
In the image that many older Britons recognize, young Carole is shown in a red dress at a chalkboard with part of a tic-tac-toe game completed. Beside her is Bubbles the Clown, a somewhat eerie-looking doll.
Originally colored blue, Bubbles was changed to green by TV engineers to assist with calibration.
Though it may seem unconventional to use such an image for calibrating color TVs, it was specifically designed to incorporate all primary colors necessary to properly display the picture.
This image served as one among several calibration aids, including her tic-tac-toe game’s ‘X,’ used to check the image’s alignment, indicating the screen’s center.
Surrounding the most broadcast face you might not recognize were gray blocks and other colors that aided technicians in setting the proper TV contrast. Modern electronics have since simplified this with pre-set image settings accessible via remote control, a tool that gained popularity about a decade after Carole’s image was first used.
Reflecting on her experience over fifty years after the photo was taken, now 66-year-old Carole shared the reason behind her selection.
On the show QI, she mentioned: “He was helping to design test cards and it was just decided that a child would be better than an adult because there’d be no fashion, no makeup, to worry about.
“It just happened to be that dad had sent in some pictures of my sister and I, and the committee decided, ‘well we might as well stick with his children’.”
Carole’s role as the face of TV disruptions largely diminished by the late 1990s with the advent of 24-hour broadcasting on UK channels. Her test card was completely phased out by 2012 with the shift to digital broadcasts.
Even after all these years since her father George took the iconic photo, Carole still retains Bubbles the Clown, her on-screen partner and sole competitor for the most-broadcasted face in history.