Most of these people will be invisible to us. They don’t get their names in the end credits of the programmes. They don’t get a namecheck on air. We don’t see them on screen. We don’t even see or hear what they’ve produced to make the programme appear. Yet they’re all vital.

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At Thames in 1970 there’s a group of people absolutely vital to making television happen for the viewer and yet utterly invisible: the transmission control staff and the technicians that work with them. Everybody has a vital job to do, from the person lining up the reels of commercials to the person with a stopwatch seeing what space is available for promotions and announcements. They pool this information and another vital, invisible specialist types it up on special paper and has it duplicated using a manual Gestetner machine, turning the handle to produce each copy, then collating them, stapling them and distributing them to dozens of people in the Euston studios – and sending copies to the head of presentation of each of the other ITV companies (and ITN) so that everybody knows what everybody else is doing.

These presentation schedules, also known as routine sheets, are then used by the transmission controllers and the continuity announcers to run each evening’s broadcasts to the second, from starting the station up at 2.44pm (and 31 seconds) through to the epilogue, closing announcement, national anthem and “don’t forget to switch off your set” starting at 11.59pm (and 50 seconds).

These routine sheets are complicated and technical, but tell us an amazing amount of useful detail of what happened on a specific day.

On Thursday 26 March 1970, Roger Rowe was the transmission controller at Euston. With him that day were Sheila Kennedy and Philip Elsmore splitting the continuity announcing job between them. If there are problems to do with the commercials – one to be pulled or one to be added – then Mr G. Smith is in the building until midnight to manage the process. Mrs Pam Durrant is available on extension 651 if the press office is required – if someone says a rude word on Today or if tomorrow’s newspapers could run with something that Thames has put out. At home but still on call is Transdiffusion’s Honorary President, Geoffrey Lugg, available on 01 977 4053, ready in case a programme becomes unavailable or disaster strikes.

The day starts at 14Hours.44Mins.31Secs exactly with the fade up of the ITA ‘flag’ caption. On the Brighter Side and Pizzicato Rockalong by Johnny Hawksworth play. At 14.48.02, Philip Elsmore – on tape – says “This is Thames Television, operating on the London transmitters of the Independent Television Authority.” Then more Hawksworth – Salute to Thames (known as the March internally) and we’re into Sheila Kennedy saying hello at 14.49.50. She has exactly ten seconds to welcome the viewers to Thames and throw forward to a repeat of Mad Movies.

There’s more time available after the programme ends at 15.14.05 with 5 seconds of the From THAMES slide. 50 seconds are given to her here, allowing time for her to run through the early evening’s programmes before the 7-second Thames ident at 15.14.53 and the Outside Broadcast. This OB is also being taken by Harlech, which may explain why the Thames ident is being run before the programme start rather than as part of it – it’s allowing the Wales and West company to not show it. Although quite why is in itself a mystery.

We’re back to the announcer’s booth at 16.16.30 for 15 seconds and a “Childrens Opening” – billed as being the announcer, so it’s Sheila Kennedy again and not some special ident or title sequence. The next programme is from Yorkshire Television in Leeds, coming down the GPO co-axial cable and being taken by Thames, Granada, Westward, Grampian, Channel and Southern.

Our first advert break of the day occurs after Diane’s Magic Theatre ends at 16.27.55. It’s for Mackintosh’s Quality Street – on black and white – followed by Findus Fish Portions in colour. This is a feature of the time – less than 6 months into colour on the main ITV regions – with the advertisements unselfconsciously swinging back and forth between colour and black and white. The ITV companies were not permitted to charge more for handling colour advertising, so had little incentive to push the advertising agencies into switching. Long-running campaigns for major brands had been prepared in black and white up to two years ago, were expensive to make, and there was little incentive for companies to remake them in colour – an expensive business.

There’s no accounting for which adverts are in colour and which are not. Mars, one of the world’s largest advertisers, is firmly in black and white throughout the evening across most of its brands – Pedigree Chum, Mars bars, Marathon, and Twix all getting a plug before 7pm without a hint of colour anywhere (Revels, however, are in colour). But smaller brands like Brolac paint and Meakin Pottery are in colour. Even brands that would benefit from colour in their commercials – ICI’s Dulux Paint – are in monochrome, yet followed by a colour commercial for Filigree Curtains (who?).

Skipping forward, Magpie at 17.19.00 is going out to the entire network except ‘HAR 2’. This is the former Teledu Cymru, the Welsh- and English-language service of Harlech – ‘HAR 1’ is the former TWW, the Harlech General Service for Western England and South Wales in English alone. Clearly Harlech Wales is putting out a children’s programme in Welsh in that part of its dual contract area.

The ITN news is at 17.50.00, and is being routed through Thames facilities in Euston – which is why this slot (later the 5.45pm and 5.40pm ITN programmes) was always the best chance of glimpsing the Thames clock or hearing part of a Thames announcement when your regional company was a tad early into the news (or Thames was a tad late). It also allows Thames to network at 30 second promotion for This Week after the news finishes – but the other companies need to get out at precisely 18.01.30 or they’ll be showing the Thames weather.

Everything now is locally produced at Thames until 20.59.00, when ITN gets 30 seconds to plug tonight’s News at Ten. This is done in a complicated way – ITN’s live promo comes in to Thames and is then sent on the standby line (not the over-the-air line; ATV had bought a second private direct line between Foley Street in London and Aston in Birmingham from the GPO back when they had two ITV contracts) to ATV to network. ATV then keeps control of the network for the next programme, except for Grampian, who opt-out for a local programme.

The ATV programme is a repeat of The Jimmy Tarbuck Show, at 20.59.30. Pre-publicity and the TVTimes have boasted that this is in colour. It isn’t, and an announcement will need to be made to apologise. It looks like that has been left to ATV to do, meaning that the apology for it not being in colour will go out across the network – the majority of which is still in black and white only anyway.

More networking shenanigans at 21.59.15, as Granada plugs Cinema to the network, but does it by sending the trail down the line to Thames to distribute to the network. Since both of the Harlech regions, and Grampian, Southern and Tyne Tees, are opting out of Cinema, their local continuity will have to run something in its place; they, and all the other regions, are going to have to fill the next 15 seconds as well, as Thames is doing its standard “station identification” at this point, a full 7-second ident held for a further 7 seconds and Philip Elsmore saying something like “This is Thames, from London. And now, the ITN News at Ten.”

At the end of the long run of commercials starting at 22.29.05, Philip Elsmore does what is in effect a leftover practice from the 1950s – a ‘clock spot’. These were cheap 7-second plugs for a product done over the station clock (or with the clock either side and a slide in-between) read by the duty announcer but were deplored by the Independent Television Authority as it looked like the station itself was being sponsored by the product in question. All that’s left of them by 1970 is the announcer coming in live at the end of a standard commercial break and doing a plug over a slide – in this case for this week’s TVTimes.

Once Cinema has run – direct to the participating network from Granada – the rest of the evening is all locally originated. The main programme is NBC’s I Spy, starring Robert Culp. The episode number 21 from season 3, previously shown on NBC in the States on 4 March 1968. That’s followed by the epilogue, 8 minutes and 7 seconds long, at 23.59.50, on videotape, and then the closedown.

The closedown isn’t given any timings, and aficionados of this particular sub-genre of presentation will know how this time was used – informally, with the announcer chatting about what we saw tonight and what we can see tomorrow, possibly thanking the transmission crew and sometimes naming the transmission controller. The national anthem is played, there’s a period of silence, and then the announcer gently fades his mic back up, reminds us to switch off our sets, and wishes us a good night again.

And the day is done.

The post Far from routine appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

BBC-1 and the big 4 ITV regions (London, Midlands, North West, Yorkshire) were due to go into colour with a big bang at the stroke of midnight on Saturday 15 November 1969. Of course, in London there were two ITV companies – Thames Television and London Weekend Television. Saturday fell under the management of London Weekend, so they went colour on schedule while Thames had to wait until Monday afternoon to open up properly in colour for the first time.

This led to a slight promotional problem for Thames. While the big campaign for the switch to colour was on-going, advertising the new colour service on its start date was advertising LWT, and the two companies did not get along for many reasons. So Thames let the national campaigns for the switch run, but mounted its own small campaign to remind people that Thames would also be in colour… but from Monday 17 November.

One promotional device was this sticker – in reality, about the size of a postage stamp – issued on sheets to staff for them to put on letterheads and envelopes. This also saved Thames the money of printing special stationery that would soon look out of date.

The post Thames goes colour appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Tom, you’d become famous as a presenter of “Night Ride” on BBC Radio. What made you jump ship to Thames?

I’d got bored with my lot at the BBC and thought I’d just chance it. I went to see the boss at Thames. He said “Okay, Tom we’ll try you out for a day”. And I gave up my BBC staff position for this one day. I did the one day, the bosses seemed pleased, so I joined the ranks of Phillip Elsmore, Peter Marshall and of course David Hamilton – who is, to this day, a good fine mate.

Working at Thames Euston Road HQ (as with the BBC) was ideal for me personally. I lived in St Johns Wood and could get to the studios in seven minutes – ten if the traffic was heavy.

It must have been a very different job compared to Radio One

I loved the “buzz” of live television and although in a tiny studio with no one with me, all of Master Control were through a glass window. I found I had to throw all scripts away when “in vision”, which I did, and just be “myself”.

Like a stage actor, I had to adapt to whatever was thrown at me. A newsflash from ITN. A programme feed not there. Loss of sound or vision. It was just me. One camera. No floor manager, either!

And when it all went wrong?

The announcer was the all-moving all-talking human ident. On the programme schedule it said things like “Tom in Vis 10”, but it never was like that. It could be 5 seconds – or even once six minutes when all sources failed and I ad-libbed my way thru the TV Times thinking “this is the worst nightmare ever!”

And public loved it when things went wrong! After that night for days afterwards London cabbies would shout out in New Bond Street or wherever, “Oi Tom you cocked it up the other night!” You must all have been flying by the seat of your pants that night!

I do want to thank the Thames transmission controllers Tony, Roger, Duggie and Barry. The crew next door became fine mates and lots of jokes were played on one another, probably out of sheer boredom. The shifts were long but one had to be aware that anything could happen and with me as the announcer even if nature called I had to tell the whole control room I was going to the loo.

Thames had a lot of celebrities floating about. Did you ever get to meet any?

When sitting in make-up I could be next to all manner of people. Leslie Caron, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Snowdon, HRH Prince Phillip – the list is endless and when on a regular visit to Las Vegas, Vic Damone announced to his audience at The Golden Nuggett “there’s the man who says goodnight to me every time I am in London”, well, fame at last!

You have a big fan base from your late night and through-the-night announcing.

I often wondered if anyone was watching in the early hours. There were thousands! I did my fair share of “thru the nights” but with the shape of things to come with no “in vision” announcing I knew for a long time maybe it was time to move on.

You also gained announcing fame outside of London, of course.

When I handed over to LWT on a Friday evening I would race home, pack and be on the 1930 for the weekend at HTV and then travel thru the night to be back at Euston Road studios first thing Monday morning. I was younger then!

I made many announcing friends – Peter Marshall, Phillip Elsmore, David Hamilton, Victoria Crawford in London; from HTV both in Cardiff and Bristol, Peter Marshall (again!), Peter Lewis, Annie St John, Keith Martin, Margaret Pritchard, Arfon Haines Davis, Dilwyn Young Jones, Jenny Ogwen and many many more.

I recall when LWT was desperately short of an announcer I did shifts for them. Michael Grade objected because I was on Thames every weekday. What the hell, it was all ITV anyway!

But to this day I still get letters from the fans of Thames. That type of announcing has gone now, of course. I’m saddened that “local” presentation on ITV has all gone except for the news. If you saw an announcer (wherever you were) you identified the face and voice with that station. Now these days it’s all beamed up from London with the “hard sell” that I suppose is important – more so today than it ever was.

In the late 1980s I realised that more and more the “in vision” spots were going. We as announcers were only seen when there was a breakdown, which didn’t bear well with me. I saw the writing on the studio wall and decided to leave for a TV show over in Los Angeles. The rest, as they say, is history.

You sound like you miss the Thames days.

I loved Thames and still do and whenever I see the ident, well, I sit here at home in a big big pool of nostalgia.

Looking back I am glad I joined Thames. It was one of the best TV companies I have ever worked for – and there have been many over my last forty years in broadcasting.

They say it’s a bad thing to look back. It’s not so, because all my memories of that era are happy ones.

The post Voice of Thames appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The majority shareholder, who also provided the majority of the staff and management, was the former ABC Weekend Television, owned by the Associated British Picture Corporation.

ABC Weekend had begun in 1956, serving the Midlands and the North on Saturdays and Sundays from Aston in Birmingham and Didsbury in Manchester.

Being the smallest of the “Big 4” companies of the time and covering the largest area for the smallest time, it wasn’t long before ABC Weekend decided (with a push from the ITA) to concentrate resources on their presentation in order to make a mark.

Along with this concentration, they took over the former Warner Bros studios in Teddington and began to produce some of ITV’s best-known programming of “the golden age” – The Avengers, ABC Armchair Theatre, Redcap and many others.

When the ITV contracts came up for renewal in 1967, ABC applied for the London weekends (Friday evening to Sunday night) contract with a high confidence of success, having been something of the golden boy in the ITA’s eye.

The minority shareholder was Rediffusion London, owned by British Electric Traction and BET’s subsidiary Broadcast Relay Services, began life as a joint venture with Associated Newspapers, calling itself Associated-Rediffusion (A-R).

A-R was the first ITV station on air, launching in September 1955, and held the “plum” contract for London weekdays – at that time including Friday evenings.

Associated Newspapers sold the majority of their shareholding during the very lean times at the start of the service, when all the ITV companies were unprofitable and haemorrhaging money.

The name Associated-Rediffusion, however, lasted on air until 1964, when, with competition from the new BBC-2 and the pirate radio stations combining with a major change of fashion and style in the UK, the company relaunched itself on air as Rediffusion, London.

As the most powerful ITV company, and as incumbent, Rediffusion were very confident of retaining their licence when the ITA announced the contract reviews. They were so confident, in fact, that much of the interview was spent lecturing the regulator on how television was done and how little the regulator knew how to do it. Also thrown in for good measure was a complaint about the loss of Friday evenings when the next contracts began.

This arrogance, for want of a better word, annoyed the abrasive chairman of the ITA, Lord Hill of Luton. The insult was made worse when the management leading the bid left, only for some of them to return as leading lights in other consortia.

Lord Hill already had a tough decision to make as to where ABC, its existing regions abolished, would fit into the new system. Rediffusion’s arrogance and the treachery of its senior management weakened their position in his eyes.

With an absolutely startling bid from the great and the good of broadcasting for the London weekends contract, Lord Hill and his Authority would need to make some very tough choices.

The post The players appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The press in the week before had taken delight in authoritatively speculating that certain companies were doomed. STV in Glasgow was going. One of the regionals would be restructured. A merger between Southern and someone was on hand.

The reality was very different but just as shocking. TWW, the dual broadcaster to Wales and western England, was out, replaced by a dazzling array of names headed by Richard Burton.

London weekends went to the London Television Consortium, made up of some of the senior management of the BBC plus other big names. ATV was therefore stripped of its London foothold.

The new Yorkshire region went to the Telefusion rentals and pipe-TV company, on condition that they took up the talent and management of the rival Yorkshire Independent Television consortium.

With all that and the headlines for Monday’s newspapers practically writing themselves (Richard Burton top, David Frost second, Telefusion on the inside pages), the announcement about the London weekdays contract must have seemed dry and technical.

It certainly didn’t seem to be a revolution. After all, neither the incumbent, Rediffusion, nor the displaced ABC had lost out.

Instead there would be a technical change as the two combined to provide programmes from Monday morning till Friday afternoon.

That ABC was given a slim majority of the company was barely noticed. That the ITA had specified the Howard Thomas of ABC was to be the MD and that he was to have a free hand in choosing the staff and management also slipped past.

Most journalists saw nothing to write up about – just a boardroom manoeuvre here and name change (possibly) there. Richard Burton and David Frost seemed much more important.

The journalists probably missed a trick. Far from being a simple merger between two companies to run an existing service, this was a revolution.

Rediffusion were completely humiliated. From being the premier ITV company, they switched to having a large investment in someone else’s premier ITV company.

ABC, that minnow in the Midlands and North, frequently confused with ATV and always fighting its London weekend rival for access to the peak London audience, suddenly came into possession of the commanding heights of ITV.

What no-one asked, because no-one realised exactly what this meant, was if ABC was up to the job. And would Rediffusion go quietly?

The journalists went back to their desks and wrote about Richard Burton’s private life and David Frost’s public life and produced profiles on little Telefusion.

Meanwhile, Howard Thomas sat down and started to consider the really important issues.

The post The shotgun marriage appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

There were an enormous number of variables to consider, amongst them being:

• The staff at the two companies had to be kept busy running them for a year.
• A small stockpile of new programmes would be needed ready for launch day.
• The company had too many studios.
• Both ABC and Rediffusion had other businesses and large international earnings they didn’t want to share with each other.
• The two companies had overlapping departments.
• Colour was on the horizon, meaning investment in technology and training was urgently required.
• The new station needed a name and an identity.

Staff

The two companies still had a job to do until July 1968 and still had to make programmes, sell adverts and make a profit for the parent companies in that time.

Therefore the staff, whilst facing redeployment (everyone was, at least, guaranteed a job somewhere in ITV, somewhere in the UK) had to be kept happy and in full creative flow.

Stockpiling

The original companies had had the chance to produce some “in the can” productions before coming on air in the mid-1950s, but with most of television being live they weren’t much needed.

By 1967, most of television was on video and film. The audience, once so enamoured of live productions, now cared less for them and wanted more polish to their programming. A “year zero” when the new contracts began, using bought in, repeated or just live material wasn’t possible. New production needed to be ready for day one.

Studios

The new company would have studios in Didsbury, Aston, Teddington, Wembley and Kingsway.

Didsbury would have to close and the staff redeployed elsewhere in ITV; Aston would go to ATV; Teddington was too great a prize to give up; Wembley was a direct competitor for Teddington but closing it would mean redeployment of the staff; Television House in Kingsway was a wonderful fancy London headquarters but inconveniently sited and expensive to lease from BET.

These would need to be rationalised, but with one eye on the coming of colour.

Other interests

Despite being subsidiaries rather than independent corporations, both ABC and Rediffusion London had diversified.

They had also developed nice lines in foreign sales, which brought in foreign currency, always in short supply and much wanted by business and government alike.

A straight merger of Associated British Cinemas (Television) Limited and Rediffusion Television Limited was therefore out of the question: ABPC wouldn’t give half of its Avengers dollars to BET.

The two parent companies, the Associated British Picture Corporation and British Electric Traction (who also controlled Broadcast Relay Services, the other shareholder in Rediffusion London) wouldn’t consider a merger either. They had nothing in common and no reason to do so just because their two most profitable subsidiaries were considering it.

Therefore, a new company would have to be formed, co-owned by the original companies or their parents, and the existing television subsidiaries would need to carry on their separate existences to manage the non-merged parts.

Overlaps

ABC and Rediffusion were the only two of the “Big 4” not in competition with each other. They were separated both regionally and chronologically and had never had that much to do with each other.

But both had news and features departments, drama and comedy directors, sport and OB controllers. Only Rediffusion had a Schools Department, but then many of Rediffusion’s department heads had fled to the new London weekends consortium.

Luckily, that very same consortium was in the market to pick up department heads anyway, making redeployment easier; nevertheless, the new company would not have double the staff of the old – people would need to be asked to leave.

Colour

The coming of colour, much promised but now actually on the horizon and written into the new contracts, meant that existing studio equipment would be rendered defunct.

Camera operators and vision mixers would have to retrain in the new higher-definition line standard; engineers would need to learn how to correct a whole new set of faults.

This meant a lot of investment back stage would be required, and also meant that the studio rationalisation would need to be carefully thought through in case money was wasted.

Identity

Of all the things to worry about, the station’s name and identity would be the lowest of problems – until the station went on air.

Once launched, a botched identity would alienate viewers and advertisers. Viewers would feel less loyal; advertisers would get confused.

Therefore, the question needed careful consideration at board level. And, with the new board uncomfortably split between Rediffusion and ABC members busy dealing with the arguments and problems of the merger/new company plans, the board was the one place where rows and entrenched views would come out into the open over something so trivially important (or importantly trivial) and lead to an unworkable compromise.

Some of these questions would be solved quickly. Some would need the Authority to step in and demand a decision. Some would devolve on the shoulders of Howard Thomas, the new MD. And some would be being fought over long after the new company had gone on air.

The post Taking shape appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Indeed, the ITA had prepared plans to void their contract with the new entity and hand complete control to ABC – Rediffusion being thought of as the “bad guy” whenever things dragged.

This accusation is unfair, but not entirely untrue. Rediffusion was, in effect, a family business. The people in charge of the parent were the children of the previous management. The Wills family, hereditary Managing Directors, would continue the tradition on the death of Rediffusion’s John Spencer Wills – his son Colin S Wills taking his father’s place on the Thames board.

This meant that Rediffusion management were hurt by their company being “handed” to ABC. That they occasionally showed this hurt was unsurprising. Many of the complaints and tough choices they forced on the new company were simply sound business sense. Others looked like petulance.

The new ITV contracts began on Tuesday 30 July 1968. In its own act of petulance, TWW had stalked out of the system back in March, so Harlech was already on air by this date.

ATV in Birmingham was simply taking the two days from the week previously denied to it (although losing those two days in London, of course). They would have been on air on Monday 29 July anyway; nevertheless, they celebrated their new contract on the last day of the old – the Monday.

Granada wanted a fresh start with its new 7-day, north-west only contract. A single day in the old Yorkshire region wouldn’t get things off to a nice enough start, so they sold that odd Monday to YTV for a peppercorn amount.

YTV therefore had a decent launch on the Monday, heralded by a mention at ABC’s final closedown the night before, plus got to establish its identity free of Granada’s northern dominance.

LWT’s contract began on the first Friday in August, so their fate need not detain us here.

That left Thames. They were taking over from Rediffusion, one of their parent companies, so following the pattern of the rest of ITV and celebrating “the new era” on the Monday seemed likely.

Rediffusion had other ideas. They simply refused to sell their final day, coming on air as normal on the Monday and doing all their farewells whilst the rest of ITV was welcoming newcomers. (This leads to the interesting anomaly where the new Yorkshire Television can boast having had a programme networked out to Rediffusion – the only such overlap between new and old.)

This meant that Rediffusion staff who should have left their old jobs on Friday and started their new ones on Monday missed the first day at their new stations.

Chief announcer Redvers Kyle closed Rediffusion down for the last time, then reappeared in the same job at YTV – but not on their first day.

Thames therefore had to come on air on Tuesday. Worse than that, their opening would not be the grand afternoon affair they had hoped for. Instead, they would come on early in the morning for an OB of the cricket.

Resigned to that fate, they opened quietly for the cricket from YTV at 11:30am on Tuesday 30 July 1968, went off air just as quietly at 1.30pm.

The big splash was made at 1.55pm, with a televised Inaugural Luncheon at the Mansion House.

From that it was into the racing coverage at 2.45 from Tyne Tees – although an hour later the technicians downed tools at TTT and ITV, with nothing to show, went off-air until 4.10pm.

The first Thames production to air was The Sooty Show at 4.40, run off from Television House. The second followed immediately after – Magpie at 5.10, run off from Teddington.

After the ITN News, the new “London programme for London” (a deliberate dig at Rediffusion’s ‘local’ news output being national in character) called Today went on air; it was followed by the first showing in London of Carry On Nurse.

This was followed at 8.15pm by Thames Television’s big hitter of the night, Tommy Cooper’s Cooper King-size! with a cast of comic and variety turns designed to make people look in.

Those who did look in were to be disappointed. The screens went black at the end of part one and Thames went off the air as a strike broke out amongst technicians. The service resumed at 10.30pm, but by that time the Thames opening night was in tatters.

Whichever way you look at it, Thames’s first day on air was never going to be perfect. But this they could live without.

The post Lights, camera, inaction appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Hour long stoppages had taken off the likes of Southern’s Day By Day and Ulster’s early evening output; every company had felt the loss of transmission halfway through of Cooper King-size!.

By Wednesday 31, things were beginning to look grim for ITV management. Viewers in the north and in Scotland had their programmes, but the technicians refused to run the commercials – losing the companies thousands of pounds.

By Thursday 1 August, programming disruptions were rife on the network. But Friday 2 would be the crunch day.

Thames managed to get through their programming for the day – which amounted to very little outside of term time anyway – with few incidents; they then prepared to hand over, for the first time in ITV history, to another company live on air.

The announcer said goodbye; the Thames skyline ident was run backward, giving the disconcerting feeling that the city was drowning; a click and a rolling picture; and up came London Weekend from Rediffusion’s old studios in Wembley.

London Weekend made their formal Authority announcement and prepared to welcome viewers to a new style of company with a new style of programming. The announcer drew breath to run his spiel; the lights, pictures and sound all promptly went off.

The technicians at London Weekend had walked out.

The rest of the network struggled to know what to do – the ACTT technicians were all liable to walk out if other companies “broke” the strike in London by continuing in their own area.

Some programmes did go out – often recorded versions of planned-live productions, in-the-can films and the occasional live item like Frost on Sunday which ran one hour 40 minutes late in a reduced form on a partially constructed set.

All of this led to the companies realising they were paying technicians to not air programmes and not to do their jobs. They responded with the management version of a strike: they locked the technicians out and took themselves off air.

By Monday 5, the situation nationally was:

• YTV: “some locked out, some sacked”
• Granada: “partly on strike, partly locked out”
• London Weekend: “locked out”
• ATV: “sacked but still sitting in” [the sit-in ended after 5 hours]
• Southern: “locked out”
• Tyne Tees: “on strike in support of those [previously] fired”
• Westward: “locked out”
• Scottish: “locked out”
• Grampian: “locked out”
• Thames: “on strike in support of sacked shop steward”
• Source: Daily Express 5 August 1968

The problem for the new companies in particular and all the companies in general was the lack of money coming into the system whilst the strikes and lock-outs continued.

For Thames, this was a potentially ruinous start after so much trouble just to get on air. Worse, covering the most competitive advertising market in the UK meant that they could watch as agency after agency cancelled even long term bookings and campaigns and switched budgets to print and the cinemas.

That was enough to make Thames management act. Together with ATV’s technician management in the transmission centre in Foley Street – who weren’t unionised and therefore weren’t “scabs” for working – Thames set on a plan to recreate ITV and bring in some money.

With ITA agreement, they opened the transmitters, then using ex-ABC announcers and props from the former ABC continuity department at Teddington, began a service.

By collecting the video and film items which each new entrant had stockpiled for launch day, linking it with an ABC continuity service (branded simply “Independent Television”) and running the tapes out from ATV Foley Street, a new Emergency National Service was soon on air.

This service was evidently run by rusty technicians and management and had all the hallmarks of being put together in a hurry. But at least the Thames sales force could get out and start shifting advertising. The adverts themselves were seen nationally, with an apology if the products were not available in a specific area. The money made was shared out across each company. ITV was back in business.

The small amount of money coming in, plus the running of recorded items gave ITV management new confidence.

Many of the regional companies simply closed, laying off their workers as there was no work to do.

This put the wind up the other 7 main unions – especially when Thames announced that the emergency service could run easily for six months (in fact, it’s likely that after about 6 weeks the stocks would have been used up – as would the ITA’s patience).

After a fortnight, the strikes and lock-outs ended with both sides claiming victory – sacked workers were rehired, but the 30% pay rises didn’t happen.

Thames was left to start broadcasting again, although this time much more from scratch than three weeks before – the stockpile of recorded material was drained; many companies took time to get production going again; live material showed signs of the strain of a fortnight’s lay-off.

The advertisers had to be wooed back quickly, so Thames began a rigorous discounting and special offers programme, tempting the advertisers back but suppressing its own turnover (and helping to cause a financial crisis and near-collapse of its main rival as it sucked the money out of London Weekend).

The viewers had now had three months of schedule disruption on ITV in general – the dregs of the last days of the old contracts, the new-look schedules in the first week, then the strikes – and took themselves off to the BBC, where all was well.

The result was a further fall in turnover as advertisers held back to see if ITV could recover – ITV could, but not with out the advertisers’ money to fund the new programming that would bring in the viewers.

All in all, the winter of 1968/9 was going to be a tough time for ITV – and as the company “at the top of the tree”, Thames stood to suffer worse than any of them.

The post Everybody out! appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

With colour promised for later in the year, the company’s management could settle down and start building up to a truly brand new type of television for London.

At that point, fate intervened. The Associated British Picture Corporation, owners of a cinema chain, film production assets and ABC Television, the 51% owner of Thames, received notification of a takeover bid.

ABPC had been a large player in the cinema world when the cinema had been the nation’s universal choice of entertainment.

But television had started to eat away at the audiences early on. British films, once so popular, began to fade as Hollywood started to develop the “blockbuster” movie.

ABPC diversified, first into television with ABC Weekend, then into converting disused cinemas into bowling alleys – a fad that has often looked like taking off in the UK but never quite managed it.

ABC Weekend was soon in profit and the company started to live off the earnings. Cinema attendances and bowling alleys stopped concerning them and they started to see themselves as a property company. In short, they grew complacent and became ripe for the picking.

Electrical and Musical Industries – EMI – had been a relatively successful record company with a history stretching back as far as ABPC’s.

But the 1960s had seen a massive boom in the sales of records – partially led by one of EMI’s better signings, a Liverpool group known as The Beatles.

Suddenly EMI was rolling in money. This money had to be spent somewhere – it couldn’t just be taken home in wheelbarrows.

So EMI started to look for ways to expand. The best way to expand in the 1960s was to buy a large but complacent business in the field you wanted to get into, exciting the City with plans to revitalise the management (rather than asset strip and sell on, as now).

EMI started by buying the Grade family’s businesses, getting it access to the top live talent in the UK.

Now it needed to do something with that talent. It would need a company that could make films. Or a company that would make television. Or both, ideally.

ATV in Birmingham would be one option. With a close relationship with the Grades, EMI could have swooped. But Lew and Bernard weren’t the easiest people to get on with already. Bring ATV in and you get an even closer relationship with people who like to dominate a room. Besides, ATV’s parent company, later to be named Associated Communications Corporation, wasn’t for sale and wasn’t suffering from complacency.

The Rank Organisation had television, cinemas and film making to hand – but Rank was too big an organisation to swallow.

ABPC, however, was the Goldilocks scenario – “just about right”. The board level management were close to retirement; the company wasn’t being dynamic so had potential; and the Thames investment was very tasty. Best of all, EMI had already picked up 25% of ABPC when Warner Bros decided to leave the UK market on the death of Jack Warner.

But the Thames investment was the stumbling block. The ITA had no view on the sale of ABPC to EMI, but it certainly did have a view on allowing the Grade empire to come into contact with Thames.

In Howard Thomas’s engaging autobiography With An Independent Air, he recalls meeting with Lew Grade to discuss ITV matters taking a creepy turn as the EMI-ABPC takeover got underway.

Lew, cigar in one hand and an unpaid invoice in the other, took pleasure in dropping broad hints to Thomas on how the business of ITV would be made simpler when Thames was part of the Grade Organisation and ATV.

Whilst Thomas doesn’t admit to ratting on Lew to the ITA, it’s likely that within days of Lew first mentioning that his brother Bernard would become chairman of ABPC (later EMI Films), the Thames MD was telling all to the Authority.

The ITA moved quickly, based on a set of worst-case assumptions that would undermine the nature of ITV and the control of the Authority itself:

• Thames controlled by, jointly planned with or considered part of a joint undertaking including ATV, ACC, Lew or Leslie Grade or Bernard Delfont could not be allowed to happen.
• Any change in the shareholding of Thames that allowed Rediffusion or BET to gain more than their allotted 49% of Thames could not be allowed to happen.
• Any change in control of Thames that would allow another organisation of any sort to change the management and policy of Thames could not be allowed to happen.

These conditions were told to ABPC in early 1969, so that the takeover could proceed with them in mind.

The ITA helpfully presented three options.

• EMI could retain the 51% of Thames, but would have to sell the Grade companies and disassociate itself from the Grade family.
• Rediffusion could be allowed to buy the shares, assuming that they agreed in advance with the ITA that they would not alter the board, management or policy of the company – in effect, own but continue not to control.
• ABPC could be forced to sell 2 of the 51% it held in Thames before the merger to a third party agreed by the ITA, who would either be required to keep hold of “the casting vote” or to sell it on only to someone agreed with the ITA.

In practice, none of these options was really viable on the open market. But the ITA had thrown enough obstacles in the way of EMI gaining control of ABPC to ensure that they would have a voice in the actual takeover.

When the takeover went through in mid-1969, both Fraser at the ITA and Howard Thomas at Thames would claim the credit for the compromise that allowed ABPC to fall to EMI.

The 51% of Thames owned by ABPC was hived off into a new company, Thames Television Holdings Ltd. This was then put at arms length of EMI, left to run its own affairs with Lord Shawcross at the head of an independently-minded board.

Thus EMI got the Thames profit share it wanted; the control of Thames stayed with Thames as the ITA wanted; and Lew Grade had no way to get his sticky mitts on a neighbouring company.

The ultimate idea was for Thames Television Holdings to be floated on the stock exchanged or otherwise dispersed, mainly to prevent Bernard Delfont, now in the chairman’s shoes at ABPC, from exerting any pressure on Thames.

However, with no sign of this pressure or of any change of policy at Thames, the ITA was happy to ignore the problem.

It would be 1971 before Thames Television Holdings was floated, at the ITA’s eventual insistence, with 60% of the voting shares being sold off – 23.5% to the City, 23.5% to big investors, 13% to Thames management.

The future of Thames was finally settled in mid-1971 – the best part of 3 years since they came on air.

Everything was decided for the best, but the company had now lived through the distraction of its senior management and board, strikes, lean periods, the near-fall of LWT and another prolonged Tory recession.

Finally, Howard Thomas could get to work on building Thames (in colour) into something great. Thames was already good and important and liked by the viewers – but Thomas required his works to be special, not just good. He was ready for battle.

The post Who’s the boss? appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

When ITV first began in 1955, Associated-Rediffusion and ATV London had good relations. Partially this was of necessity: the two shared A-R’s London facilities, and when bankruptcy beckoned in early 1956, AR had effectively bankrolled ATV to keep it on air. The last thing A-R needed was to expand its loss-making 5 day operation into a loss-making 7 day operation, after all.

Once ATV opened in Birmingham, AR was looking forward to another company pulling its weight and taking some of the burden of the weekday production requirements.

Alas, ATV chose to save its best output for London weekends; anything of value that could be recorded in Birmingham to show in London found its way on to ATV London.

ABC and ATV fought like cat and dog from the start – on launch day, ABC was to be found in the High Court arguing that the new London weekend contractor was passing off the initials ‘ABC’ by calling itself Associated Broadcasting Company. ATV had changed its name and on-air identity by its third week.

ABC and ATV went into partnership on studios in Birmingham out of necessity in the early, loss-making days. Howard Thomas describes in his autobiography how this was a necessary short-term solution that caused him unending problems as ATV in turn denied him access to London and challenged the costings of the few programmes they did allow through.

ABC and Granada had a better relationship, if only because the two of them resolutely ignored each other as much as they could. Granada was eventually told by the ITA that their closedowns on a Friday night, which implied that there was no television at all until Monday, would have to not only mention that ITV continued when Granada was off, but also name-check the weekend service.

Nevertheless, Granada in all its publicity continued to suggest that the north of England was served by Granada and Granada alone.

These petty differences were swept away when the new pattern of broadcasting was announced in 1967. From now on, the previously regional model of 7-day companies would apply everywhere.

Except London.

The London weekday company was already the dominant company in ITV – although this was partially because ATV was distracted by its split region and Granada had an almost-illegally close relationship with AR and continued to be pals with Rediffusion London.

However, the fact remained that a 7-day London company would very quickly overwhelm the entire network. It would be richer, have better access to stars and would start to draw money and talent from out of the regions – an anathema to the ITA in pre-devolution days, but not something that worries regulators now.

So the split was retained. But the ITA wanted the new “Big 5” to have roughly equal shares of the revenue of ITV (roughly because YTV was a minnow compared to the other 4, whilst ATV had rich diversifications like ITC that somewhat muddied the waters) and also planned to end the practice of one company having two contract areas (ABC and ATV).

The split therefore needed to move to create a more useful equity between weekdays and weekends in London. The most useful split would have been a straight Monday-Thursday/Friday-Sunday division.

However, the ITV system had commitments during the day on Fridays. Schools programming couldn’t just stop or change style or control on a Friday – although control of output could go elsewhere (it went to ATV in Birmingham).

Sports programming like racing and cricket was a staple of daytime ITV, being exempt from the broadcasting hours restrictions that kept television to a largely evenings-only experience until the early 1970s.

But a major London event, like test cricket or Wimbledon couldn’t efficiently be split between two providers without a lot of waste, duplication and confusion.

Worse, most major news stories in those days occurred on weekdays during the day – politicians and terrorists alike hadn’t learnt to time events to catch the BBC news at 8.55 or the ITN News at Ten.

With the ITA planning a specifically different service on weekdays to that seen on weekends, it didn’t want the weekend provider suddenly having to cover a major story of the style of Churchill’s funeral. Likewise, it didn’t want the entire responsibility to fall on to the shoulders of ITN, who would have had to run to the ITA to ask them to make ITV pay for the increased responsibility.

Therefore the split would need to be after these things were unlikely to happen, but before the meat of the evening was underway – sometime on Friday evening.

The time of the split appears not to have been fixed by the time of the contract interviews. Certainly the new London Television Consortium (later London Weekend and later still LWT) was already lobbying for all of Friday for its weekend service well before it went on air.

Thames also wanted as much of peak time as could be garnered.

The time to split was set at 7pm by the ITA, though they agreed to keep this under consideration as both contractors wanted to push it an hour or more either way.

Therefore Thames and LWT were thrust into closer contact than any two companies had ever been before. The split between the two was noticeable not only for its picture roll at 7pm but also for the failure of either announcer to acknowledge the other’s existence – although Thames would provide the epilogue on LWT at first, and in the 1980s would even provide LWT with a service called “Thames Weekend News”.

Needless to say, the two companies started to bicker almost immediately.

LWT’s management was largely ex-BBC. They had no idea how ITV worked, but knew that it didn’t and were happy to tell their opposite numbers of that fact to their faces. Thames management was ABC, and they took pleasure in telling the LWT shower that they would crash and burn.

After the launch-week strikes and subsequent shut down, Thames’s ex-ABC sales force went out on the rampage to rebuild the lost business.

LWT’s ex-Rediffusion sales force arranged to have lunch with a contact here and a friend there.

Thames organised discounts, special offers and freebies.

LWT took people to dinner and gave them free tickets to studio audience shows.

Thames sales staff knocked on doors, rang around, called in favours, got friends and families to recruit small advertisers.

LWT sales staff sat and waited for the phone to ring like gentlemen should do.

Thames, worried over the potential financial ruin from the botched launch period, poured money it didn’t have into popular programmes and local interest features.

LWT produced the highbrow arts features, reviews and David Frost talk shows they had promised the ITA. And put them out in peak time. And wondered why the other regions didn’t take them.

Thames aggressively sold its programmes to the network and abroad.

LWT offered its programmes to the network and expressed wry amusement when there were no takers. How foolish these old-fashioned ITV people were! The programmes wouldn’t sell abroad, either – after all, they wouldn’t sell in the UK.

The end result of this was obvious to everyone except those at LWT.

LWT crashed and burned.

The ex-BBC executives were amazed when it was pointed out to them that their programmes had to attract viewers to attract advertisers to attract money. If that circle never started, the company would simply go bust.

The executives had all been crying out for serious arts and documentary programmes on a weekend that neither BBC-1 nor ATV London were supplying. They thought that providing expensive arts programmes to the masses in place of Sunday Night at the London Palladium would be providing the masses with just what they needed.

It’s likely true that the masses needed that. But foisting it upon them wouldn’t work on the BBC (which is why they left) so it was even less likely to work on ITV on the weekends. If nothing else, the masses still had popular programming on BBC-1 at weekends – that didn’t end when the executives left (quite the reverse – Sir Hugh Carleton Greene’s reforms of the BBC were bearing fruit even as he was leaving; the BBC had never been so popular since the monopoly ended).

The ITA, powerless to stop LWT making a fool of itself but required by law to be ready to pick up the pieces, drew up two plans of action.

1. In the first instance, the day LWT went bankrupt, Thames would go 7 days. Howard Thomas reports that he was asked to draw up an emergency schedule for Thames weekends, undoubtedly to last the period until a new contract could be let – generally regarded to be about a year.
2. Second, that contract would be offered first and foremost to Rediffusion Television. They would be invited to takeover the remains of LWT (the studios, staff and programming at a peppercorn certainly; the actual bankrupt company itself if they were wiling to yet again throw money at ITV, despite their treatment last time).

When the second event came to pass, Rediffusion would give up its share of Thames at market rate. EMI would be a willing buyer; if not, there were others.

Rediffusion would be compensated by having the ITA’s favour, so far as that went. Most probably that meant rebates on rental and a favourable eye cast upon any programme plans.

Rediffusion Television, under John Spencer Wills, wasn’t fooled by this; nevertheless it was a tempting offer and one that BET was unlikely to refuse.

But BET was already noticing that its 49% of Thames was earning almost as much money as 100% of Rediffusion London. Given time to settle in and an end to the recession that had inevitably followed in on the heals of the new Tory government in 1970, 49% of Thames was likely to be worth far more than 100% of Rediffusion Weekend Television.

Rediffusion-BET were therefore cautious in their replies to the ITA’s back-channel private soundings.

In the end it didn’t matter – LWT recovered after a series of painful boardroom coups, relaunches and attempts to grasp the nature of Independent Television.

But a suspicion between LWT and Thames was now set in cement. Many LWT staff had been displaced from good jobs at Rediffusion by the coming of Thames. The sales force of Thames had helped doom the early ideals of LWT. The new management at LWT knew that Thames was always waiting to catch their contract should they fall.

There would be co-operation and contact between the two companies over the years, but never trust.

When contract renewals came up in 1973/4, 1980/2 and 1991/3, the two would back the bids of others either loudly or behind the scenes.

Eventually one of them would win by default. But that’s another story.

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