Perusing Tuesday’s TV listings in that day’s paper I noticed that Sooty had moved over to ITV and a new magazine show ‘Magpie’ was on at 5.10. There had been something billed earlier that afternoon as Opening Of Thames but that meant nothing to me. The set warmed up during the ad break and then a very unfamiliar face appeared in the announcer’s chair (I was later to discover this was Sheila Kennedy) in front of a very different backdrop. It was when she said something along the lines of “Now we start today’s children’s programmes on Thames…” that it sunk in; change had come, it was all becoming a little exciting!

I hadn’t been completely unprepared for this, some months back my parents had mentioned something they’d read in the paper that ITV in London was changing and the name ‘Thames TV’ came up. I just assumed it was to be a straight name change, Redvers Kyle, Muriel Young, Jon Kelly and Laurie West would all still be there with a ‘Thames TV’ logo pinned on the front and back of the programmes instead of ‘Rediffusion’. But seeing Sheila Kennedy followed by the plain text version of the FROM THAMES ident playing into The Sooty Show it became clear that it had really happened and it was all going to be very different, subsequently I sat through ‘Sooty’ anticipating more Thames graphics and announcements at the end of the programme. I mention ‘graphics’ but up to this point it was just down to plain text, no station symbol at the start or end of the programmes, just a simple FROM THAMES.

Magpie was up next which immediately presented itself as an ITV version of ‘Blue Peter’ and, as often noted, a tad more hip and trendy, although I also recognised it as a near replacement for Rediffusion’s Come Here Often which, in retrospect I feel was the better show.

That first edition was not without excitement though, a filmed report of a balloon flight taken by Susan Stranks included footage of the balloon bursting into flames not long after landing and Susan had safely stepped away. Later in the show fellow presenter Tony Bastable introduced us to the concept of the various Magpie badges, inviting viewers to collect the complete set of eleven (I still cherish my ‘Four For A Boy’ badge to this day), while Pete Brady took us on a pre-filmed helicopter trip along the Thames around Teddington Lock and the weir, complete with an aerial view of the studio buildings. Also appearing in that first edition was the start of a short run of Captain Fantastic lifted straight from Rediffusion’s Do Not Adjust Your Set which seemed a bit weird really and at odds with the rest of the show.

Children’s programmes over, another commercial break and it’s ITN News time with, for the first time for me anyway, a sighting of the Thames clock, now with Philip Elsmore signing on as our evening announcer. The clock doubled as a calendar, I’m sure I’d seen something similar hanging on the wall in our local branch of Barclay’s Bank. Main story on the news was the arrival of Thames Television during which I noticed the skyline ident being played. Now that looked really impressive and I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t use that in front of the programmes.

The new regional news programme Today held very little interest for me as a nine-year-old and anyway, it was a summer evening so I was back outside playing with my mates until later in the evening when, along with the rest of my family I settled down to enjoy Tommy Cooper’s King Size show. During the commercial break the screen went blank cutting an advert part way through.

Around ten seconds later another commercial started playing but this was also faded abruptly as the screen went blank again and stayed that way, prompting my father to grumble about the poor organisation of this ‘young upstart of a company’. Little did he know! The apology card that followed at least went some way to explain. That was the last I would see of our new TV station that day, nine o’clock was bedtime for me and my siblings, after which I assumed my parents would be switching to BBC-1 for their further televisual entertainment.

The following morning I just had to reassure myself that, after the previous night’s fiasco Thames would still be there. As my little sister finished watching Play School on BBC-2 I quietly turned the dial to Channel 9 where I was greeted by the familiar Test Card D with the wording ‘ITA Thames Television London Weekend Television’ which somewhat confused me; Thames was London’s WEEKDAY television, how could they have got that one wrong?

After Rediffusion’s solid and paternal method of presentation it took a little while to get used to the slightly more ‘showbiz’ and lightweight approach from Thames. At nine years old I was totally unaware that we were really watching ABC in different clothes and I really had no idea as to why things had changed in the first place.

A few days into the new regime though it did occur to me to check out the other station that we could pick up in Crawley from a place called Chillerton Down. Sure enough, there on Channel 11 was Southern Television, dependable as ever and totally unaffected by what had been going on in London, armed with the reassurance that they would NEVER go away…

The post A new service for London appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

“The Managing Director, Bryan Cowgill, accepted a plan put to him by the Director of Production, Richard Dunn. It was a plan that proposed the unthinkable; the management would operate the station.”

In late 1984, Thames Television’s output was affected by two industrial disputes. The first occasion lasted one week and led to blue screens throughout London and the South East; the second occurrence saw Thames management respond with their own makeshift service.

Monday 27 August 1984

On Bank Holiday Monday (for most of the UK), an ongoing and lengthy dispute concerning new working arrangements spilled out into industrial action. As outlined in Independent Television in Britain, Volume 5: ITV and IBA 1981-82 – The Old Relationship Changes:

The heart of any television station is its Central Transmission Facility (CTF), which presents and transmits the programmes and, in commercial television, the revenue-earning advertisements. For historical reasons, up until this time Thames CTF staff had been self-rostering. The unions wanted thirty-two staff, all to be paid at six times the normal hourly rate (the industry term for this was ‘golden hours’) to run a night-time service, an expansion of operation favoured by the IBA.

The management developed a roster by which the night service could be run by six people on time-and-a-half rates. [Richard] Dunn (Director of Production) received support from [Bryan] Cowgill (Managing Director) and the Board when he sought to impose the new roster. ¹

Meetings between Thames management and the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT) – from December through to July – culminated in management pressing ahead with its plans to implement the new rosters for seventy staff in the CTF.

Talks at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) followed in August; then, on the 22nd, ACTT members voted to support the men in the CTF unit and against further ACAS discussions.²

Monday 27 saw the implementation of the new arrangements, with the likelihood of a dispute highlighted in the morning newspapers. “ITV companies were yesterday making emergency arrangements to avoid a television blackout today”³, noted the Glasgow Herald whilst the Newcastle Journal explained the numbers involved:

The 70 men involved in the dispute earn between £26,000 and £29,000 a year for a basic six-day fortnight of 74 hours.

The new rosters would mean a nine-day fortnight and would cut between £2000 and £7000 from overtime payments to the technicians.

Thames says the change is aimed at saving £200,000 a year in overtime payments which it has to pay because of local agreements, even though the technicians do not actually work much of the overtime.

The technicians have been told to start working the new rosters from 8am today, but they are likely to ignore the instruction and continue working the old system.

If they do, they will be suspended and their department, central technical facilities, will stop putting out programmes.⁴

Monday morning came and as predicted, one technician was suspended for failing to observe the new rotas; his colleagues then walked out in protest. 6 The technicians subsequently received the backing of their colleagues, though the union meeting was attended by fewer than 200 of the 550 ACTT members at Thames’ Euston studios.⁵

MD Bryan Cowgill remained bullish: “We do not require thirty men on duty in our central transmission area on overtime late at night when the operation requirements of the company can be met most of the time by ten men working normal rostered time.”⁶

At 9.25am, following the conclusion of TV-am’s output, viewers served by Thames saw this caption which remained in place throughout the day.

For the rest of the network, the dispute had a sizeable effect with as much as nine-and-a-half hours of output affected.⁷ Some regions were immediately hit by the absence of Sesame Street at 9.25am,⁸ before the whole network lost its scheduled afternoon and most of its evening output:

• 12.30pm Bank Holiday Sport featuring golf and racing from Epsom and Newcastle (all regions) until 5.05pm
• 8pm The Benny Hill Show (all regions)
• 9.15pm Film: The Long Good Friday (all regions)
• 11.20pm Elton John in Central Park (except HTV Wales & West)

Tyne Tees viewers did receive the planned horse racing coverage from Newcastle, but otherwise makeshift schedules with recorded sport and other material were the order of the day. Following the racing, Tyne Tees aired American drama CHiPs at 4pm; The Benny Hill Show was replaced with Quincy before John Wayne’s western The Train Robbers at 9.15pm. Elton John’s performance was substituted with Tom Jones in concert at Knott’s Berry Farm, California from 11pm; a That’s Hollywood profile of Gregory Peck closed proceedings.

STV’s makeshift afternoon service began with a repeated edition of the documentary series Weir’s Way followed by local golf highlights, the 1955 film Doctor at Sea, cartoon fun with Snuffy Smith and Barney Google, CHiPs and the animated adventures of the Harlem Globetrotters. The Scottish Fiddle Orchestra in concert and James Coburn spy caper Our Man Flint replaced the bulk of the evening’s scheduled output.

From 8pm, Yorkshire viewers received a locally-produced comedy double bill of In Loving Memory and Duty Free before the 1968 Michael Caine drama Deadfall stood in as the evening film and Tina Turner – in a Canadian concert performance from 1982 – substituted for Elton John.

Meanwhile, Grampian replaced Benny Hill with an instalment of Lee Majors’ adventure series The Fall Guy. Following a brief musical interlude from Rod Argent, the evening’s big movie premiere was replaced with Peter Nichols’ 1973 satirical feature The National Health starring Lynn Redgrave and Jim Dale; eagle-eyed viewers would have noted the presence of Bob Hoskins – star of the evening’s scheduled film – in the cast. Wishbone Ash Live in Concert at The Marquee Club, produced by Trilion Pictures the prior year, completed the evening.

On Tuesday, the dispute continued to affect sports coverage from Epsom, this time as part of Channel 4 Racing;⁹ though ITV disruption was minimal, with only a repeated edition of Rainbow at 12.10pm absent from network schedules. HTV’s delayed screening of the Elton John concert at 11.30pm was likewise blacked.

Meanwhile, London’s screens – TV-am aside – were once again devoid of ITV output. Thames management offered to go to arbitration to resolve the dispute; meanwhile, at midday,¹⁰ ACTT members in Euston Road voted 158 to 147 to return to work. However, the union’s shop stewards decided that the margin of victory was too narrow; instead, a strike committee was assembled – half the membership formed of representatives from the seventy members within the CTF – with a further meeting scheduled for Thursday.¹¹

Further disruption occurred on Wednesday with Rod, Jane & Freddy (12noon & 4pm) and a repeated edition of The Sooty Show (4.20pm) displaced; Tyne Tees viewers received World Famous Fairy Tales and Flintstone Frolics respectively, whilst STV ran Alfie Atkins before Sooty was inexplicably replaced with teenage comedy import Joanie Loves Chachi. Later, in place of the documentary Crime Inc (9pm), Tyne Tees screened The Streets of San Francisco whilst STV & Grampian also swapped fact for fiction with The Sweeney.

Thursday’s ACTT meeting saw staff vote overwhelmingly to continue their action until at least Monday, whilst management considered proposals put forward by the strike committee;¹² subsequently, ACAS talks continued into the early hours of Friday.¹³ That evening’s scheduled TV movie – the WWII drama The Scarlet and The Black – at 7pm was a further casualty of the dispute. Grampian aired the feature-length musical South Pacific whilst STV viewers saw Steve McQueen in the western Nevada Smith.

Britain’s fourth channel was also experiencing disruption. On Monday, the signal for London viewers – normally sent via Thames before reaching viewers’ homes – was rerouted directly to transmitters; this meant that Channel 4 transmissions in the capital were airing without commercials.¹⁴ The situation was now escalating:

“Channel 4 was going out…in [the] Central, Border, Grampian, Ulster and Scottish areas…without any advertising.

“The commercials blackout – which will lose the companies advertising revenue – follows a response from technicians to black Channel 4 after attempts to get the network off screens in the Thames area failed.

“Although the Independent Broadcasting Authority can route the Channel 4 signal direct to transmitters without passing through the companies, only the individual companies can insert the advertisements appropriate to their areas. Because the technicians’ union, the ACTT, could not get Channel 4 stopped in the Thames area, it asked other companies to blackout the commercial breaks.” – Aberdeen Evening Express, 31 Aug 1984

Friday’s programme changes were limited to daytime output with a repeat of Chorlton & The Wheelies (12noon) and a new Rainbow (12.10pm & 4pm) displaced; at 4pm, Tyne Tees deployed European Folktales whilst STV screened a film on Canadian wildlife. As usual, LWT – unaffected by the dispute – took to the air at 5.15pm.

Following twenty hours of talks over the weekend, programmes on Thames resumed at 1pm on Monday 3 September after ACTT technicians voted 370 to 35 to accept a deal between management and the union. The settlement allowed the company flexibility over rostering whilst agreeing to a reduction in working hours.¹⁵ Further talks relating to the future integration of video, telecine and the master control areas of the CTF would follow.¹⁶

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

Wednesday 17 October 1984

“Threat to ITV Tonight” was the Evening Standard headline, following a dispute involving sixty-two film editors and their proposed use of lightweight videotape cameras. Thames management had offered the staff a 20% pay increase in two stages, an initial 13% followed by a further 7% upon implementation of the new technology; union members were asking for 30% (26% then 4%).¹⁷ ACTT shop steward Peter Bould emphasised that the editors, “were naturally seeking some parity in earnings” with other technicians ¹⁸ and noted that the stumbling block in reaching a settlement was agreement on a date for the payment of increases for handling the new equipment.¹⁹

The union wants the high settlement in return for operating new technology, but Thames management pointed out that the men already earn £13,000 – £20,000 [£43,000 – £66,500 in 2019, allowing for inflation] and have just received a 10 per cent bonus under the company’s profit-sharing scheme.

The pay dispute has run for 18 months and programmes were disrupted at the beginning of the month because of an unofficial work to rule.

Programmes affected were Thames News, the current affairs series TV Eye and a major show business special featuring Jim Davidson entertaining troops in the Falklands.

A Thames spokesman said this afternoon: “We have heard nothing official from the union yet but we are not hopeful about tonight’s programmes. We will not know until 6pm what is happening. We do not plan to change our minds.”

“It is most upsetting because we feel that 20 per cent is a more than reasonable offer.”

Tonight’s blackout threat came after the 550 members of the ACTT shop at Thames Television decided at a mass meeting to support the 62 film editors. – Evening Standard, 17th Oct 1984

ACTT members at Euston Road began industrial action – having given management five hours’ notice²⁰ – at 7.26pm.²¹

London’s ITV screens were then filled by the already familiar apology caption whilst other regions continued with Coronation Street before deploying their own alternative output in lieu of the scheduled evening programmes, all due to emanate from Thames:

• 8pm New Series: This Is Your Life
• 8.30pm New Series: Mike Yarwood In Persons
• 9pm Minder (New Episode: ‘The Long Ride Back To Scratchwood’)
• 10.30pm Midweek Sport Special featuring England vs Finland from Wembley (except STV & Grampian)

Viewers of Grampian saw an episode of the ITC action series The Adventurer at 8pm followed by Happy Days – its first of several outings over the coming few days – with The Streets of San Francisco replacing Arthur Daley.

The dispute continued the following day. Unlike the initial strike during August, this blackout also affected ITV Schools broadcasts; on these occasions, no substitute programming was provided with only a simple apology caption and music airing in place of the scheduled Thames output. The first such broadcasts to be affected were Middle English, Seeing and Doing and Craft, Design and Technology. Later on Thursday, Sarah Kennedy’s discussion show Daytime at 2.30pm, American drama Hotel (networked to some areas at 8.30pm) and TV Eye (9.30pm) were all absent from the various ITV regions – the latter interruption prompting a further appearance by Fonzie on Grampian’s screens.

On Friday, only Middle English and the traditional double screening of Rainbow at 12.10pm and 4pm were absent from the network; as usual, LWT resumed its broadcasts at 5.15pm.

At this stage, Thames staff at Teddington continued to work as normal;²² meanwhile, the Daily Mail noted a plan by Thames management to get the station back on the air:

Senior executives said that if the strike was not settled by Monday, management engineers would screen programmes.

Such a move, bypassing the company’s 550 [Euston] technicians, could lead to a complete ITV shutdown by the technicians’ union ACTT. But there is no doubting the seriousness of the Thames plan, which was given a dummy run yesterday.

The programmes would be old ones – Minder repeats, for example, rather than current Minder episodes. But they would keep advertisers happy and probably many viewers as well in the 11 million homes in the Thames TV area.

A senior Thames source said: “The repercussions of this would be enormous because [the] ACTT might pull everyone out.”

“But we are very, very angry – not with the pay claim, but with the way the strike was called on Wednesday. In blatant defiance of the disputes procedure, the Euston shop gave only five hours’ notice of industrial action.”²³

Planning for the makeshift service was already at an advanced stage:

Fred Atkinson, a wise and able engineer, who was in charge of operations at both the transmission centre at Euston Road and the outside broadcast centre at Hanworth and was Dunn’s right-hand man, worked out a roster of managers to run the station. These included a backbone of managers of the key transmission, videotape and telecine (film transmissions) areas. But the remainder of the forty-five or so people necessary to keep the station on the air were hastily trained finance, personnel and other members of the non-broadcast aspects of management. Dunn proposed the plan to Cowgill, who backed it. Fred Atkinson on the operations side and Barrie Sales on the programme schedule side were to implement it. – Independent Television in Britain: Volume 5, p159

Following nineteen hours of discussions over the weekend, talks broke down in the early hours of Monday morning, 22nd October; the management service was then primed for launch that evening.

Thames TV is going back on the air tonight – with programmes put out by management in defiance of striking technicians.

Thames managing director Mr Bryan Cowgill said the strike was costing the company £3 ½ million a week in lost advertising revenue.

He promised to continue the emergency service “for as long as it takes”.

The technicians’ union, ACTT, attacked the decision to mount what it called a “pirate” service and warned that serious disruption could hit programmes throughout the ITV national network.

The union’s general secretary, Mr Alan Sapper, added, “The union states its total opposition to such a venture and commits its full resources to frustrating it.

“This move by management is totally unprecedented in the history of independent television’s industrial relations and seriously hinders any resolvement to the present dispute involving film editors.”

Mr Cowgill said the union had put a “double-barrel shotgun to our head and pulled the trigger.”

He went on, “I am not, and neither is my board, haunted by the prospect of a blank screen.

“It offends me and it spits on the public. I’m not prepared to sit around any longer.”

Mr Cowgill said there were still 1500 people working normally and Thames would continue to meet the £950,000 wages bill for as long as possible before considering further action. – Evening Standard, 22nd Oct 1984

Contrary to earlier press reports, Cowgill confirmed that the service would not only broadcast repeats but would contain some new material.

To avoid an escalation of the dispute, the service did not run programming from other ITV regions or from ITN; as before, Thames programmes remained off the air in other areas. Alan Sapper, General Secretary of the ACTT, explained the logistics to LBC:

At 6pm, the service – which had required the approval of the IBA²⁴ – went live.

Thames’ Monday evening schedule, as originally published, was:

• 6pm Thames News
• 6.25pm Help!
• 6.35pm Crossroads
• 7pm The Krypton Factor
• 7.30pm Coronation Street
• 8pm Tripper’s Day
• 8.30pm World In Action
• 9pm Quincy
• 10pm News At Ten f/b Thames News Headlines
• 10.30pm Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense
• 11.55pm The Bounder

…whilst the new makeshift schedule was thus:

• 6pm Carry on Laughing
• 6.25pm Help!
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Knight Rider
• 8pm Tripper’s Day*
• 8.30pm Fresh Fields
• 9pm Minder
• 10pm Quincy
• 11pm Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense
• 12.10am Night Thoughts

(Note: * indicates peak-time programmes scheduled in Thames’ originally published line-up)

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

Initially, the replacement service contained no national or local news bulletins.

Outside London, The English Programme, Seeing and Doing and The French Programme were absent from ITV Schools. Then, Christopher Lillicrap’s Flicks – at 12noon & 4pm – Educating Marmalade at 4.40pm and Danger Mouse at 5pm were all displaced from Children’s ITV. Tyne Tees aired cartoons and Laurel & Hardy’s three-reel Chickens Come Home before deploying a clever replacement for the evening’s single affected programme; in place of Tripper’s Day at 8pm, Leonard Rossiter instead featured in the 1978 short film The Waterloo Bridge Handicap. Over on Channel 4, Thames’ daytime show A Plus 4 failed to appear in its regular 4pm slot; the programme remained off the air throughout the dispute.

The following day, Thames – having carried out a telephone survey of viewers – claimed that the emergency service had proven extremely popular;²⁵ subsequent BARB figures confirmed this with Minder – postponed from the prior Wednesday – having attracted 3.1m viewers in London.²⁶

With its entertainment-centric schedule free of the usual allowance of news and documentaries, the company claimed that advertising was 100% of what was normally expected.²⁷ Over the course of the dispute, Thames registered a 46% audience share, only 2% down from the prior year.²⁸

On Tuesday, ACTT staff at Teddington responded to the management’s actions by joining the strike;²⁹ this decision immediately affected programme production and threatened to disrupt the recording of a planned Eric Morecambe tribute at the London Palladium on Friday 9 Nov.³⁰ However, despite earlier suggestions, no national blackout of ITV – aside from the absence of Thames material – was to occur.³¹

The makeshift service for Tuesday began at 1.40pm – this would remain the opening time throughout the rest of the service – with a Danny Kaye film displaced from the previous day’s originally planned schedule.

Tuesday 23 October 1984

• 1.40pm Film: Up in Arms
• 3.30pm The Young Doctors
• 4pm The Wind in The Willows
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.25pm Help!
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Carry on Laughing
• 7.30pm Give Us a Clue*
• 8pm Des O’Connor Tonight*
• 9pm The Bill*
• 10pm Shelley
• 10.30pm Schindler (documentary, 1983)
• 11.50pm Night Thoughts

David Bellamy’s 1978 nature series and the American comedy Diff’rent Strokes would become permanent fixtures at 5.30pm and 6pm respectively; likewise, the Robert Gillespie sitcom Keep It In The Family at 6.30pm.

Along with networked programmes, also missing from Thames’ regular Tuesday schedule was current affairs staple Reporting London at 6.55pm. Fortuitously for the makeshift service, however, Euston Road was already due to provide almost the entire evening’s output across the network, allowing Thames to largely stay with their published peak-time schedule; following Give Us a Clue, guests Ted Rogers and Jill Gascoine appeared on Des O’Connor Tonight before the second episode of new police drama The Bill.

No schools programmes were affected on Tuesday. Later, Rainbow (12.10pm), Daytime (2.30pm) and CBTV (4.45pm) were all absent; for the latter, Granada substituted an edition of its 1982 space technology series The Final Frontier whilst Grampian aired the animated Flintstone Frolics.

That evening, the regions were further deprived of two-and-a-half hours of scheduled output. On TVS, Olivia Newton-John’s feature-length music video Twist of Fate replaced Give Us a Clue before the Sidney Poitier drama To Sir, With Love. Central viewers saw American sitcom Benson and 1966 western Alvarez Kelly.

Granada filled the entire evening’s gap with one film, WWII thriller The Eagle Has Landed, as did Tyne Tees with Nevada Smith. Network output returned to normal with News at Ten followed by an ITN/Central documentary on Afghanistan with Sandy Gall.

Wednesday 24 October 1984

• 1.40pm A Country Practice
• 2.30pm Mary Berry
• 3pm The Adventurer
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm We’ll Tell You a Story
• 4.15pm Cockleshell Bay
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm CBTV
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.25pm Help!
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Name That Tune*
• 7.30pm Morecambe & Wise
• 8pm Benny Hill
• 9pm The Sweeney
• 10pm Shelley
• 10.30pm Hill Street Blues
• 11.20pm Night Thoughts

Members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) joined the strike on Wednesday,³² the same day that Thames began to stage makeshift news updates throughout its schedule, with bulletins at 1.40pm, 3.30pm, 6pm, 8pm and 10pm. The short updates were written and read by Director of Public Relations, Donald Cullimore, a former ITN political correspondent.³³ When Cullimore departed for New York on Thames business,³⁴ his place was taken by Ronald Allison, Thames Head of Sport and ex-BBC reporter.³⁵

The Peterborough column in the Daily Telegraph… found a pleasurable nostalgia in the fact that, since the autocue operators were on strike, the two men had reverted to the ‘head down with an occasional glance up to the camera’ newsreading technique of the fifties. The London Evening Standard was less supportive, believing, not entirely without justification, that a number of stories each night were culled from that paper’s early editions. – Independent Television in Britain: Volume 5, p160

Elsewhere, the ITV Schools schedule was once again affected, with Craft, Design and Technology and The English Programme missing. Later, Rod Jane & Freddy (12noon & 4pm) was similarly absent.

Once again, the evening’s planned network output was severely impacted. STV replaced Name That Tune at 7pm with a further outing for the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra, whilst TVS & Central turned to regular standby Happy Days; Granada viewers enjoyed the lively chaos of The Grumbleweeds Radio Show.

Following Coronation Street, films replaced the 8pm to 10pm Thames triple-bill – This Is Your Life, Mike Yarwood and Minder – in several regions: STV screened the Neil Simon comedy Barefoot In The Park whilst TVS aired Western prequel Butch & Sundance – The Early Days. Our Man Flint appeared on Granada whilst war drama Hanover Street was shown on Central.

With thanks to 2ombieboy’s VHS Vault

A proposal to resolve the dispute was sent by the ACTT to the Independent Television Companies Association;³⁶ meanwhile, the makeshift service continued apace. Thames’ Thursday schedule included some previously displaced programmes and a new series.

Thursday 25 October 1984

• 1.40pm Falcon Crest
• 2.30pm Mary Berry
• 3pm The Adventurer
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm We’ll Tell You a Story
• 4.15pm Cockleshell Bay
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm Challenge
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.25pm Help!
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Knight Rider
• 8pm New Series: Up The Elephant and Round The Castle*
• 8.30pm Hotel
• 9.30pm TV Eye
• 10pm Hill Street Blues
• 11.40pm Night Thoughts

Hotel – the episode ‘Intimate Strangers’ with guest Elizabeth Taylor – had originally been scheduled for the prior Thursday; likewise, TV Eye, the weekly current affairs programme whose report on the Ethiopian famine, entitled ‘Bitter Harvest’, was intended for broadcast throughout ITV. By this point in the dispute, all programme production at both Euston and Teddington – Euston Films was not affected by the dispute³⁷ – had halted entirely.³⁸ However, outside intervention and a unique networking arrangement ensured its transmission across the UK, as reported in The Guardian.

Striking Thames TV technicians will today go into the company’s Euston studios in London for the first time for a week after volunteering to work on a TV Eye programme on the Ethiopian famine, to be shown tonight.

The gesture by the technicians’ union the ACTT, was in response to an appeal from Oxfam and the Save The Children fund, “to show humanitarian support by allowing this powerful film to be shown on national television as a special case.” Both charities expect the programme to stimulate donations and other help.

A complicated formula had to be worked out to enable production and transmission work on TV Eye to be completed without either side losing face. The film department of the Euston studios, where 550 technicians are on strike, will complete production work free of charge, so that technically they will not have returned to work.

The results will be taken to the Teddington studios in West London, where over 300 technicians are out, for final processing and for production of two copies. One copy will be given to Thames management to transmit in their management-run emergency service from the Euston studio tonight.

The other will be given to ACTT members to transmit to the network of TV stations outside London from Teddington. This means that Thames management are not seen to restore even part of a service outside London, and the management do not have to allow ACTT members to transmit in the Euston studios while they are on unofficial strike.³⁹

Earlier, ITV Schools broadcasts of Middle English, Seeing and Doing and Craft, Design and Technology had all failed to appear. Later, a varied selection of repeats aired in place of Daytime at 2.30pm including Paint Along with Nancy (TVS), Laverne & Shirley (Central) and The Beverly Hillbillies (HTV). Elsewhere, TSW screened the 1982 film Yvonne Hudson – Sculptor whilst Granada viewers saw an edition of the RTE documentary series Hands (entitled ‘A Dublin Candlemaker’). Yorkshire broadcast an instalment of its locally-produced series Clegg’s People.

At 4.45pm Spooky – the Thames children’s drama – was substituted by TVS & Yorkshire for the ongoing adventures of The Smurfs. Central opted for an edition of Groovy Ghoulies whilst TSW aired the American fantasy comedy Just Our Luck. HTV broadcast a tale from the International Storybook and Granada dusted off The Adventures of Black Beauty; Grampian screened a further episode of Happy Days.

Replacing Up The Elephant and Round The Castle (at 8pm in some regions, 8.30pm in others), TSW aired Tim Conway vehicle Ace Crawford, Private Eye whilst Yorkshire paid a further visit to Marbella in Duty Free; Grampian screened another episode of The Adventurer.

With thanks to The TV Museum

Members of the National Association of Theatrical, Television and Kine Employees (NATTKE) voted not to cross picket lines;⁴⁰ meanwhile, Thames management and union representatives met separately at ACAS for exploratory discussions; by now, over 1000 technicians had joined the dispute.⁴¹

Friday’s line-up on Thames, running until 5.15pm, opened with a Gary Cooper film previously scheduled for 19 October.

Friday 26 October 1984

• 1.40pm Film: The Wedding Night
• 3pm Mary Berry
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm We’ll Tell You a Story
• 4.15pm Cockleshell Bay
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Five Magic Minutes
• 4.50pm Freetime

Following the non-appearance of Middle English during schools programming, two further Thames shows were absent from network schedules: Rainbow at 12noon & 4pm was replaced with more Smurf-based antics on TSW & Channel whilst STV also featured animation with Bamse, the world’s strongest bear. Granada screened an edition of its own pre-school programme A Handful of Songs whilst cartoons aired on TVS & Anglia.

Finally, at 4.50pm, a new series based on the Davenport Collection of magic-related ephemera, Illusions, was postponed. Anglia repeated an edition of its own series Animals in Action; similarly, Granada looked to its archive for Graham’s Ark on the subject of ‘big dogs’. STV screened a Canadian film from 1978, The Game Reserves of South Africa (along with a bonus Abbott & Costello cartoon) whilst Grampian, eschewing the trend for natural world documentaries, paid yet another visit to the Cunninghams in Happy Days. Following an uninterrupted weekend’s viewing courtesy of LWT, Thames resumed its temporary service on Monday.

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

Monday 29 October 1984

• 1.40pm Film: Wuthering Heights
• 3.30pm The Young Doctors
• 4pm We’ll Tell You a Story
• 4.15pm Button Moon
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm The Coral Island
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Knight Rider
• 8pm Tripper’s Day*
• 8.30pm Fresh Fields
• 9pm The Sweeney
• 10pm Quincy
• 11pm Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense
• 12.15am Night Thoughts

The Coral Island, an adventure series originally screened in 1983, aired daily at 5pm (4.45pm on Friday). The episode of Quincy was entitled ‘The Golden Hour’ with ‘Paint Me a Murder’ as the featured Hammer drama.

As per the previous Monday, the affected ITV Schools broadcasts were The English Programme, Seeing and Doing and The French Programme; however, with Central’s new drama Murphy’s Mob beginning its run at 4.45pm, only one Children’s ITV show – Flicks at 12noon & 4pm – was disrupted. In its place, Anglia, Central, Grampian & TVS all ran cartoons; Yorkshire, Granada & HTV screened their own productions, Gammon and Spinach, A Handful of Songs and Flower Stories respectively. The Adventures of the Blue Knight aired on STV whilst TSW & Channel showed European Folktales at 12noon and The Smurfs at 4pm.

Later, a variety of domestic and imported sitcoms replaced the final episode of Tripper’s Day at 8pm. Grampian, TSW & Channel went stateside for an episode of the Lynn Redgrave comedy Teachers Only, likewise Central (Nine to Five) and STV (Benson). Closer to home, Anglia & HTV offered repeats of YTV’s Bill Maynard vehicle The Gaffer; Yorkshire themselves screened another of its own productions, In Loving Memory.

Granada opted for stand-up comedy with The Comedians whilst Tyne Tees deviated from the pack with a musical offering, Jack Jones in concert at HTV’s Culverhouse Cross studio.

Once again, Tuesday’s line-up on Thames benefited from their originally scheduled peak-time line-up.

Tuesday 30 October 1984

• 1.40pm Film: The Odd Couple
• 3.30pm The Young Doctors
• 4pm Rainbow
• 4.15pm Chorlton and the Wheelies
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm The Coral Island
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Carry On Laughing
• 7.30pm Give Us a Clue*
• 8pm Des O’Connor Tonight
• 9pm The Bill*
• 10pm Shelley
• 10.30pm Class of ‘62
• 11.25pm Night Thoughts

Although airing in its assigned slot, Des O’Connor Tonight was a repeated edition; however, The Bill continued its new series with the episode ‘Clutching at Straws’. Shelley – ‘Brave New World’ – was followed by Marilyn Gaunt’s 1983 reunion documentary.

Outside of London, ITV Schools programmes aired as scheduled; otherwise, there was severe disruption throughout the day. A variety of children’s shows replaced Rainbow at 12.10pm including Bamse the Bear (STV), Sally & Jake (Ulster), Unicorn Tales (Tyne Tees), Get Up and Go (Yorkshire), Flower Stories (HTV), European Folktales (TSW & Channel) and Wincey’s Pets (Granada).

At 2.30pm, Anglia’s replacement for Daytime was the ever-present clip show That’s Hollywood; Tyne Tees repeated an edition of its recent documentary series fronted by Jack Charlton, Big Jack’s British. Central deployed an instalment of its own business technology series Venture; STV viewers enjoyed another outing for Tom Weir whilst Granada, TSW, Channel & Ulster all visited the art studio of Nancy Kominsky. Grampian aired an episode of the American sitcom Silver Spoons.

CBTV at 4.45pm was switched for the usual eclectic mix of children’s standby material such as Unicorn Tales (Anglia), Sport Billy (Ulster), The Smurfs (Yorkshire & TVS), International Storybook (HTV), The Final Frontier (Granada), Silver Spoons (STV) and Short Story Theatre (Tyne Tees). Elsewhere, with Hallowe’en fast approaching, seasonal scares were to be found courtesy of Fangface (Grampian) and the Groovy Ghoulies (Central) whilst TSW & Channel selected the 1979 animated short Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy in the Pumpkin Who Couldn’t Smile, a title surely worthy of an appearance in Give Us a Clue.

For the second week running, Tuesday’s planned peak-time line-up from 7.30pm to 10pm was absent, prompting most regions to consult their film libraries; this time, Nevada Smith popped up on TSW & Channel whilst Anglia & HTV screened the adventures of Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King. An episode of Benson on Central preceded the crime drama Diamonds with Robert Shaw; Carry On Up The Jungle on Granada was followed by Magnum – a story entitled ‘Smaller Than Life’ – at 9pm and Tyne Tees aired the 1968 war drama The Green Berets with John Wayne.

Yorkshire selected the biopic MacArthur, The Rebel General starring Gregory Peck whilst Grampian opted for sci-fi TV movie A Fire In The Sky. STV viewers enjoyed a variety of silent-era stunts in the 1962 compilation The Great Chase, followed by an episode of Magnum at 9pm; Border’s fare was somewhat less frantic – Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby.

At ACAS, mediation continued with some tentative progress being made after almost twelve hours of talks; a further meeting was scheduled for the following day.⁴²

Wednesday’s peak-time offering from Thames was prominently displayed in the London Evening Standard.

Wednesday 31 October

• 1.40pm A Country Practice
• 2.30pm Mary Berry
• 3pm The Adventurer
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm Cockleshell Bay
• 4.15pm Flicks
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm The Coral Island
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Name That Tune*
• 7.30pm Morecambe & Wise
• 8pm The Mike Yarwood Hour
• 9pm Minder*
• 10pm Film: The Island of Dr Moreau
• 11.45pm Night Thoughts

Minder at 9pm was a new instalment, contrary to newspaper listings advertising a repeat of the first episode from 1979; this was, in fact, the intended final chapter of the current series, ‘The Balance of Power’.

Craft, Design and Technology and The English Programme were the day’s two absentees from ITV Schools, whilst Rod, Jane & Freddy at 12noon & 4pm were once again replaced with varied delights; a selection of cartoons aired on Anglia, Border, Central, Grampian, TVS & Ulster whilst Granada dipped into its own archive for Songbook; likewise, Yorkshire with Gammon and Spinach. Flower Stories (HTV), The Adventures of The Blue Knight (STV) and a combination of European Folktales at 12noon and The Smurfs at 4pm (TSW & Channel) filled the gaps elsewhere.

7pm’s appointment with Name That Tune prompted some regions to repeat their own productions, such as STV’s Closer To Home, a documentary on the Highland Games in America, Border’s Look Who’s Talking fronted by Derek Batey, Granada-based mayhem with the Grumbleweeds and Ulster’s Country Style with host Gene Fitzpatrick. Elsewhere, imports including Ace Crawford – Private Eye (Anglia), Benson (Grampian, TSW & Channel), Diff’rent Strokes (Yorkshire & TVS) and – of course – Happy Days (Central & HTV) filled the slot. Tyne Tees looked to their regional neighbours for a repeat of YTV’s The Gaffer.

From 8pm, most regions opted for films. Border’s offering was the post-WWII drama Tunes of Glory starring John Mills and Alec Guinness; TVS featured Gene Hackman in March or Die whilst Granada screened the John Wayne comedic adventure Donovan’s Reef. Elsewhere, The Thief Who Came To Dinner (Grampian), Von Ryan’s Express (Central), Butch Cassidy & Sundance – The Early Years (Yorkshire), Operation Crossbow (HTV) and Where The Spies Are (Anglia) ran until News at Ten. Special mention should be made of Tyne Tees’ selection, Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda in the 1939 crime drama Jesse James; the oldest standby material to appear in peak-time during the dispute.

A handful of areas declined films in favour of music and drama. STV once again welcomed the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra – their third such outing since the initial Thames dispute in August – before The New Avengers at 9pm. TSW viewers saw Tom Jones perform at Knott’s before Patrick Mower and George Layton guest starred in The Sweeney episode ‘Trojan Bus’.

31 October 1984 was, of course, the 25th anniversary of Ulster Television’s launch; following a celebration of songwriter Percy French at 8pm, the channel aired its scheduled birthday special at 9pm. The intended screening of Minder at 10.30pm was then substituted with an episode of the Hammer horror anthology series Journey To The Unknown.

Back at Thames, the unity of the strike was weakening, with The Guardian reporting that 200 of the 500 ACTT staff at Teddington had signed a petition urging a return to work. ⁴³ Meanwhile, Thursday’s makeshift schedule on Thames included an early evening feature film and two new series.

Thursday 1 November 1984

• 1.40pm Falcon Crest
• 2.30pm Mary Berry
• 3pm The Adventurer
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm Rod, Jane & Freddy
• 4.15pm Jamie And The Magic Torch
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm Danger Mouse
• 5pm The Coral Island
• 5.30pm Botanic Man
• 6pm Diff’rent Strokes
• 6.30pm Keep It In The Family
• 7pm Whose Baby?
• 7.30pm News Headlines then Film: The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
• 10pm George Robinson of Newmarket
• 10.30pm New Series: The Master
• 11.30pm New Series: Jobs Limited
• 11.55pm Night Thoughts

The 10pm documentary was a repeat of an item originally shown within the daytime A Plus strand. The Master, an American drama starring Lee Van Cleef, began with the episode ‘Max’ whilst new factual programme Jobs Limited debuted in its originally planned timeslot.

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

Across the network, ITV Schools programmes Middle English, Seeing and Doing and Craft, Design and Technology were blacked out. Various factual shows replaced Daytime at 2.30pm including Portrait of a Legend (Anglia), Hands (Granada), At Home with…Jilly Cooper (HTV), Big Jack’s British (‘Trooper Charlton’, Tyne Tees), The Moviemakers (TSW & Channel), Paint Along with Nancy (TVS) and Clegg’s People (Yorkshire).

In the evening, the absence of Up The Elephant and Round The Castle and TV Eye prompted several regions to shuffle their line-ups: Anglia’s celebrity snooker show A Frame With [Steve] Davis, originally shown on Channel 4, made an impromptu appearance at 8pm following Knight Rider whilst at 8.30pm, TVS inserted an episode of Kojak, ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ and Yorkshire replaced Jim Davidson with a further repeat of their own sitcom Duty Free.

Diff’rent Strokes and The Adventurer aired at 8.30pm on Border and Grampian respectively whilst films were added to the schedules of Central (Carry On Abroad, 7.30pm) and Granada (Battle for the Planet of the Apes, 8.30pm).

Later, in place of TV Eye at 9.30pm, some regions substituted other factual programmes. TVS screened a 1982 edition of its series Just Williams entitled ‘Gherkin and Truffle Go To War’, a documentary on WWII. Tyne Tees aired ‘Hunters of Okavango’, an episode of Anglia’s Survival series; similarly, Grampian opted for an instalment of Orphans of the Wild, an imported nature series, whilst TSW repeated a film from its own Scene South West strand.

Elsewhere, STV welcomed Jonathan and Jennifer in Hart to Hart at 9pm, whilst Border completed its revised line-up with the 1973 crime short, The Laughing Girl Murder; Yorkshire aired a repeat of Thora Hird sitcom Hallelujah! ahead of News at Ten.

On Friday 2 November, the dispute was resolved. ACTT members voted to accept Thames management’s offer, settled at ACAS talks the prior evening. Staff agreed to the conditions of the originally proposed remuneration; specifically, that the two-phase 20% increase would be tied to the introduction of new technology ⁴⁴ with the ACTT committing to start immediate negotiations on the introduction of single-operator video cameras. Future pay negotiations would concern all relevant employees rather than the existing arrangement of multiple agreements within the Thames ACTT membership. ⁴⁵

Programme production would resume on Saturday;⁴⁶ meanwhile, Thames management concluded its emergency service with Friday’s programming.

With thanks to Ferguson Videostar

Friday 2 November 1984

• 1.40pm Film: Raffles
• 2.50pm Cartoon Time
• 3pm Mary Berry
• 3.30pm Sons and Daughters
• 4pm Rainbow
• 4.15pm Button Moon
• 4.30pm The Sooty Show
• 4.45pm The Coral Island

Middle English was the only schools programme affected on Friday. Later, Rainbow at 12.10pm and 4pm was replaced with the now-familiar pattern of substitutions: various cartoons in most regions (Anglia, Border, Central, Grampian, TVS, Tyne Tees & Ulster), A Handful of Songs (Granada), Get Up and Go (Yorkshire), Flora and Fauna (STV), Flower Stories (HTV) and European Folktales (12.10pm) & The Smurfs (4pm) (TSW/Channel).

Two further Children’s ITV shows were blacked out. At 4.25pm, Granada substituted The Wind In The Willows with Japanese animation Kum Kum whilst Yorkshire paid another visit to The Smurfs. Then, at 4.50pm, Illusions – on the subject of escapology – was replaced on Granada with another instalment of Graham’s Ark. Yorkshire repeated an edition of its own 1982 geography-based series, Two-Way Ticket.

Other regions screened fifty-minute shows to cover both gaps with The Adventures of Black Beauty (STV), The Nancy Drew Mysteries (Anglia & Central), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Border), CHiPs (‘Tiger In The Streets’, HTV) and The Little House on the Prairie (Grampian) all making an appearance.

As ever, normal service resumed with LWT at 5.15pm; Thames’ management service and the regular sight of unscheduled changes elsewhere came to an end. However, it would be several months before the full backlog of displaced programmes made it to the air.

Thames’ initial challenge was to catch up with serials, soaps and schools programmes. Having aired five episodes of The Coral Island during the dispute, the channel rapidly screened the final four chapters on Monday 5, Wednesday 7, Thursday 8 and Monday 12 November at 4.45pm; these displaced Wednesday’s Razzmatazz and Murphy’s Mob, the latter airing across the network on Mondays and Thursdays but yet to debut in London. The Central series would eventually reach Thames on Wednesday 14 Nov at 4.45pm (in place of Razzmatazz) and continued on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays into December. In turn, viewers in the capital enjoyed weekday morning screenings of Razzmatazz for two weeks beginning Monday 10 December (except Friday 14 and Monday 17).

In addition to the regular Monday and Wednesday slots, additional episodes of Coronation Street aired in London on Tuesday 6 November (7pm), Thursday 15 November (7.30pm), Thursday 22 November (7.30pm), Tuesday 27 November (7.30pm) and Tuesday 4 December (7.30pm). On the latter two occasions, the rest of the ITV network caught up with the two displaced editions of Give Us a Clue. Meanwhile, on Thursdays throughout November, truncated editions of Thames News and Thames Sport (running for twenty minutes apiece) enabled visits to the Crossroads motel at 6.40pm.

The displaced ITV Schools output was screened in December, with Thames’ programmes airing nationally on Thursday 6 & Friday 7. London viewers then received the backlog of non-Thames titles such as Picture Box, Stop, Look and Listen and How We Used To Live from Monday 10 – Friday 14 December whilst other regions aired pre-Christmas holiday children’s programmes.

Name That Tune, This Is Your Life, Mike Yarwood In Persons and Des O’Connor Tonight all reclaimed their regular slots though the latter took a one week break on Tuesday 4 December, allowing The Benny Hill Show – lost from Bank Holiday Monday – to air at 8pm.

Other programmes appeared in London and beyond as time and schedules permitted. For Thames viewers, The Krypton Factor resumed on Thursday 15 November at 7pm with the competition’s finale airing in the same slot one week later. Sandy Gall’s documentary on Afghanistan was screened on Wednesday 5 December at 11.40pm whilst the final episode in the second series of Duty Free reached Thames’ screens on Thursday 20 December at 8pm.

The Eric Morecambe tribute Bring Me Sunshine, which had been threatened by the dispute, took place as planned in November and was networked on Christmas Day. Up The Elephant and Round The Castle stayed on the shelf until January (the one episode already shown on Thames – ‘The Hostage’ – went out nationally as the last of the run), with Never The Twain repeats taking its place meanwhile.

The unscreened episode of Minder, ‘Hypnotising Rita’, originally scheduled for Wednesday 24 October, aired nationally on Tuesday 1 January 1985 at 9.15pm. Then, ‘The Long Ride Back To Scratchwood’, was broadcast outside London on Monday 7 January at 9pm (except STV, Monday 21 January at 9pm) with ‘The Balance of Power’ following on Monday 14 January 1985, also at 9pm; Thames screened episodes of Quincy.

Whilst The Bill continued in its regular slot – Tuesdays at 9pm – from 6 November, two episodes remained unscreened outside London until the new year: ‘A Friend In Need’ aired on Tuesday 29 January 1985 at 9pm with ‘Clutching At Straws’ in the same slot the following week; on both occasions, Thames aired repeats of The Sweeney.

Elton John in Central Park aired on Boxing Day whilst on Easter Monday – 224 days late – Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren’s crime drama The Long Good Friday finally enjoyed its ITV premiere.

The autumn disputes of 1984 were by no means the last instances of industrial disruption to affect the company and, indeed, ITV as a whole, though there would be no such protracted blackouts of Thames programming again. Meanwhile, the precedent of an individual company staging a successful, management-run service had been established; in 1987, this tactic would be seen again within the ITV network.

Footnotes

Listings information from: Aberdeen Evening Express, Daily Mail, Glasgow Evening Times, Glasgow Herald, The Guardian, Liverpool Echo, London Evening Standard, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Newcastle Journal, The Press & Journal, Reading Post, The Times

ITV Schools information from: Broadcast For Schools

The post Carry On Euston appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

When the new franchises were advertised at the end of 1966 the general assessment was that the new company, Yorkshire, was being introduced to dilute the power and profitability of the four major companies, and perhaps to make life more difficult for them; thereafter, change for the sake of change would bring in two or perhaps three new regional contractors.

The real problem facing us at ABC Television was how to find a new area to replace our ‘lost week-end’ as Peter Black of the Daily Mail called it. The company’s reputation stood high with the Authority, but it would now be homeless. London was our objective. Like the other companies, we thought that the Authority would be content with simply weakening Rediffusion by lopping off the Friday evening. We at ABC therefore decided to apply for the London two-and-a-half day week-end contract, and, as second choice, the seven-day Midlands contract. The boards of directors of all the companies had studied their potential revenue and costs figures before reaching decisions. There was little difficulty in convincing our own Board that although the extra evening’s programme in London would be costly, the resulting revenue for the week-end would provide a profit at least equalling ABC’s current £3,000,000 [£55,000,000 today, allowing for inflation] and perhaps more if we worked hard enough at it.

The Authority had been doing its own arithmetic. It was on the assessments of their canny Director of Finance, Tony Curbishley, that the Authority had divided the five contracts as evenly and as fairly as they could. Curbishley, who had access to all the details of every company’s finances, had worked out the potential revenue of each area, deducted the running costs, and he calculated that the net profit on each of the four major companies would be £3,000,000, with smaller Yorkshire below this level. It was Curbishley who had been responsible for re-dividing London’s revenue and he calculated that the total income would be evenly split if the London week-end contract began at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. on Fridays. According to his figures both of the London companies should show a profit of £3,000,000. This confirmed the figures we had worked out and presented to our own Board. The fact that London Weekend failed to achieve such profits in the early years reflected their early difficulties and miscalculations.

And perhaps now was the opportunity for new blood to be infused? It soon began to leak out that certain BBC executives were being nominated by would-be new contractors and were, in fact, appearing at the Authority’s Brompton Road hearings alongside the new applicants. Then, ominously, Michael Peacock resigned from his job as Controller of BBC1 to join Aidan Crawley’s London Weekend Television consortium. Whilst other BBC executives were known to have allowed their names to go forward, to be revealed only to the Authority, we decided that some sort of assurance must have been given to Peacock before he would venture from security into the unknown. It was discovered that he had been nominated as Managing Director of the proposed company, and other BBC names began to emerge: Humphrey Burton (music and opera), Doreen Stephens (head of BBC children’s programmes), Frank Muir (supervisor of comedy shows) and also John Freeman and David Frost. Such expertise and renown would be almost irresistible to Lord Hill.

By this time there was confusion and suspicion in the ITV boardrooms and on the third floor at the BBC. For everyone concerned, the final pronouncement by Lord Hill could not come too soon. The Authority reached its final decisions on the new contractors at their meeting towards the end of May and it was decided that the Chairman would make the announcement two days later, on a Sunday, to avoid Stock Exchange reactions.

On the fateful Sunday morning the Chairmen of the three London contenders returned with their cohorts to Brompton Road for their final interviews with Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser. Thus it was that London Weekend was awarded the programme contract it had sought, while John Spencer Wills, Chairman of Rediffusion Television, was told by Lord Hill of the Authority’s decision – which was to merge Rediffusion with ABC Television and to award the London weekday contract to the new joint company. There would be an equal sharing of profits but fifty-one per cent of the voting shares and the control of the new company would go to ABC, who would provide the managing director and the controller of programmes. Lord Hill described John Spencer Wills’ reaction as ‘deeply shocked, if not flabbergasted, but courteous throughout’.

Next it was ABC Television’s turn and I went with my Chairman, Sir Philip Warter and the deputy-chairman Robert Clark. We were given the same formula, with the addition that Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser congratulated me on my appointment as Managing Director of the new London company. It was only on the day after the meeting with Lord Hill and Bob Fraser that I began to realise fully the enormity of the task upon which I had been so suddenly embarked. My first thought was for the staff; nearly three thousand men and women employed by both companies were now reading in their newspapers that something had happened to their jobs. To operate the new company (and what should we call it?) for four-and-a-half days in London would need fewer staff than Rediffusion employed and more than had worked for ABC. There would be jobs for little more than half of the total payroll of the merged companies. Lord Hill had already tried to quell rising apprehension among the ITV workers by a promise that there would be a job for everyone – somewhere.

It was important too to retain the most valuable programme executives and I had to make rapid decisions as to who should be in control of the six programme departments, bearing in mind the equal division between the two original companies and the knowledge that some people had committed themselves already to new contractors.

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

This brought incessant problems of morale and money. The ABC staff, trained in Manchester, were facing upheaval from their comfortable homes to start afresh in a ‘foreign’ city. Studio staffs had their loyalties split down the middle and were uncertain whether they would be working for LWT or for the new and unnamed company arising from the demise of ABC and Rediffusion.

ABC paid out half a million [£9 million now allowing for inflation] in redundancy settlements, and Rediffusion almost twice as much. There was also the question of pensions, and transfer of rights. Since Rediffusion’s pension funds had been invested with typical business acumen there were handsome benefits for those whose careers had developed with the growth of their company. Somehow we managed to keep ABC Television going and by the end of our last financial year (March 1968) we had a turnover of £11,753,000 [£203,000,000] and showed a trading profit of £2,159,000 [£37,350,000]. The parent Corporation could have no complaint about the return on its original investment.

When we came to giving the company its name I was resolutely opposed to any more initials. I had always envied the solidity and sturdiness of a single word like Granada or Rediffusion. I believe in descriptive titles for companies and products and I would have liked to include the magic word ‘London’ but already this belonged to London Weekend Television. (I had no regrets when they began to use the initials LWT for in the process they lost some of the impact of the word ‘London’.)

As well, I wanted a name that would lend itself to a graphic symbol. My first thought was Tower Television, combining the symbols of the old and the new, Tower Bridge and the General Post Office tower. In the end we settled for the name of Thames, influenced partly because our Teddington studios were alongside the river, near the ancient lock. It was also a name of international recognisability and our future expansion lay in world-wide sales. Above all, Thames was a romantic name, for many have come to London as I did, to stand on the bridges and gaze on the breath-taking skylines. My own favourite skyline was the rooftops of Whitehall, as seen from the bridge over the lake in Green Park, and it was this that led to the London skyline which became the symbol of Thames Television. We did take artistic liberties with our spires and somehow the Post Office tower popped up from behind St Paul’s Cathedral. The London Evening News calmly ‘lifted’ the skyline idea, turned it into a silhouette and used the result as their own symbol. We could hardly object, because London belongs to all of us who live and work there.

The signature music came to me when I saw a gypsy woman selling lavender in a Chelsea street. She was singing ‘Who’ll buy my sweet lavender?’ The street cries of London were the very first singing ‘commercials’. When the day came to launch Thames officially with a rather pompous opening ceremony at Mansion House, Lord Mayor and all, a pretty girl strolled into the gold-plated hall with a trayful of sprigs of lavender, singing ‘our song’. She happened to be a soprano from Sadler’s Wells, but the simple melody was a refreshing change from the customary fanfares. Some fortunate composer was commissioned to ‘orchestrate’ the tune, almost to the point of unrecognisability I regret to say, and it probably provided him with a pension for life.

But it was not all harmony in Television House when we began to move in to the former Rediffusion headquarters. I took a corner office in the building, from where I sighted Ivor Novello’s former roof-top flat, and Thames’ occupation began whilst the remaining staff of Rediffusion were still struggling loyally to complete the advertised programme schedule. Brian Tesler was already planning our new ‘mix’ for London weekdays. We decided on which ABC series to retain, and which of Rediffusion’s. Beyond that we planned new series like Frontier, a vigorous North West India episodic tale of war and love. For economy reasons this had to be filmed in the mountains of North Wales, which surprisingly were not all that different from the authentic Himalayas.

Rediffusion’s venerable current affairs programme This Week, was an inevitable choice, but we decided to drop the two quiz programmes which had overstayed their welcome and possibly had handicapped Rediffusion in their application, Take Your Pick and Double Your Money. We also decided to discontinue ATV’s Crossroads because of the poor quality of scripts and acting compared with Coronation Street. This turned out to be a mistake and the series had to be brought back by sheer public insistence. For this reason Crossroads episodes transmitted in the London area always languished six months behind the Birmingham sequences. Only years later were the episodes synchronised, with Noelle Gordon interpreting to the London audience in a special ‘what-happened-then’ edition the missing strands of the endless saga.

The post Who will buy my sweet lavender? appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Lord Mountbatten was born in the first year of the century and had taken part in the pageant of history, with a seat in the Royal Box. Always attracted by the visual arts and a pioneer in the use of the motion picture for the training and entertainment of the Royal Navy, he had turned down all the offers to publish his written autobiography. It was typical of Mountbatten to choose the most up-to-date of all media, television, as his means of personal communication. His agreement with Rediffusion was that he would make himself available, together with his rare collection of diaries, letters, photographs, films and memories, to record his life on camera. In return he would possess the overseas rights of the resulting programmes, for the benefit of his Broadlands estate. Rediffusion assigned to him their distinguished documentary producer, Peter Morley, and for three years these two men worked together, with increasing understanding. Lord Mountbatten has admitted the early attempts to interview him on film were disappointing, but inexorably he mastered the technique and became an accomplished professional broadcaster.

I believe the original concept was a series of twenty-six half-hour programmes, although no networking arrangement with the other companies had been negotiated. During lengthy screening sessions Brian Tesler and I reviewed the results with Peter Morley; in ‘rough cut’ we looked at hours of library material, mostly in black and white, with new material filmed in colour of Lord Mountbatten returning to his scenes of glory.

Our decision was to make this the show piece for Thames. We took the bold course and decided to make twelve one-hour episodes, transmitted at the peak time of nine o’clock, though we had no illusion that any of the other stations would be likely to follow our example.

All this we explained to Lord Mountbatten and his film producer son-in-law Lord Brabourne, a joint ally valuable to both of us. I remember how Lord Mountbatten came down to our riverside Teddington studios to get to know us better. After luncheon aboard our ‘retired’ boat, the m.v. Iris, a survivor of Dunkirk, we went on a tour of the premises. On the nearby car park the Drama Department were recording a section of Frontier, where a firing squad in British Army uniforms was lined up to execute an Indian spy. As we were walking towards them the production halted and out of habit Lord Mountbatten ‘inspected’ the shooting squad. They must have looked a motley lot, actors in uniforms hired from Berman’s. There was only one real soldier around, a regimental sergeant major seconded from Aldershot to act as military adviser and obviously enjoying a few leisurely days at Teddington supervising an Equity squad and drilling them for the sequence. His embarrassment can be imagined when the raggle-taggle of actors suddenly found themselves being inspected by the Supremo himself! The RSM’s face was red as Lord Mountbatten gave him a curt nod. Inside, a prison play was in production. Lord Mountbatten was impressed with the dress rehearsal of a scene where the prisoner was taken from the condemned cell to face the Governor in his office. The reproduction was accurate, as Lord Mountbatten knew from his recent survey of prisons and subsequent report to the Government on the subject. He smilingly congratulated me afterwards on the excellent organisation of having troops on parade and a prison play laid on for him!

This was a pleasant interlude away from the attrition which had broken out in the ITCA headquarters where the new “Big Five’ were now meeting to plan the first season’s programmes of the new phase of ITV. Interesting new characters had arrived upon the familiar scene, as the principals turned up with their adherents. The infiltration of the new had begun.

One familiar face was missing. Rediffusion’s former protagonist, John McMillan, had been submerged in the blending of ABC and Rediffusion. Cecil Bernstein, Lew Grade and I had agreed that John McMillan’s knowledge and experience should not disappear from ITV, and we lost no time in creating for him a new job in the industry, as Director of Sport. Such an appointment was not welcomed by the incoming London Weekend Television who were now to be responsible for Saturday sport and wanted to take over ABC’s World of Sport.

At the programme planning meetings the old guard was much in evidence; Cecil Bernstein, with another Granada pioneer, Denis Forman; Lew Grade, with his latest number two, Robin Gill, a pressurising young man with ambitions to succeed even Lew Grade himself; Brian Tesler and I, who had now moved up the ladder from the week-ends and provinces to London. The new companies were represented by Yorkshire’s Ward Thomas and Donald Baverstock, and London Weekend’s buoyant team of Michael Peacock and Tom Margerison, both eager to teach new tricks to old masters.

The situation was clearly defined. In the assessment of the Authority, four companies had equal strength and opportunity, with practically the same potential advertisement revenue and the same potential profit, £3,000,000. Yorkshire came fifth in size and revenue, but with their fair share of networked programming guaranteed by the Authority.

Lew Grade had been swayed by Robin Gill’s financial calculations to concentrate on the Midlands contract, but now he was without his foothold in London and was one more regional contractor. As a former tenant of the London Weekend preserve he was also smarting under the deprecatory comments Michael Peacock continued to make to the press about ATV’s shortcomings, and his promises of more uplifting programmes at week-ends. Surrounded by his shining knights from the BBC, he believed implicitly in what London Weekend’s colourful application for the franchise had set forth. Now he was determined to prove his words and to revitalise the week-end’s television.

Granada had been little disturbed by the changes, except that they now faced the problem of contributing from Lancashire their quota of Saturday and Sunday programmes on a reduced income. Yorkshire had its own task of starting off with new staff and without any programmes in reserve. They would have to originate fewer programmes than the other four, but correspondingly they had to network more than anyone else and therefore their ratings depended upon whatever new programmes were available for them. The programme output of Granada, ATV and Thames was predictable, but after the shouting had died down would LWT be capable of supplying an effective Saturday-Sunday output?

Even when the interchange of programmes was agreed payments would still have to be arranged between the five companies; a new system had to be devised. An immediate issue was that if LWT were to be given absolute control of Saturday afternoon sport why was the budget for World of Sport so suddenly inflated? What percentage of Midland, Lancashire and Yorkshire sports contributions would be included in the reconstructed programme?

Peacock and Tom Margerison faced up to this with apparent equanimity but when they returned to their office in Burlington Street there must have been some puzzled consultations with their colleagues. BBC-trained executives were used to competing in a gentlemanly way for allocations of the overall budget and once the figures were settled they simply ordered programmes from the appropriate departments. They had merely to ask for fifty hours of drama, sixty hours from Light Entertainment, and so on, then await the detailed proposals. ITV programme controllers had to go back to their studios and then make their own programmes. At LWT there was little understanding of the intricacies of ITV programme finance and the proper division of costs. Nor was the scheduling, planned with the other four major companies, the final stage; there still remained the ten regional companies to be convinced of the workability of the schedules.

The final judgement, though, would come from the public, and there was a wide difference between the time-honoured BBC policy of giving the public what was good for them, and the ITV attitude of trying to offer the public what they would like to view. If the public did not respond to whatever was new and revolutionary in the LWT week-end schedule then the advertisers, an ultra-conservative group, would probably sit back and wait until the required audience was assembled, just as they had done in the early and desperate days of ITV.

It was in this uneasy and uncertain mood that ITV was relaunched in its new career in August 1967. Many tried and favourite programmes had been thrown out of the new schedule. Unknown and unresearched programmes were being tendered by three new companies; a percentage of failure was inevitable. Unfortunately, too, a new method of audience research was being introduced. TAM Rating (Television Audience Measurement) was another of the casualties of the era of change, to be replaced by Audits of Great Britain’s new system (“son of Tam’ some called it). The new means of audience appraisal had the backing of the Joint Industry Committee for Television Advertising Research (JICTAR) and therefore was financed collectively by advertisers, agencies and the programme companies. It was an improved system but two years would go by before its new standards of measurement would be understood and accepted.

Meanwhile, according to the first JICTAR figures the audience for ITV had shrunk alarmingly, almost overnight.

The post Mountbatten’s ratings appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Then came the technicians’ strike. Disenchanted staff, suddenly transplanted from one county to another, or even from one part of London to another, were demanding compensation, displacement money, new agreements, new safeguards, new conditions. Men doing exactly the same jobs in the same studios were claiming redundancy payments. Men transported from Manchester to Leeds wanted money for new houses, legal fees, removal costs, and ‘displacement’ compensation. Who, after all, wanted to give up Manchester United for Leeds United?

ITV was crippled and the BBC scooped up the audience, as certified by JICTAR, basely backfiring on its new supporters. Advertisers switched away from the uncertainties of television and returned to the comparative reliability of the press. As if this was not enough for the programme contractors the Government decided to increase the levy on television advertising. Like everyone else, ministers and their civil servants had read The Times, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, gloating on the financial bonuses Lord Hill was supposed to have handed out with bouquets to consortia, companies and a few Midas-minded individuals. In view of these predictions the Treasury moved in. Meanwhile, those of us who had laboured in these vineyards for twelve years without any capital gains at all glowered with some envy at the newcomers who were to amass fortunes simply by entering the industry.

In July 1969, within a year of the inauguration of the new chapter of ITV, the government levy on television advertising revenue was increased by the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Roy Jenkins, scalping another £3,000,000 [£52 million now allowing for inflation] out of the revenue.

Once again Independent Television was in a struggle for survival. In its first year Thames could show a profit of only £759,000 [£13 million], a poor return on its £7,000,000 [£121 million] capital employed on a six-year contract. Yet the warriors who had been through such experiences before were accustomed to the switchback career of the industry and when they were plunging down to the Big Dipper’s depths they knew how to hold on to their seats. To Granada and ATV it had become a way of life, and Thames had sprung from sturdy stock. Yorkshire, too, was no newcomer, for the staff had been recruited mostly from ABC and Rediffusion, and the Managing Director, Ward Thomas, had reared a small company, Grampian Television. His task at Leeds had not been easy because although Yorkshire’s brand new studios had managed to open on time their transmitting mast on the wilds of Emley Moor had been blown down in a gale, causing a £250,000 [£4½ million] loss of revenue.

It was now that London Weekend Television found themselves in a game where professionalism was all; not only in the art of television but professionalism in the business of television. They were in a do-it-yourself industry, where you not only had to conceive programmes, but you also had to produce them yourself, sometimes having to argue with staff and technicians about the conditions of making the programmes. It was an industry, too, where your future depended upon the customers’ support and without the viewer-customers you would not attract the advertisers, and without advertisers you would have no income.

A television programme company is an exceptional animal. It has to be a dynamic (but not explosive) band of artists, engineers and salesmen sharing a single aim: to produce a public service of imaginative quality. The advertising salesman must be sympathetic to the creative man’s ambitions; and the engineer to his foibles. The creative man has to meet the engineers half-way and he must have also sufficient business acumen to appreciate that without ammunition from him the salesman will not be able to raise the money for his own livelihood and, sometimes, his indulgences.

London Weekend Television was like an international football side of brilliant individuals but untrained as a team. When their confidential application was finally published in a pamphlet, The Open Secret, the prospectus was revealed to be a scintillating piece of authorship but lacking in practicability. LWT’s programmes and planning did not appeal enough to the public, the advertisers, or the other companies. As the week-end ratings subsided Granada, ATV and Yorkshire were unwilling to let their most effective programmes be slotted into the week-end schedules, and struggled to keep them within the security of the successful weekday schedule. There were also unfortunate press statements ones like Michael Peacock’s: ‘The trouble is that ITV believes that people stop thinking at weekends,’ and the epitaph spoken by the programme controller Cyril Bennett in a moment of truth when introducing LWT’s 1969/1970 plans: ‘The first duty of a commercial station is to survive’.

Michael Peacock took on a mammoth job; with loyal and better support he might have survived. He had to start from scratch, in studios which were less than up-to-date and with studio star disgruntled at the loss of employers who had kept them happy. There was no real and united production team at the top, only a collection of talented individualists who did not have the experience or the patience to weather the inevitably frustrating early years. There were sensational resignations and at last Michael Peacock was fired by his board two years after winning the contract. Several of his supporters who had been signatories to the original application resigned in sympathy with him.

After two years of headlines and front-page publicity, from the euphoria of the successful application and the promises of irresistible week-end programmes, to uninhibited full-page advertisements boosting its own talent, LWT appointed its new chairman and Chief Executive, John Freeman, and finally settled down into the new pattern of ITV.

With the limelight focussed on its competitor, Thames Television went quietly and unspectacularly about its job of welding together the choice ingredients of two companies with much solid achievement behind them. Out of the disappointments and disarray, a group with rare experience and proven ability was taking shape within Thames, which was to remain almost unchanged for six years. One of my earliest moves was to take thirty programme people, the most creative in the new departments, away to Brighton for a couple of days, to get to know each other and to exchange ideas, and to air publicly the more constructive critical comments overheard in the local pubs and in our Thames club.

The post All fall down appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

My other objective was of course to break down those barriers created by any merger when it brings together executives from rival companies of totally different philosophies. This was only the beginning of a long and tortuous process, for the loyalties of Rediffusion staff were deep and it took several years to overcome their natural resentment of ABC control being forced upon them. I knew that total integration of the two companies could only be attained by joint achievements, when everyone would be proud to work under the banner of the new company, Thames. Therefore this was a further inducement (if any were needed) for Thames to emerge as the leader in current affairs and informational programmes, in addition to its acknowledged strength in entertainment and drama.

The highspot, I decided, would be The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten which had been a Rediffusion creation. Once having decided to play this as a trump card and break away from the ITV network practice of putting on documentary series at off-peak time I tried to induce ATV, Granada and Yorkshire to follow Thames’ lead and run the series at 9 p.m. This proposal was gently supported by the Authority (although not made a ‘requirement’) but it was not found acceptable, and others slotted the programmes for 10.30 p.m. directly after News at Ten, athough eventually one or two of the regions did follow our lead.

In a despairing effort to coax the two most powerful executives, Cedi Bernstein and Lew Grade, into nine o’clock networking with us I harnessed the driving force of the dauntless Lord Mountbatten. During one of the social events we cornered Lew and Cecil, and Lord Mountbatten went straight into the attack. Lew was immovable: ‘Howard must be mad, putting on your programme against the BBC at nine! That’s when the BBC put on all those sexy plays with bad language. You’ll get slaughtered. Now when I put on the programmes, after the news at 10.30, there’ll be no opposition.’ (No opposition, I thought, only football matches and feature films.) Lord Mountbatten did not withdraw from his attack until Lew Grade told him: ‘I guarantee, Lord Mountbatten, that ATV will get better ratings than Thames. In fact, I’m so sure I’ll bet on it. If Thames get higher ratings than ATV I’ll pay you five hundred pounds.’ In fact, Thames did achieve higher ratings at 9 p.m. than ATV at 10.30 p.m. and I reminded Lew Grade of this bet. ‘I know, I’ve already sent Mountbatten my cheque.’ He lit a new cigar and added ‘Cheap at the price, wasn’t it?’

Thus when Thames next offered a series of equal importance – The World at War – the companies all agreed to follow our lead and network this at 9 p.m. The programmes were rarely out of the top ten. For once, we did bring out the brass band to launch The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten with a flourish of trumpets and drums, for this series clearly had the stamp of success. We decided to have three ‘premieres’ at the Imperial War Museum, which had been such a valuable source of material for us. The first showing was for Lord Mountbatten’s military colleagues, the other for the Queen and her family, and the third for the press. The premiere for Her Majesty was probably more royal than any previous occasion, attracting the entire royal family with the exception of the Duke of Gloucester who was ill.

I found with Lord Mountbatten that in spite of his forceful personality he was susceptible to reasoned resistance, and there were several occasions when he gave in to determined argument. Our opinions differed about the values of various episodes depicting his career. For the press screening he wanted to show the episode he had selected for the Queen, his magnificent days in India. I agreed that nothing could be better for the Royal screening but it was not the right episode for the press. I wanted the second of the series, The Kings Depart, which told the story of his marriage to Edwina Ashley and their honeymoon in Hollywood, where they had made a picture which was preserved in his astonishing collection of Mountbatten films. The honeymooners had stayed at the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and taken part in a film Nice and Friendly, with Charlie Chaplin and the ‘Kid’, Jackie Coogan. It was funny and touching and was inevitably a hit with the newspaper men. Lord Mountbatten agreed afterwards that it was the correct decision. Our sales organisation went on to distribute the series on behalf of his Trust throughout the world.

For the first time we were able to break into French television. Only Mountbatten could have gone direct to De Gaulle to have the series shown in France. He then proceeded to re-record the commentaries in French, and indefatigably went through the same process to record a German version when German television also took the programmes. Our only failure was in the United States, where in spite of all the pressures and efforts the networks once again refused to find time for a series of British documentaries. Lord Mountbatten had Henry Ford as his house guest at Broadlands, for what I anticipated would be the most expensive outing of Mr Ford’s life, to sponsor the series in America. Although Mr Ford was willing, the American network concerned would not accept the programmes because they thought it would be disadvantageous to their ratings.

This series helped to consolidate the network, as well as Thames. Weekdays were now firmly established, partly because of the variable performance of the week-end schedules. The unpredictability and unreliability of Friday evening and week-end programmes disturbed the advertisers, who always wanted to be sure that their commercials would reach a known and countable audience. This could be guaranteed only on weekday television.

Thames could now claim leadership of the network, for the most effective programmes were concentrated from Monday to Thursday, based on Thames’ formula of the best of ABC and Rediffusion, plus new programmes, reinforced by the cream of the output of the three major regional companies. All this we celebrated at our first staff dance in January 1969, symbolising the union of the two companies. We had to take the huge Lyceum ballroom in the Strand to accommodate the staff of 1,600 plus their wives, husbands and friends, jubilant and secure after two years of doubts and hazards. All this gave me some satisfaction – not least that after twelve years of journeying from London to Manchester and Birmingham it was a joy to have my travels limited to Teddington.

Thames had moved into its new building on the Euston Road, which had been designed for the next phase of television, and we went forward with confidence into the world of colour. Now we set ourselves new sights with large-scale programmes which would take two or three years to mature.

Yet all was not well in the pastures of Golden Square. For years there had been trepidation about the inevitable sale of Warner Brothers’ share interest in ABPC; with Jack Warner’s advancing years speculation and rumour had opened up all sorts of possibilities. Then came a stranger at the door. At the end of January 1968 Electric & Musical Industries Ltd, had informed the Associated British Picture Corporation that they had agreed to purchase from Warner Brothers four million Ordinary Stock Units and thus acquired twenty-five per cent of the issued Ordinary Capital of the Corporation. Sir Philip Warter announced that the two companies had agreed to co-operate in the ‘full development of their combined resources in the field of entertainment at home and overseas. To this end the Board of the Corporation has invited EMI to nominate two directors for the Board of the Corporation.’ The two directors were John Read and Bernard Delfont.

Now the solid Associated British Picture Corporation began to feel the tremors of changes ahead. But Thames Television was consolidating its position in the television industry.

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

Lord Normanton had died in office and the Chairmanship of the BBC had become vacant. In one of those occasional swings of the pendulum when power passes from Chairman to Director-General, or vice versa, Sir Hugh Greene had developed into a Director-General with character and personality strong enough to assume control of the Corporation’s policies and activities. His liberal attitudes towards programmes and programme-makers were less popular outside the BBC. It might be all very well to brush aside protesting do-gooders like the reforming Mary Whitehouse but it could be hazardous to antagonise a Prime Minister.

When the day came to decide on who should occupy the Chairman’s seat on the BBC Board of Governors the final choice rested with one man, the Prime Minister. There are two versions of what happened. One account is that during a Cabinet meeting the Prime Minister passed a scribbled note to his Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, the Rt Hon Herbert Bowden, and asked him whether he had any preference for being appointed Chairman of the BBC or of Independent Television. ‘Bert’ Bowden was nearing the summit of an impressive career but, for domestic reasons, the travels essential to his Commonwealth duties had become irksome and he had notified the Prime Minister that he would welcome a transfer to another post in Britain.

When he read the message it did not take him long to make up his mind. He knew Sir Robert Fraser and liked him; Sir Hugh Greene was an unknown quantity and from hearsay the prospect was not attractive. Although the Minister had been an opponent of Independent Television in the beginning, his respect had grown for its accomplishments, and he decided that this was where his future might lie. He accepted the job, and the peerage that went with it. Lord Aylestone became Chairman of the Independent Television Authority.

The more familiar version is that the Prime Minister, dissatisfied with the BBC and its domination by the Director-General, came to the conclusion that the only remedy was to appoint a combative Chairman. Impressed with the performance of Lord Hill at ITV and his domination of its Director-General and members of the Authority, Mr Wilson decided to use the shock tactic of installing as Chairman of the BBC the ‘general’ in command of the opposition.

Perhaps when he contemplated such a switch Mr Wilson had been finally impressed by the firm way in which Lord Hill had dealt with the programme companies and his effective handling of the press at the Sunday afternoon conference to announce the changes. It was only six weeks after the press conference that Lord Hill was telephoned at his home in Harpenden and summoned to Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister on the following afternoon. Mr Wilson was accompanied by the Postmaster-General, then Mr Edward Short. The Prime Minister first complimented Lord Hill on his good work at the ITA and then offered him the Chairmanship of the BBC. Lord Hill’s own reflection on this was:

The Prime Minister had not given me a choice between an extension of my job at the ITA or the acceptance of the BBC Chairmanship. If he had, I suspect that I might well have accepted an extension of the ITA Chairmanship.

The one factor about which there was no doubt was the Prime Minister’s intention to put politicians in control of BBC and ITA.

Lord Hill moved into Broadcasting House and began a stormy regime at the BBC where the news of his appointment had been received with anger and bewilderment. A cold reception awaited him from the Board of Governors.

Lord Aylestone told me that his reception at Brompton Road, too, was chilly. The way he assessed it, everyone was speculating as to why he had been sent there, but before long his friendliness and his candour thawed out the freeze and he became the most popular Chairman with the staff of the Authority.

His first action had been to study the transcripts of all the interviews for the new franchises. His conclusions were that Television West-and-Wales had been treated fairly but he was not entirely happy with the handling of Rediffusion.

Born in Cardiff, where his parents ran a small but unsuccessful bakery, Bert Bowden became Labour member for Leicester South in 1945, gaining a safe seat. His five years at the Authority were extended to seven and a half years and he left with the goodwill of the staff and all the companies. A modest and simple man, his tastes in many ways reflected the programme preferences of the public, and above all he was totally honest and direct in his approach to problems. He was accessible to all and overcame most difficulties by applying ordinary commonsense.

Lord Hill’s legacy of new companies became Lord Aylestone’s baby, with all the pangs of youthfulness. There was also the task of finding a successor for Sir Robert Fraser, who was due to retire. I know that Lord Aylestone’s first preference for a new Director-General would have been John Freeman and an approach was made. At the time John Freeman was not attracted but ultimately, when the chaotic situation at London Weekend was heading for disaster, the company was salvaged by the appointment of John Freeman in the combined role of Chairman and Chief Executive, with Aidan Crawley becoming president.

Thames Television had succeeded in mastering most of the problems of a merger and was creating no difficulties for the new Authority Chairman. After a successful launching at the Mansion House Thames had reached the end of its first half year and in spite of the industry’s troubled re-start the Company looked well set for a good run.

Then came rumblings of another change. EMI had made a bid to take over ABC, half owners of Thames Television.

The post Over the Hill appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

There was little accord at the top. The brilliant lawyer, Eric Fletcher, as Deputy Chairman, was an imaginative appointment by Warner Brothers and his strong personality influenced the Chairman, Sir Philip Warter, who was in a role where confidence, drive and leadership were essential. The combination of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, backed by the might of Warner Brothers, made it almost impossible for the main survivor of the original John Maxwell team, Robert Clark, to produce important British films at Elstree studios or to expand the Corporation beyond cinema exhibition. The power struggles at the summit kept the Board of the Corporation occupied with its internal affairs whilst in the City ABPC became regarded as dormant, ripe for take-over.

Over the years many bidders had been rumoured and as the fortunes of Warner Brothers themselves fluctuated in the United States, and the ageless Jack Warner began at last to grow venerable, approaches for the Warner holding in ABPC were openly discussed in the United States. British Government regulations controlling the ownership of British cinemas and studios had tightened up since the original wartime transaction, and American film organisations regarded some of the difficulties as insurmountable. The financial success of the Corporation’s only important subsidiary, ABC Television, had made the prospect more valuable but correspondingly more difficult, because of the strict limitations on foreign control of a British commercial television company. At least one of the American networks had studied ABPC’s financial structure primarily for the possibility of gaining ABC Television but the Government’s safeguards effectively protected British ownership.

The Board of ABPC did surprisingly little to defend its vulnerability or to expand its activities. Robert Clark, who had become a millionaire through his dealings in the property market, was understood to be anxious to acquire all or part of the Warner shares if they were offered for sale, but if this was his ambition it was never fulfilled. Meantime his expertise in property values had steered the Corporation towards its wealth in the ownership of cinemas occupying valuable central sites in hundreds of towns and cities.

The Corporation squatted on its mountain of cinemas like a sitting hen. Detailed reports were prepared for them on other industries, other companies, other ventures. Bulky grew the portfolios but the decision was almost inevitably a rejection or a postponement. It took me long years to push, nudge and coax the Corporation into Independent Television. When ABC Television became their most important asset, apart from the properties they owned, I did my best to urge them further into associated fields of opportunity. As the profits from television multiplied these were diverted into the ailing cinema business. The cinema executives, who predominated on the Board, were campaigning for the television profits to be invested in bowling centres on the basis that it was a fad which America had adopted and Britain would follow. It was also a practical way of using empty cinemas which had ceased to pay their way.

I was the only director arguing that we should diversify into by-products of television, particularly wired television. Granada had started up in this activity, as well as in music and publishing. ATV was in records, music and theatres. Rediffusion had not only expanded its wired television business but had acquired Wembley Stadium and was investing in other branches of entertainment.

I almost lost heart after I had brought to the boardroom an attractive opportunity for them to acquire an interest in one of the most promising television relay companies, Telefusion Ltd. This was the outcome of a relationship I had developed with the solid John Wilkinson who had started this company from his first shop in Blackpool and built up Telefusion into a powerful force in our northern area. He had a further asset in his equally hardworking and highly efficient son, and it was obvious that this company had a future. Together we worked towards a share deal between Telefusion and ABC Television. This was the flaw, because the Corporation wanted no partners, only cast-iron safe investments. I was depressed by their eventual and embarrassing rejection, because they lacked the vision to recognise the classic situation of a growing business with inbuilt management prowess.

Instead, the profits from ABC Television were poured into the conversion of a dozen cinemas into bowling centres. The venture collapsed and, a few years later, as the bowling centres were closed down, one after another, I watched Telefusion climb to a leading place in the wired television market, and eventually become successful applicants for the Yorkshire programme franchise.

The post Inside ABPC appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The effect of this was that only a rich and established British company, acceptable to the Board of Trade as owner of a cinema chain, and to the ITA as partner in its ‘prime company’ with the London weekday contract, could effectively bid to take over ABPC in its entirety.

EMI’s wealth was mainly in profits from the records of the Beatles and it was a natural development for them to extend their diversification from electronics into the business of leisure. When Sir Joseph Lockwood had become Chairman he had hoisted EMI out of the doldrums up to the heights. He was also keenly aware that although capital assets and profits were key factors, where the entertainment industry was concerned entrepreneurism was all-important. Therefore he resolved to take under the wing of EMI the most professional of all the showmen, the Grades and their brother Bernard Delfont. Possibly EMI overpaid for what they eventually acquired in the Grade Organisation because events proved that Lew and Leslie were not available to add much to the EMI organisation, but it would be difficult to put a price on the tremendous contribution Bernard Delfont brought to EMI through sheer showmanship. The buying and selling of the Grade Organisation and the purchase of the Blackpool Tower Co. scarcely justified the high price paid by EMI, but ultimately the millions made from the Beatles and their music were deftly used Sir Joseph Lockwood and John Read to steer EMI into supremacy in the realm of British show business.

Now the amassed dollars of EMI and Capitol Records in America were earmarked for the purchase of Warner Brothers shares in ABPC and with it the control of one of Britain’s two major cinema circuits. There was a prolonged and bitter defence by ABPC when EMI finally made their bid for ownership. There were blasts and counterblasts of official statements to bewildered shareholders but the end was inevitable, with EMI’s determination to win, apparently regardless of the cost. Because of Robert Clark’s dour resistance they paid heavily for ABPC, perhaps too highly, but as the years have gone by their huge investment has never ceased to bring increased turnover, with the Group’s profits ultimately reaching £50,000,000 a year.

EMI gained control of ABPC early in 1969. Their encirclement of ABPC had been closely studied by interested parties in Independent Television, not least by the Authority itself. After all, Thames Television was the company it had designed to operate the principal contract in London. As Lord Hill has written since, it was the calibre of the management of ABC Television which had influenced the Authority in its decision to let the smaller company be in control of the resident company when the London weekday merger was effected. The Authority, therefore, was less concerned about the future of ABPC than it was with the key executives from ABC Television who were now running Thames precisely in the style and to the standard the Authority had stipulated.

The attitude of Lord Aylestone and Sir Robert Fraser was firm and definite. The Authority, in making its contract decisions, had chosen individuals, not merely the companies that employed them. If there were wholesale changes in a parent company’s Board the Authority’s priority would be to safeguard executives in the specialised posts for which they were highly qualified. The Authority’s policy, then, was to maintain the management and executives in Thames in their jobs so that they could continue to fulfil the contract as originally intended. It was clear that Thames Television had either to be given a protected situation within the EMI-ABPC merger, or it would have to be hived off and kept outside the transaction.

As the arguments wore on between the two giant company there were other interested onlookers. At ATV Lew Grade and Robin Gill were giving mysterious nods and winks to suggest that they expected to become party to the outcome of the merger. They were anticipating a close link between EMI/ABPC and ATV, extending their own interest to include Thames. We could all be together, they assured me, in running a colossal conglomerate.

It was this very assumption that compelled the Authority to lay down stringent rules concerning the take-over’s application to Thames. Their first conditions were that EMI would have to sever all connection with the agency activities of the Grace Organisation; nor could any members of that group be connected with the Board or management of Thames Television. The Authority had already exercised their right to approve the election of any new director of Thames from the Associated British side and they now reserved the right to approve any nominee of EMI proposed for inclusion in the specified number of directors on Thames’ Board. This was more stringent than the rules for Rediffusion who were free to nominate anyone they wished for their four directorships.

Unusual conditions like this were making the merger all the more complicated and difficult for John Read (now Sir John Read) EMI’s Managing Director, but he realised the potential for his company in Thames and its staff, and he was determined to keep the company within the EMI Group. I accepted assurances that Thames would in fact have greater freedom and more opportunity for expansion as part of EMI. This proved to be the case.

Although my involvement with the merger itself was limited to board meetings where Sir Philip Warter and Robert Clark reported on the state of warfare, I spent much of my time in delicate conversations with both parties, and with Lord Aylestone and Sir Robert Fraser. I kept my colleagues closely informed because they were as anxious as I was to preserve Thames Television management as a team, and to secure the maximum freedom and backing for the future development of the company.

The larger issue of EMI’s take-over of ABPC was drawing to its inevitable conclusion and Robert Clark was fighting to the last ditch to resist the financial onslaught of EMI. Such an abrasive relationship had developed that there was no possibility of Sir Philip Warter or Robert Clark staying behind to join the board of the victor if and when the Corporation were vanquished. There was an element of sadness for me in this because Robert Clark would have made a good Chairman of Thames Television, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that he and EMI were irreconcilable and it would not be easy for him to maintain smooth communication between EMI and Thames.

There followed an elaborate solution to the problem of establishing Thames as a subsidiary of EMI, consisting of the formation of a new company, Thames Television Holdings Ltd, to control EMI/ABPC’s majority stake (as partners with Rediffusion Television) in Thames Television. The four principal executives of Thames, George Cooper, Brian Tesler, Bernard Greenhead and myself, were allocated twenty per cent of the newly created voting shares in TT Holdings Ltd, EMI had the controling forty per cent, and two other independent companies mere to be offered twenty per cent each. EMI had difficulty in disposing of these shares to outside parties, because of profit uncertainties in Independent Television. They were turned down by British Lion Films but ultimately the shares were acquired by Sir Charles Forte and Charles Hunnisett.

Ail we wanted to do, at Thames, fiercely engaged as we were in building up our company, was to get on with the job and make programmes. There was relief when at last the details had been agreed and the official ITA announcement included the phrase: ‘there will be no change in the present executive management of Thames Television’.

The post Enter EMI appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

It is hard to assess what mergers do to people. After the machinations of boards of directors, merchant bankers, lawyers, financial wizards; after the battle has been lost and won, there remain the staff, the workers, the executives, and all their families, who have suffered so much worry, apprehension and, sometimes, sorrow. EMI could not have been more thoughtful and helpful in their care of the thousands of men and women who had worked so loyally for the old firm. Yet, as in any other merger, the middle-aged executives suffered most. The very qualities of devotion to a company and its bosses, often at the expense of rejecting other job offers, becomes a handicap when new, younger executives cast a cold eye upon the comfortably established men in their forties and fifties who have, perhaps, begun to take things a little too easily.

A merger certainly hurts. This one was too much for the ascetic Sir Philip Warter. Besides the feeling of inadequacy in that he had allowed his father-in-law’s business to succumb, he had the additional agony of losing his only daughter Shirley after a painful illness. When the merger became inevitable Sir Philip refused to remain on the Board and chose to retire to the West Country. He did not live for very long.

Even the sturdy, resolute Scotsman, Robert Clark, was disconsolate after the take-over, and probably felt secretly that his old master, John Maxwell, would somehow have saved the situation and held on to control. A tremendous worker, dedicated to his company in spite of disheartening experiences, Robert Clark took a year or two to recover and then began to enjoy the pleasures of getting closer to his family. Some day a sympathetic writer will have to analyse the effect of mergers – and there are hundreds of them – and the impact they have upon the people concerned.

At Thames Television our immediate assignment was to find a new and ‘independent’ Chairman.

On the EMI Board were several distinguished non-executive sectors and it seemed to us that the quest could begin there. One possibility was Lord Shawcross, a controversial and undoubtedly independent figure. When the Authority asked my opinion I said I considered he would make a prestigious Chairman of Thames. Thereupon Sir Robert Fraser said that I had better go around to Lord Shawcross and invite him to become Chairman of our Board of Directors. I had never met Lord Shawcross until I faced him across the desk of his small office in the Morgan Guaranty Trust in Lombard Street. Stern, lined, handsome, he sat like a judge before me and when he asked, unsmilingly, why I thought he should become Chairman of Thames Television, I decided to tell him the disadvantages. As a director of a commercial television company he would not be allowed to appear on ITV; for the same reason the BBC would be unlikely to ask him to appear on their television programmes; as a constant contributor to The Times letter page he would be seen to be writing more as a chairman of a television company than as a vigorous independent.

Lord Shawcross accepted the invitation, additional to his other directorships, and we began a five-year association from which I was to learn a great deal. Not an easy man to get to know, his personal swing from left to right had made him extremely critical of the political element which he was convinced would disrupt Britain. Lord Shawcross was also on very friendly terms with another cross-bencher, Aidan Crawley, Chairman of our rival, LWT, and the two Chairmen often found themselves in the same club comparing the very different performances of the two companies. At first they tried to find ways of working harmoniously together, but as London Weekend’s audiences and revenue slumped there began talks of a possible working collaboration. As the LWT situation deteriorated discussions between the companies ended, for there was doubt whether the week-end company could survive its internal and external troubles. There was indeed a point where I began to prepare for an emergency situation and plan a weekend programme service if requested by the Authority.

By this time Sir Robert Fraser had retired and Brian Young been appointed Director-General. 1970 was a difficult year to enter Independent Television and Brian Young, coming from the directorship of the Nuffield Foundation and the Headmastership of Charterhouse, soon found at the SCC meetings that he had inherited an awkward squad of prefects. He supported the principle of limited collaboration between the two London companies but he was opposed to any kind of merger or take-over. With Lord Aylestone he battled on through the firings and mass resignations of London Weekend executives, resisted the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch in his bid to popularise week-end programmes in the Australian pattern, and was relieved to support the appointment of John Freeman to stabilise the company.

Brian Young’s first experience of this turbulent industry was not confined to company survival. A Director-General has the final voice on whether or not a controversial programme should be transmitted. When his staff found themselves unable to reach agreement on, for example, the script of a play, the last stage would be a confrontation between the Director-General and the Managing Director of the company concerned. Outstanding playwrights were in short supply and Thames had been delighted to commission a play from an actor who had become increasingly successful as a dramatist, Colin Welland.

Say Goodnight to Your Grandma, was a modern North Country play about an independent young wife determined to hold on to her weak husband against a possessive mother and the pals of his bachelor days. When one of the friends, Ray, had banteringly propositioned her, Jean had flabbergasted him by suggesting they should adjourn to his car outside. As Ray retreated in embarrassment the husband asked Jean whether his friend had said anything to upset her. She replied: ‘No! Just asked if he could screw me!’ The writer and director argued that such a dramatic line was only a modern successor to Bernard Shaw’s ‘not bloody likely’ for Eliza Doolittle. The author wanted to use a more Anglo-Saxon four-letter word than the American ‘screw’ and the producer informed us that the two different versions had been recorded.

I believe it was the first such decision Brian Young had to take, and he wisely sought further opinions from the Authority. There was no question about the dramatic value of the line but the final decision on the actual verb to be used rested with the Authority. Brian Young telephoned me to say that if we used the word ‘screw’ there would be no objection and the play could go on at normal time, 9 p.m. On the other hand, if the company felt very strongly that the four-letter word was essential to the play then it could be used, but at a later hour; that was, at 10.30 p.m. following the ITN news. I settled for the normal time and the word less likely to offend viewers. The play eventually reached the West End stage unexpurgated and had a profitable run.

The post Exits and entrances appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

For years the formidable task of recording on television for posterity the history of World War II had bedazzled and yet daunted both BBC and ITV. The Corporation must have spent thousands of pounds on research, and bulky reports were piling an on executive desks. So was the cost, and therefore the BBC kept postponing a decision on such a mammoth undertaking.

At Thames, Jeremy Isaacs, the Controller of Features and Current Affairs programmes, had been nursing the possibilities of the subject for some time and had assessed the cost (including a special team researching for three years and assembling archive films) at £500,000. This proposal had the support of the Director of Programmes, Brian Tesler, and when we discussed at the Board meeting how best to deploy the uplift in our net revenue income I put forward The World at War. Inflation, higher salaries, travel, and particularly higher exchange rates to buy foreign film material soon made Isaacs’ budget out-of-date. By the time the twenty-six programmes were completed almost £1,000,000 [£12.5million] had been spent. The cost was eventually recovered because the series was transmitted in most countries throughout the world; but the importance of the series was that it was ITV’s ultimate challenge to the BBC in their domination of high quality documentary and current affairs programmes. The World at War proved that ITV was at least equal to the BBC’s highest standards, and, more salient, the ITV mass audience could be riveted to their receivers week after week by serious documentary programmes at the peak hour of nine o’clock.

My fears that the appeal of such an historic series would be largely to a middle-aged audience, for nostalgic reasons, mere disproved by research which established that the younger audience was equally fascinated. The success of the series owed much to the decision that it should be produced by a team of young people re-discovering 1939-45, with the years of strife seen through their eyes, rather than by older men remembering.

As the ITV contracts were extended, inflation forced costs to soar and advertisers to cut down their expenditure. From the peak results in 1973-4 the following years brought descending profits, reflecting the all-too-familiar switchback of ITV fortunes. By now the Government had accepted our arguments that levy should be taken on profits and not on revenue, but the swingeing two-thirds of net profits before tax was greater than the industry could bear without reducing expenditure on programmes. Once again the companies went knocking at the doors of the Treasury and the Home Office, pleading to be allowed to retain a higher proportion of their profits so that they could invest the necessary millions in important long-term projects.

Money counted in millions needs to flow through the veins of both BBC and ITV if big and bold concepts are to be brought to fruition. For Churchill’s centenary year only a wealthy company like Thames could have afforded to embark on such a spectacular drama series as Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill with Lee Remick as its star. Two years later, when profits were halved by reduced advertisement revenue, not even Thames could have afforded such a lavish programme. Again, the gamble of, for example, a 1977 Avengers-type of series would have cost £2,500,000 [£17million] for twenty-six one-hour episodes, a dangerous allocation of dwindling profits which few would contemplate.

The Independent Companies’ problem today is to find space for expansion, to employ fully the talents which have been generated to establish Britain as the standard bearer of quality television programme production. The solution lies in a second channel for ITV, promised long ago by previous Governments but still being sought against opposition by educationists, propagandists and political adversaries.

The film industry has waned, the press is shrinking in size and importance, and only the television programme industry seems capable of expansion and earning increasing overseas income. Ten years after the Labour Party had opposed the ending of BBC monopoly by the innovation of Independent Television, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, made a public statement declaring ITV to be ‘part of our social system and part of our national way of life’. A decade later the time has come to clear the for Independent Television to break out of its confines and to press forward, to become not only a national institution but a world force.

The post Settling down 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.

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.

The post Weekend world appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

TWW lost their contract to Harlech; Telefusion Yorkshire gained a foothold and half of Granada’s service area: ATV was to end their Midlands weekday/London weekend split and entrench themselves solely in the Midlands.

The most significant of the changes was that there would be no weekend contracts in either the North or Midlands, and ABC – undoubtedly the most distinctive of all ITV incumbents – had put their bid in for the weekends at London, a move they had been well-prepared for over a long period of time, and the award of which appeared to be merely a formality.

However, two events changed the course of ABC’s fate.

The David Frost-Aidan Crawley London Television Consortium (later London Weekend) was bright, intelligent, cultured, and promised much for the future, and under the ITA’s ethos that the system had to be open to newcomers, the LTC were awarded the weekend contract for the capital that had been ABC’s by right.

Secondly, Rediffusion had, for a long time, appeared to be creating a number of problems between themselves and the ITA, culminating in an interview that was disastrous for them.

The Authority then decided to suggest that a joint company to provide London with a weekday service could be devised from the resources of Rediffusion and ABC.

This was Thames Television.

New ITV contractors needed to sign up the best talent they can find, as well as devising ratings-winning programmes, so as to establish a reputation for quality.

Thames had an advantage over all the new companies, as well as many of the older ones, in that they could develop new programme strands as well as incorporate elements from the outputs of both ABC (showbusiness, drama) and Rediffusion (current affairs, children’s and schools programmes).

They also had a number of artists on contract, ensuring that they had access to creative talent, and technical expertise and experience.

Added to this, they had Teddington Studios, a riverside location that they would use to the full in years to come.

The share split in Thames – ABC 51%, Rediffusion 49% – inevitably effected a number of decisions made in the company to the point at which Thames was, effectively, ABC in disguise.

From the first day, Thames was attempting to establish a loyal audience by scheduling a brand-new magazine programme “Magpie”, guaranteeing that viewers would tune in by incorporating episodes of the “Captain Fantastic” serial into it – itself previously a feature of Rediffusion’s “Do Not Adjust Your Set”, soon to be revived by Thames.

Eamonn Andrews would now be the anchor of “Today”, from Monday-Thursday. “This Week” would continue. There were a few sitcoms, like “Never Mind the Quality, Feel The Width” that had begun in the ABC era, and “The Avengers”, “Callan” and “Public Eye” would be mainstays of Thames drama.

However, there was one disadvantage for the new company. The previous London weekday contract was for Monday-Friday, morning to closedown.

Now LWT had extra hours from Friday, 7pm to close, which meant that Thames had, at best, four evenings a week in which to build an audience and to gain vital advertising revenue.

This led to some oddities in scheduling: “Opportunity Knocks”, an ABC Saturday night talent show, was to be slotted into a 6.45 slot on Monday evenings.

Eamonn Andrews’ chat show, on which he had previously interviewed “Sunday Night People”, was scheduled for Thursday evenings.

“Just Jimmy” with the Clitheroe Kid himself had been moved from Saturday teatime, where it had been a family show, to Friday teatime, as a children’s show.

Over time, Thames planning staff worked out the best network slots for many of their programmes and out of the three mentioned, only “Opportunity Knocks” survived in its original Thames timeslot.

8pm Wednesday became the slot for variety specials and one-offs, drama was featured at 9pm, and 7pm became a time for sitcoms.

“Armchair Theatre” was moved into various places throughout the week, but never quite fitted, and never really regained its hard-won reputation: there were, however, attempts to update it, notably “Armchair Cinema”.

In June 1974, “Regan” was shown in this strand, to unanimous praise, and this film led to commissions for “The Sweeney”. “Armchair Cinema” later became “Armchair Thriller”, and was allowed to disappear from the screen forever.

One thing that should never be overlooked is that Thames, with roots in ABC and connections to EMI could make use of those relationships to the full. Thames were able to reap rewards from cinema films of “Callan”, “Sweeney!” and “Sweeney 2” and, most lucratively, “The Best of Benny Hill” – made for very little, using video-to-film transfer of the best of the early Thames series.

The best years of Thames were probably from its inception to 1979, when there was still a great deal of the ABC staffing on board and when production values were maintained at a high level.

They had signed most of the major talent, such as Morecambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper, Mike Yarwood and Kenny Everett, and had won a number of international awards.

The company was also about to make significant inroads into the US, thanks to Don Tuffnell’s sales of “The Benny Hill Show” and an entire week of programmes shown in the USA in September 1976. It might also be true to say that Thames lost their way in trying to establish themselves as world players.

What a pity that at yet another ITV franchise round, the company lost its contract to Carlton.

The legacy of Thames lives on now in both the name of an independent production company and an archive of programmes that has continued to be shown, frequently, on satellite and terrestrial television.

These programmes show, to both those who saw them first time around and to younger viewers just discovering them, that Thames had plenty of grace and style – qualities that both ABC and Rediffusion had in endless supply.

Not at all a bad thing.

The post Take me to the river appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Answer: “ITV VT operators get London weighting.”

ITV technicians were among the highest paid workers in Britain in the seventies and a whole series of overtime rates and extra payments for unsocial hours ensured that ITV technicians were handsomely rewarded for their efforts.

Rather like their comrades in the car factories and the collieries, members of the ACTT (Association of Cine and Television Technicians) were feared throughout ITV as they could strike at the drop of the hat; and any member who had to stay a minute over his shift immediately demanded overtime pay.

As Michael Grade recalled of the industry in the seventies, “All of us were demeaned by the necessity of adding bribes to high wages to get technicians to work.”

In the recent TV series recalling 50 years of ITV, Grade also recalled a story where technicians were offered cash in hand payments to finish off the recording of a show as they threatened to walk out at 10pm prompt rather than finish a little later to complete the recording of a programme.

Of course, the technicians knew that ITV in the seventies was the most popular broadcaster in Britain, the larger companies like Thames were extremely wealthy and could therefore afford to acquiesce to the union’s demands or face blank screens and lose advertising revenue (as happened in the pay strike of 1979), and held the upper hand.

After all, I would imagine the ACTT believed that if owning an ITV contractor was a licence to print money, then its members should share in the profits.

While it is probably an exaggeration to say Thames VT operators earned the same as the Shah of Iran, it was recognised throughout the industry that the technicians were very well rewarded.

However, industrial relations at Thames were never good despite the high wages and benefits enjoyed by ACTT members.

On Thames’s opening day on July 30, 1968, technicians, in common with their colleagues at other ITV contractors, staged a lightning strike, which saw a Tommy Cooper show switched off after 15 minutes and the evening’s schedule replaced by a caption and music.

For three weeks Thames was hit by a series of guerrilla strikes, which crippled the company and eventually saw an emergency national service replace Thames programmes.

The strikes, which had been called by the ACTT as the union was worried about its members’ pay and conditions under the new contractors, were resolved by offering the ACTT a seven per cent pay rise.

While an uneasy relationship developed between Thames and the ACTT, with the former treating the latter very cautiously, industrial relations began to worsen during the seventies.

A two-week strike by technicians shut down the whole of ITV in the summer of 1975, the technicians being bought off with a huge 35 per cent pay rise.

Thames itself was hit by a strike by production assistants that nearly brought down the whole of ITV during May 1977. Thirty production assistants at the Teddington studios refused to operate new video equipment during the filming of the hit series Rock Follies: the assistants demanded an extra £800 a year to operate the equipment.

Thames then announced it was sacking the technicians as they were in breach of contract for refusing to use the equipment, one of the few occasions Thames decided to get tough with the ACTT.

A Thames spokesman told the Evening Standard on May 23, “The production assistants were warned that unless they returned to normal, they will be deemed to have terminated their employment with us.”

The dispute with the ACTT soon began to badly affect the Teddington studios, where the bulk of Thames networked programmes were made. Programmes such as a five a side football tournament, children’s programmes and two popular variety shows were cancelled.

Both sides refused to back down, the ACTT stating its members should receive their £800 and Thames declaring the pay demand to be unrealistic and a breach of the government’s incomes policy. However, the strike began to cripple Thames, whose recorded output was severely disrupted, and the ACTT decided to threaten an all out strike across ITV if the production assistants were not reinstated.

When Thames lost its coverage of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee on June 8 to industrial action, and the strike threatening to spread, emergency talks began between Thames and the ACTT.

On June 10 negotiations began on ending the dispute. Thames decided not to press ahead with dismissing the production assistants and the ACTT backed down on threats to widen the dispute.

With the strike costing the station a quarter of a million pounds, and the station’s programmes being disrupted, the company offered the production assistants a final offer of £600. On June 15 the production assistants accepted the offer and returned to work.

According to the Evening Standard, Thames was desperate for the dispute to end, as the station had a massive backlog of programmes to be edited and was a big exporter of shows to America and Australia.

As the seventies wore on, industrial relations in television hit a low ebb. The replacement of film by video led the ACTT to black £2million worth of new technology, as the union feared this would lead to job losses, leading Alan Sapper of the ACTT to comment, “£2million of unused equipment lying unused? Good, that’s a victory for us.”

The BBC was also hit by a series of strikes in December 1978, which nearly led to its Christmas schedule being wiped out, and Border Television was closed down for four weeks in a dispute over new technology.

1979 saw industrial relations at Thames and ITV in general hit a new low. Following the Winter of Discontent, which saw public sector workers win pay awards of up to 20 per cent, the ACTT decided to press ITV for a similar amount. The ITV contractors refused and an overtime ban began on August 6.

At 2207, Thames technicians decided to switch off the power at Euston Road, leading to a blackout, and when the management decided to switch the power back on, the technicians walked out on strike.

The strike at Thames became a national strike on August 10, as the ACTT told its members to stage an all out strike in support of a pay rise of 15 to 20 per cent.

This became the most famous strike in television history, lasting for ten weeks and causing huge damage to ITV. The strike also marked the zenith of union power at ITV.

The IBA, seeing that the strike was dragging on indefinitely, and causing financial problems to the ITV contractors, who were losing advertising revenue due to blank screens, advised the contractors to give in to the union’s demands.

Michael Grade commented on this, “The IBA believed the public interest was best served by keeping the screen alive, so we must accommodate the unions at whatever cost to ourselves.”

The ACTT was bought off with a 22 per cent pay rise in return for concessions on using new technology and the strike ended on October 24, with Thames hosting a national ITV service that lasted for three weeks as ITV struggled to return to normal.

The long strike had also proved damaging in ratings terms, as viewers, after an initial bout of anger at losing their favourite ITV shows, became used to the BBC and seemed slow to return to ITV after the strike ended.

While this was the last time ITV nationally would be brought down by industrial action, at a regional level the ACTT proved it still was a force to be reckoned with, causing disruption at Central and Border.

Again Thames, the most affluent ITV contractor, would face problems with the union in the eighties. Thames was given the responsibility of producing ITV and Channel 4’s coverage of the 1984 Olympics.

As ITV’s coverage of the Olympics in previous years had been non-existent, as in 1976, or half hearted, as in 1980, Thames decided to spend millions on its Olympics coverage.

Unfortunately, three weeks before the games were due to start, the ACTT threatened industrial action over staffing levels and overtime rates, and Thames decided to withdraw its coverage at a cost of £5million.

This dispute was a precursor to a one-month strike by technicians at Thames over overtime rates. The station was blacked out on the August Bank Holiday, leading the ITV regions to introduce an emergency schedule (Tyne Tees put in place an old western and imports, typical Tyne Tees emergency programming) as Thames had responsibility for network programming that day.

However, Thames management decided to set up an emergency schedule and run the station themselves; while this was less than satisfactory for the viewers, at least the station was kept on the air.

Seeing that the station could be (sort of) run without them, the technicians decided to call off their strike after four weeks and returned to work.

How much did a Thames technician earn in those days? An article about the dispute in the Sunday Times, which quoted that a Thames technician’s average earnings were £24,000 a year, the equivalent of £50,000 or more today.

While very good in those days, when the average was around £9000 a year, the technicians certainly were not earning telephone number salaries, as some newspapers would have its readers believe.

As Thames was regarded as a cash cow in those days, it charged the highest advertising rates on ITV and served some of the most affluent areas of Britain, it was only fair that its staff received high salaries.

After all, the company regarded itself as being like a commercial BBC and obviously paying high wages would help it retain good staff.

However, it was certainly true that the militancy and restrictive practices of the ACTT had caused serious problems at Thames. The station had lost millions through abandoning the Olympics and strikes such as the 1979 walkout had caused huge damage to ratings and revenue.

This had not gone unnoticed by Thames management and Margaret Thatcher, who regarded television as a last bastion of trade union power.

In the latter half of the decade, Thatcherite employment laws, such as outlawing the closed shop, which had given the ACTT so much power, and the introduction of secret ballots before industrial action could be called, weakened the unions.

Also the introduction of new technology saw a reduction in the numbers of technicians required to operate it.

The ACTT itself began to lose influence and was finally humiliated in the TV-am strike in 1988, when the station ran itself without technicians for three months.

In 1989 the ACTT merged with the BBC unions, the ABS and BETA, due to falling membership and fading influence.

The last gasp of union power at Thames came in October 1991 when it was announced that the station had lost its franchise, with the loss of 1400 jobs.

The unions threatened industrial action against coverage of the Rugby Union World Cup, but the threat came to nothing as the unions realised Thames could not be saved.

While the television unions had often been at loggerheads with Thames management, the threat of industrial action in 1991 to save their company showed that, despite past disputes, the unions actually cared about Thames and wanted to save it.

Unfortunately Thames died on December 31, 1992, and was replaced by the vastly inferior Carlton, where the unions became virtually non-existent and programmes became far worse.

While it would be wrong to say Thames had an appalling industrial relations record, the station was more prone to disputes than a contractor like Grampian.

Due to Thames being the most affluent ITV contractor, and a desire for staff to remain at the top of the earnings league, the unions were quite prepared to use industrial action if they saw their position threatened.

Of course, in the pre-Thatcher era, unions were far more powerful and strikes in general were a far more favoured weapon than they are now.

The ACTT at Thames was probably no different to unions in other industries at the time, but a growing resentment by management to the union’s restrictive practices, which remained in place well into the eighties, led to its downfall.

The post Strike Out appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

But it is very difficult to talk about Thames without thinking about the great programmes they produced, and almost impossible to think of Thames without thinking of “Death On The Rock”. That documentary, produced by the “This Week” team, was about a suspected shoot to kill policy against IRA suspects, focusing on a killing of 3 IRA suspects on Gibraltar.

The documentary infuriated the government of the time; an inquiry resulted, which found in the programme’s favour.

Conspiracy theories still exist about how the government manipulated the regulator into denying Thames licences to broadcast twice in 1991. Firstly, they lost their Channel 3 licence to Carlton Communications. Secondly, they were denied the Channel 5 licence despite there being no other bidders.

However, there is no proof that “Death On The Rock” was in any way responsible for either situation.

Thames were great documentary producers, but they did far more. “In Loving Memory”, the 1969 play that was later developed into a period sitcom by YTV starring Thora Hird and set in an undertakers, is forever in my childhood memories as a classic Thames comedy.

It was just one in a long stream of successful comedies from Thames. The Carry On team produced a ton of specials at Teddington; then there was “Father, Dear Father”, “The Benny Hill Show”, “Bless This House”, “Man About The House” and its two spin- offs, “George and Mildred” and “Robin’s Nest”, “Never The Twain”, “Fresh Fields” and many more.

They had a ton of great comedies and great comedy talents too, such as Mike and Bernie Winters, Leslie Crowther, Benny Hill, Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett, and of course, as the ident into their programme went, “Here they are now, Morecambe and Wise.”

Thames Television, and their subsidiary company Euston Films, produced a ton of dramas that were and indeed still are among ITV’s best ever drama productions.

“Van Der Valk”, “The Sweeney”, “Minder”, “Widows”, “Quatermass”, “Reilly: Ace Of Spies”, “Jack The Ripper”, “Hannay”, “Rumpole Of The Bailey”, and many others were amongst the staple diet of ITV prime time for over 20 years.

Thames still has a prime time drama on ITV today, despite not having an ITV franchise. “The Bill” began in 1984, and 21 years on, the programme continues to garner good ratings in an even more competitive market than the one it was born into.

Thames also produced an incredible amount of children’s programming, both itself and through animation studio Cosgrove Hall. “Jamie and The Magic Torch”, “Chorlton and the Wheelies”, “Danger Mouse”, “Cockleshell Bay”, “Count Duckula”, “The Wind In The Willows”, “The Tomorrow People”, “Button Moon” and many more were all part of growing up for kids in the 70s and 80s, but none more so than “Rainbow”.

For over 20 years, Geoffrey, Bungle, Zippy and George played with and entertained the nation’s kids. Few programmes of any kind from any broadcaster can match that kind of longevity, and even fewer kids programmes can even come close.

Thames Television were not specialists, they could produce almost anything, and generally make a success out if it.

Sure they had their failures, just like anybody else. Everybody who loves The Goon Show will say that the TV version, “The Telegoons”, was not a patch on the radio shows, but how many people remember the other TV version, produced by Thames in 1968, called, “The Goon Show”? And who can forget the flop that was “Capital City”, about an investment bank. The show generated much controversy when one of the female characters kissed another woman on screen, then promptly disappeared.

But for every Capital City, there was a ton of successes, such as “The Bill”, “Give Us A Clue”, “Whose Baby?” and many more, across all genres.

Thames used to say that they had “A Talent For Television”. Given the fact that 13 years after losing the Channel 3 London franchise, they are still producing successful shows for ITV1, Channel 5 and anybody else who wants them to, I think we can truly agree with that statement.

The post London’s television appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Out of all of the ITV franchises that have existed, the names of Thames and Granada have proved to be the most enduring throughout the history of ITV, despite Thames only existing from 1968 onwards.

Whilst Granada still hangs on to its ITV franchise in the North West of England as well as acquiring all the other English ITV franchises (plus Wales) through a succession of takeovers and mergers, the reputation of Thames Television as an ITV franchise seems to have survived both the test of time and the arguably diminished status of its modern incarnation, Talkback Thames.

It is strongly arguable that given hindsight it was probably a good thing that Thames lost its franchise when it did, meaning that its reputation for good quality programming lived on intact without having to suffer the fate of a forced takeover/sell off or decline through neglect as a result of a lack of regulation. Thames was a product of a ‘shotgun marriage’ between the UK ABC and Rediffusion’s television production divisions, with their respective parent companies remaining separate from the newly created entity.

In theory this would create the ‘best of both worlds’ for the London weekday franchise, though ABC being the ‘dominant’ partner with a 51% share of Thames (compared with 49% for Rediffusion) got to make all the most important decisions during the early days of Thames’ operations, and inevitably picked the best bits from the Rediffusion division whilst discarding the rest as unwanted leftovers.

This created a fair deal of resentment amongst some staff and seemed rather harsh at the time, but the end result was a fearsomely talented powerhouse of an ITV franchise that continued the good work that ABC (and Rediffusion) had started and went on to perhaps eclipse both of these franchises in terms of public recognition. At the time of the 1968 franchise changes, the loss of ABC in particular (as well as Rediffusion) from the ITV network was probably almost as traumatic as the loss of Thames from the network in 1993, but whilst Carlton had an unproven track record, Thames by contrast at least had a previous track record as ABC and Rediffusion, although of course the loss of Rediffusion was to be compensated for in part by the introduction of Yorkshire Television.

Thames launched with a mixture of programming inherited from its ABC predecessor plus some new ideas of its own. Thames may have innovated but it wasn’t afraid to copy either, and this was especially apparent in the field of children’s programming: Once Upon A Time (produced in 1968) was a copy of the BBC’s Jackanory, and the famous Magpie series was a blatant copy of Blue Peter (the title alone illustrates the intent!) except of course it was ‘trendier’. Blue Peter was (wrongly) perceived by some as being solely for “middle-class mother’s boys” whilst Magpie was its hipper and socially aware equivalent. Of course, Blue Peter had the last laugh in terms of its longevity and enduring popularity.

Before the age of computer graphics, television producers had to be creative in order to produce the type of special effects that are sometimes required for a particular programme, therefore a much greater technical knowledge of the workings of television was required in order to produce the effects in the first place, and their production was often also labour-intensive.

Indeed Thames almost ‘cornered the market’ in terms of the use of special effects at one point, though other ITV franchises such as Granada had used chromakey effects (superimposing one image upon another one) plus ATV (and others) used similar effects in productions such as Sapphire and Steel.

Notable Thames productions that were produced during the 1970s and 80s featuring an extensive use of special effects included The Kenny Everett Video Show and The Benny Hill Show, as well as one-off special productions such as Quincy’s Quest. Thames was in many respects the cosmopolitan ‘city-dweller’ both in terms of its programming and its presentation, with the long-running and popular London skyline ident in particular illustrating the values that Thames stood for.

This however might have made it slightly unpopular with viewers who lived on the fringes of the coverage area; in particular the parts of Kent that were served by the Bluebell Hill UHF transmitter up to 1982 when it was belatedly reallocated to the new enhanced regional service supplied by newcomer TVS. (Southern’s VHF coverage from the Dover transmitter had also included the Bluebell Hill UHF coverage area.)

And of course there were more than a few ITV viewers who wished that they could have had Thames as their local ITV contractor instead of the one that they were ‘lumbered’ with, which was especially the case if you lived in the city and had no interest in yachting or farming (which seemed to be Southern Television’s speciality), though it’s also arguable that there was a touch of “the grass is greener the other side of the fence” about this rationale.

Going back to Southern, its general on-screen presentation was actually not bad at all, and it’s arguable that viewers of Southern Television weren’t missing that much since all the worthwhile Thames programming ended up being networked anyway. Southern’s successor, TVS, was an interesting case in itself since TVS decided that it wanted to be taken seriously as a producer of networked programmes, and for a brief period during the late 1980s onward it more or less met its objectives with programmes such as Catchphrase and the Brian Conley Show being shown peak time on the ITV network.

This period however coincided with perhaps one of the weakest points in the history of Thames (which was primarily caused by financial turmoil) and there was perhaps a degree of interaction between the two events that TVS took advantage of for its own gain, though of course TVS was to ultimately suffer the same fate as Thames (if for perhaps more understandable reasons).

But of course with Thames Television there was an unmistakable ‘glamour’ factor about its programmes, even though Thames was more than capable of providing gritty and down-to-earth offerings if the case demanded it; don’t forget that it was the controversial Death On The Rock that may have been partly responsible for Thames’ demise even if it wasn’t the sole reason for this happening.

The quality of Thames’ output went hand in hand with the showbiz glamour that London as a capital city usually signified, and it is arguable that this may have given Thames a slight edge over Granada when it came to overseas sales; indeed the Thames name was chosen with overseas markets in mind, since the old ABC name could easily be confused with both the unrelated US ABC network and the Australian ABC. (ABC was spelt out as “Associated British Corporation” at the end of The Avengers, for example, since that series was sold abroad.)

Ultimately it was only the BBC that could ever directly take on Thames in the comedy and light entertainment departments, and it’s also arguable that even ATV and Granada couldn’t entirely match the depth and breadth of Thames’ entire output throughout its existence; Granada may have been strong in some areas but its light entertainment output never reached the heights of the Morecambe and Wise Show and ATV’s current affairs programming was weaker by comparison.

Maybe if LWT also had another franchise it could have become a closer equivalent to Thames, though of course this is in the realms of speculation, but a hint as to this potential was obtained when TVS increased its networked programming towards the end of its franchise period courtesy of a deal with LWT. And it may be easy to scoff at some of the sitcoms that Thames came up with – two that spring to mind include Robin’s Nest and George and Mildred – but they were very well produced and probably better than anything that the ITV network has produced in terms of sitcoms since 1990.

By way of comparison, the only ITV sitcom to have even been considered to be of any worth during the last fifteen years is probably Holding the Baby (starring Nick Hancock and later on Hugh Bonneville).

Unfortunately, all good things inevitably come to an end, and the demise of Thames at the start of 1993 seemed to leave a large hole in the epicentre of the ITV network that Carlton had no hope of filling even with the best of intentions; there was just too much in the way of established production heritage embedded within Thames as a broadcaster, and Carlton would have had to devoted an insane quantity of resources in both money and manpower in order to even come close to matching this.

On top of this there seemed to be a degree of apathy in Carlton’s networked output that was present for the first five or so years that didn’t help either. So is it possible to legitimately claim that Thames Television was the best ITV franchise in the history of the universe? The answer to that highly contentious question is probably “Yes”; other ITV franchises may have survived longer (Granada) or produced long running light entertainment spectaculars (ATV) but ATV’s serious output didn’t match that of Thames or Granada – ATV never produced anything current affairs-related on a regular basis that was a match for This Week or World in Action.

And Granada may have been reasonably strong in light entertainment but it never produced anything of the calibre of The Morecambe and Wise Show. Indeed the only genre that Thames didn’t quite succeed in making its own was that of the soap opera; Granada had Coronation Street, Yorkshire had Emmerdale Farm and ATV produced Crossroads, although ironically The Bill was effectively transformed into a soap years after Thames lost its franchise.

And others may have arguably matched Thames in the quality of presentation, but often fell down in other areas such as programme quality; Thames may have made some ‘bad’ programming from time to time but even the mediocre was often more watchable than the majority of today’s schedule filler material.

We will probably never see another UK commercial TV company that will ever be as widely respected or as competent as Thames Television was, and UK television as a whole has become poorer as a result after the demise of Thames; the critics’ reports of early Carlton programming really hammered home the message about the resulting loss of quality, and despite the resilience of the ITV network as a whole, this and the subsequent decline in standards caused by a weakening regulatory framework meant the beginning of the end for quality television which just happens to be funded by commercials, as opposed to just being a slave to advertisers and shareholders’ demands.

The post A Thames Special appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

By the 1980s, both Thorn EMI (as it had become) and BET had developed business strategies that made redundant their stakes in Thames. This was to prove very detrimental to the broadcaster.

In the meantime, the government of Margaret Thatcher was pressing ahead with its efforts to shake-up industry. It had sold off many of the assets that the Conservatives had inherited in 1979, and introduced sweeping industrial relations legislation to end the closed shop, secondary picketing and wild-cat strikes; tactics that in the previous decade the unions had employed so effectively and (to the government) devastatingly.

By the mid-1980s, Mrs Thatcher had turned her attention to broadcasting. One by one, the broadcasters started to use the new weapons at their disposal to reign in the unions. Bruce Gyngell locked out the TV-am unions when they went on strike, keeping the station on the air with a diet of cartoons and American imports. Ulster Television dismissed a union shop steward when he claimed too much time off sick in order to run his pub.

Thames faced strikes of its own. Technological advances meant, in some cases, that fewer people were needed to do the same job, which threatened redundancies.

However, it should also be noted that government income policies (read: wage freezes) in the 1970s severely restricted the opportunities for workers to increase their income.

In 1984 the unions walked out in protest over how many staff were to run the late night service, and their rates of pay, then again over the introduction of new technology for the news crews.

Thames responded by getting its own management to run the station. At first confined to films and repeats, the management service it put out was almost as successful as the normal service.

The company’s directors doubled as newsreaders, without autocue, although much of their material could well have been lifted straight from the Evening Standard.

From this point on, the successful management service would always be the nuclear option to be deployed against the unions. Only two companies, Thames and Ulster, needed to rely on it. In Belfast, its success sapped morale among strikers, who returned to work after two weeks.

At about this time, Thames’ shareholders were looking for a potential buyer for the company. They eventually signed a deal agreeing the sale of Thames, subject to the approval of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).

This approval was required, because the Authority had the power effectively to veto changes of ownership of ITV broadcasters. In extremis, if a company was sold in the face of the Authority’s objections, it could terminate and re-advertise a contract mid-term.

In the event, the Authority exercised its powers of veto, on the grounds that it would not be in the interests of Thames Television or the viewing public for the sale to go ahead.

The potential buyer said afterwards that his company should have gone ahead with the deal and risk disenfranchisement. The newly reconstituted Thames would have applied and probably won its franchise back. In the event, ownership remained with Thorn EMI and BET.

And the potential buyer? His name was Michael Green, chairman of Carlton Communications.

He tried again in 1989, when the rules on ownership had changed, but this time underbid. Instead, BET sold its shares to Thorn EMI, leaving the way open for Carlton to bid against Thames two years later.

Incidentally, BET selling up marked the end of an era, because it was through BET that Thames could trace a link, through Rediffusion, back to the earliest days of ITV in London.

In 1986, a committee headed by Lord Peacock delivered its report. Asked to recommend options for public policy on broadcasting, its main recommendation was that the BBC be funded in part by advertising.

It added, almost as an afterthought, that the ITV franchises, when next up for renewal, be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The Government’s 1990 White Paper on the future of broadcasting embraced this suggestion, which was one of the key proposals in what became the Broadcasting Act 1990. Interested parties would submit bids for each of the regional independent television franchises, and in each region the highest bidder would win.

The Act also set up the Independent Television Commission (ITC), which would take over responsibility from the IBA for awarding contracts effective from 1993 when the existing ones expired, and regulating the broadcasters.

The simple highest-bidder wheeze was widely believed to be the brainchild of the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. His view was that it didn’t matter a row of beans what was on the telly; the most important thing was to maximize Treasury revenue. And then, in October 1989, Mr Lawson resigned.

It was left to David Mellor, who took over responsibility for the Bill, to sort out which parts were to stay and which would go.

The competitive tendering provision was endorsed by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, herself and was unmoveable. Now, though, it was to be augmented with a quality threshold provision.

Applicants had to submit their detailed proposals. Those whose programme proposals did not came up to scratch, or whose business plans were unrealistic, would fail. There was also an “exceptional circumstances” clause, giving the ITC discretion to choose a lower bidder.

Thames’s response to what was at this stage still the Broadcasting Bill (it did not receive Royal Assent until some months later) was that it did not guarantee the company a licence.

Its Annual Report took some – perhaps too much – comfort in the fact that its track record could be taken into account, if the proposals of rival bidders were way short of the mark.

Too much, because the ITC had no specific powers to take into account an established broadcaster’s track record vis-à-vis paper promises.

When the bids were submitted, Thames had two rivals. A consortium backed by David Frost, called CPV-TV, failed the quality hurdle, so it came to a straight contest between the remaining two.

Carlton’s bid was £43m compared to Thames’ bid of £33m, so Carlton won the licence to broadcast to London from 1993 onwards.

For many, this marked the point at which ITV ceased to be a broadcaster of quality, popular programmes.

Thames steadily ran down its operations and staff, winding up its broadcast arm and transforming itself into an independent production company. It bowed out in familiar fashion, with a valedictory programme showcasing its achievements over the years.

Then a final speech from its Chief Executive, Richard Dunn, the news, Big Ben, and a happy new year from Carlton, “Television for London” as it styled itself.

And what became of Thames? It continued to make The Bill and other programmes for ITV, as well as the BBC and other broadcasters. It was eventually sold to the publishing company Pearson, and at the time of writing (2005) is part of the Fremantle Media group, owned by RTL.

So why should such a fine broadcaster, the lynchpin of the ITV network, be summarily dismissed? There are a number of possible reasons; conspiracy theories abound. A thousand straws in the wind that may or may not make up a bale of hay.

In 1988 British forces stationed in Gibraltar shot dead three people they suspected of being Irish terrorists. The IRA later confirmed that they had been a unit on active service.

In a subsequent statement to the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, said that the security forces believed that their movements posed an imminent danger, and had opened fire partly because they believed, wrongly, that the unit was about to detonate a bomb.

The investigation broadcast by Thames caused uproar.

A “This Week” special, “Death on the Rock” upset the government of Margaret Thatcher, which put the IBA under pressure to pull the broadcast, the official reason being given was that it would prejudice the official inquiry yet to take place. Any unofficial reasons can only be a matter for conjecture.

“Death on the Rock” is often cited as the reason that Thames was not re-enfranchised by the ITC in 1991 as the ITV London broadcaster.

ITV’s official history takes pains to demonstrate that the ITC’s evaluation of the competing bids was not open to such influence, even subliminally.

However, it admits that “a number of senior figures in the industry at the time do still believe [that] The Rock incident must have had some effect on the Thames decision.”

While the ITC could say, correctly, that it was free from political interference in exercising its powers under the Broadcasting Act 1990, it is undeniable that the thinking that shaped the act itself was far from free from such influence.

It is possible that Death on the Rock caused the Government to shape the legislation so as to be disadvantageous to Thames, and the by-now discredited (from the Government’s point of view) IBA.

Another factor that weighed against Thames was its ownership. At the time when the applications were being drawn up, Thames’s controlling shareholder was Thorn EMI, BET having by this time sold out.

And Thorn EMI wanted out. It was not going to throw money at the London licence that it would not get back from a future buyer. Nor was it prepared to pay through the nose for staff redundancies.

It was not going to allow the company ruthlessly to cut costs, as, say, LWT did, to free up more money for the bid, if the price to Thorn EMI was a net loss once it had disposed of the company.

Thames had to consider how much the London licence was worth. The Board settled on the figure of £30m in real terms.

Would Carlton have done any better with Thames? If it had succeeded in buying the company in 1985, would it have managed to restructure Thames, making it leaner and fitter for the bid? Also, would a Carlton-Thames board have had deeper pockets? One thing is certain: if everything else stayed the same, Thames would have won in 1991 because Carlton, as its owner, would not have been bidding against it.

However, everything else would not have stayed the same, so such speculation must remain nothing more than an interesting academic exercise.

And would the shape of ITV have been much different in any case? By 1993, the old system of scheduling, with majors and minors, was no more. A central scheduler decided what programmes were to be shown.

This change meant that the old Big Five (Thames, LWT, Central, Yorkshire and Granada) could no longer dominate the schedules with their offerings. Now, a minnow like newcomer Westcountry, or an independent like Thames or Mentorn, had as much chance of getting a good idea on screen as an established player like Granada or LWT.

In the event, Carlton’s tenure of the London licence got off to a shaky start. It commissioned a lot of experimental stuff from independent production companies, and got slated several times by the ITC.

The process of consolidation that was then underway, though, saw Carlton and Granada take control of all of ITV in England and Wales, before merging to form ITV plc.

Again, it can only be a matter of speculation whether the standard of ITV now would be different had Thames, under whatever ownership, remained within the ITV system instead of being replaced by Carlton.

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

I was growing more interested in the world around me, watching TV news and reading the papers. I had been aware for some time that big changes were afoot within Independent Television. I knew that in Wales and the West for example, Harlech Television was the new incumbent, with glamorous stars like Richard Burton, Geraint Evans, Stanley Baker and Wynford Vaughn-Thomas on board, as part of the reshuffle of ITV companies announced the year before.

I had become particularly interested in television presentation and I switched on each day to see the ITA caption and hear the inspiring music leading the late afternoon start of Rediffusion.

I had enjoyed many of its youth programmes like ‘Five O’clock Club’, ‘Tuesday Rendezvous’, and ‘Ready Steady Go’, but new arrival Thames was promising programmes “specially for Londoners” and I became very excited about it all. I had no idea then that Thames came about when the ITA forced ITV stalwarts ABC and Rediffusion to jointly create a new company for the weekday franchise.

For the ‘Friday evening to Sunday’ franchise, a new company called London Weekend replaced the former Saturday-Sunday ATV operation. I knew that David Frost, who had presented several series on Rediffusion, was to be a key figure in the new weekend set up.

Rediffusion had not given a high priority to regional news. Their nightly show ‘Three After Six’ though only shown locally, concerned itself rather more with matters of national interest. The ITA was unhappy with this.

Thames however were promising magazine shows and feature specials. They also planned more late night social affairs programmes, continuing a long standing Rediffusion tradition.

So it was with a great fanfare that Thames came on air that Tuesday afternoon with an opening lunch from the Mansion House where the Lord Mayor was welcoming “London’s new Television Service”. This was perhaps rather a fraudulent description as it was really a fresh contractor newly providing an existing service, but the press office allowed itself some licence on the matter!

The public banquet was attended by Councillors, Aldermen, leading city figures and journalists, ITA board members, Directors of the Rediffusion company, the Associated-British Picture Corporation, the new Thames executives, the Postmaster General and Post Office board. It is a measure of the perceived public service role of Independent Television in those days that the bill for the whole celebration was met without question by the ratepayers of the City! “A new television service for London” was assumed then to have major significance for the life of the whole nation.

The banquet was televised live, with recorded highlights repeated at 11pm. Clips were included on the National News for viewers in the other regions (who had not carried the live broadcast). This indicated a degree of viewer interest that would be unthinkable today. There was even a live commentary by Andrew Gardiner who described the scene, interviewed the dignitaries between courses and presumably gave commentary on the guests eating!

After the Lord Mayor’s dinner there was horse racing from Redcar networked from Tyne Tees Television but this was affected by a technicians’ industrial dispute for some of the programme. This was a precursor to a major strike that was to take ITV off air later in the week.

Thames had inherited two main programme production bases. The former ABC studios at Teddington Lock in Middlesex, was to be used for drama, light entertainment and children’s shows. Television House in Kingsway, the principle London ITV facility remained in Rediffusion’s company ownership but was provided for Thames’ use as part of Rediffusion’s dowry to the new company. The Rediffusion signwork on the building itself remained in position for many more years. ITN and some of the TV Times offices were also housed in this complex.

Television House concentrated on live feature and topical programmes such as the new daily ‘Today’ magazine with Eamonn Andrews and ‘This Week’, the networked political magazine. Current Affairs and Schools programme departments continued to be based here, the staff largely unchanged from the Rediffusion payroll.

New central London studios were being built with the approach of colour television in mind and gradually the various departments would move to the new purpose built studios on the Euston Road in NW1. The new facility was to be called “Thames Television House” and was due to open by 1970.

The company maintained an outside broadcast base at Hanwell in Middlesex, inherited from ABC Television, garaging the fleet of mobile broadcasting vans for sporting or other events, such as regularly covered Theatre Awards and Royal Film and Theatre Performances. It was the production base for Thames’s motoring programme ‘Drive In’. Steve Minchin, Bob Service and Grahame Turner ran a well-remembered and efficient Outside Broadcast Operation, which was regarded, from ABC days as amongst the best in the network.

‘Today’ was presented every weekday from Rediffusion’s Television House in Kingsway and passers-by could stand and peer through the ground floor pavement window of the studio as Eamonn Andrews and the team put out the show. The crowd outside the window were often seen on the show in the lighter summer months when cameras panned in the direction of the street.

The ITA had long thought Rediffusion’s local programming too national in scope, seemingly having little regard to what was going on in London itself. Thames opted to better this record with a range of programme improvements for the metropolis.

From the former ABC Northern and Midland weekend operation they imported a team of highly polished continuity announcers linking programmes “in-vision” with a lighter and wittier touch than Rediffusion had permitted.

Mainstays of the former ABC team, Philip Elsmore, David Hamilton, Sheila Kennedy and John Benson spent the Autumn of 1968 bedding down the new Thames image with considerable success, and using the long standing ABC flair for corporate identity to stamp the new company on London viewers minds. Tom Edwards and Peter Marshall later joined the team.

Thames’s first networked programme for children and successor to Rediffusion’s ‘Five O’clock Club’ was ‘Magpie’, a racier version of BBC’s ‘Blue Peter’. Presented by Susan Stranks, Tony Bastable and Canadian ex pirate radio deejay Pete Brady, it was to revolutionise children’s magazine programming. Gone were the mildly condescending middle class uncle and aunt figures and in came groovy young presenters who did not patronise.

Other shows that first night included Cooper King Size with Tommy Cooper who proved to be a huge star for Thames over the years, his contract inherited from ABC, though part of his first networked Thames show was also lost to industrial action.

Traditionally around the ITV network (though never on Granada in the North) it fell to an ageing cleric in a dog collar to present a mildly religious “Epilogue” programme before transmission ceased each night around twelve. Thames chose to pursue and develop Rediffusion’s long standing interest in social affairs content and chose to develop Rediffusion’s existing series ‘The Last Programme’ to a rather more ‘activist’ social affairs agenda.

Presented by regulars Llew Gardener, Joan Shenton and Ivor Mills , the show ran across the week at closedown and was curiously the only Thames programme shown on London Weekend to give it seven day continuity.

Three producers each took a week at a time on the show. Jon Woods, Mavis Airey and Anthony Stancombe subsequently forged notable careers in “issues” television. ABC stalwart Margery Baker produced some editions including a prize-winning series on the Russian Orthodox Church and its icons, arts and musical specials, a special performance of Bach’s St Nicholas Cantata and a presentation of The London Contemporary Dance Company in ‘Kontakion’. It is unimaginable that these programmes would be seen on ITV today.

For almost two more years Thames used Rediffusion’s Television House in Kingsway for its schools, religious, adult education and current affairs departments.

From 1970 Thames Television House in Euston was the company’s new headquarters and within that office and studio complex the sales teams planned and rehearsed their presentations to London businessmen and potential advertisers.

Inherited from ABC, this sales group was long regarded as one of the most successful in the industry and quickly established Thames as the most profitable of the major new ITV contracts. This was as much due to inspired hard work as any marketing secrets. The ITA had expected ATV’s new seven day contract in the Midlands to be the most lucrative of the major regions but the ex ABC salesmen at Thames proved the Authority wrong.

Head of Commercial Sales was the late Paul Cheffins, one of the most respected figures in the industry. He worked closely with Muir Sutherland the Programme Coordinator at Thames Television International, selling Thames programmes worldwide.

The last departments to transfer to Thames Television House in 1971 were Current Affairs and Schools Television. The schools department under Edwin Whitely continued the pioneering work established by Rediffusion’s Enid Love who took up the newly created post of Head of Education at Yorkshire Television.

Thames presented many schools programmes at both junior and senior levels, including ‘Seeing and Doing’, ‘Finding Out’, ‘The World Around Us’, ‘Viewpoint’, and ‘King Lear’, in a ‘Shakespeare for Schools’ initiative. Thames full time education officer, Fernau Hall, developed direct relationships with schools in the London area and appointed Community Education Officers, fulfilling a long standing Rediffusion ambition.

Thames screened a wide range of adult education programmes, including the visually stunning ‘Treasures of the British Museum’. The Educational series ‘A Place in the Country’ and ‘Water Wise’ were successful enough to be repeated for mainstream viewers.

As part of Thames’s commitment to ‘social action television’ the company set up a programme called ‘Help’, highlighting various social problems of the day and continuing a tradition started by the former North and Midland weekend contractor ABC, in their “ABC at Large” series of the mid sixties.

These new Thames programmes often appealed for volunteers to assist in social projects of various kinds. Presented by Joan Shenton and Viv Taylor-Gee, short spots were backed with leaflets and booklets that could be written or phoned for and viewers with specific problems were referred to appropriate agencies for support. With the advent of independent production companies Shenton later opted to form her own medical and social based television company, Meditel.

‘Help’ covered many topics from adoption to birth control, drugs and the skills needed for looking after homeless teenagers. Advice programmes on taxation, home finance and debt made in association with London Citizens Advice Bureau were particularly popular.

As London’s own magazine programme, ‘Today’ went from strength to strength. In the summer of 1976 my own youth group had featured in the London Evening News and thus we were invited to appear live on the ‘Today’ show that evening. Sandra Harris met us in reception and we were ushered into the studio without any time for rehearsal and found ourselves live on air. For me it was a wonderful experience to see the inner workings of Thames at first hand, something I was privileged to do on more than one occasion.

‘Today’ hit the national news on 1st December 1976, when use of the then dreaded “F” word live on television, shocked the region during a now famous altercation between programme presenter Bill Grundy, and the alternative punk band The Sex Pistols, led by Johnny Rotten. The incident inadvertently promoted the emerging punk phenomenon, but truncated Grundy’s long ITV career.

Thames had a first-rate documentary department, inherited wholesale from Rediffusion, which continued to supply ITV with award winning material. One memorable example was ‘Beauty, Bonnie, Daisy, Violet, Grace and Geoffrey Morton’. Directed by Frank Cvitanovich and produced by Jolyon Wimhurst, Yorkshireman Morton was shown farming 40 acres using his eponymous shire horses to deploy old fashioned farming methods long since generally abandoned. In 1974 Thames collected the British Academy (BAFTA) award for Best Documentary.

Jeremy Isaacs, formerly of Rediffusion, long standing producer of This Week, after many years at the helm was asked to take charge of another mammoth project which brought Thames more awards and kudos than anything else in its 25 years as an ITV contractor, the 26 part history series The World At War. So much material was amassed that the video sold in shops later had 32 episodes – more than had been transmitted originally!

From late 1972 the long-standing Post Office broadcasting hours restrictions were relaxed by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. ITV and later the BBC developed afternoon programmes and extended children’s programmes to Saturday mornings for the first time. ITV’s new weekday afternoon schedule had a lunchtime bulletin from ITN at 1240 (which the BBC had been doing at 1.25 for over 15 years) and a new breed of rather cheap and cheerful daytime programming made its debut. Schools programmes were newly restricted to mornings only and general programming now began at noon.

Thames paid much attention to new look programmes for housewives, still then a clearly designated group within society. By today’s standards, male unemployment was low during the early seventies and so daytime strands could be specifically targeted at women and the retired.

One innovation featured Michael and Mary Parkinson in ‘Tea-Break’. The programme was an unusual mix of features and entertainment and was later relaunched as ‘Afternoon Plus’ with Mavis Nicholson and Elaine Grand. These series launched the television careers of a range of new presenters like Mary Berry, Anna Raeburn and Jill Tweedie. The shows were produced by Catherine Freeman and Mary McAnnally.

Thames presented a range of current affairs and specials, most notably continuing Rediffusion’s long standing ‘This Week’, which ran side by side with Granada’s equally famous ‘World in Action’. ‘TV Eye’ was a brief revamp of ‘This Week’. One edition, ‘Death on the Rock’, produced by Roger Bolton, caused a major row with the Conservative government and is widely alleged to bear part of the blame for Thames losing its ITV contract to Carlton in 1992.

Feature programmes included the long running ‘Wish You Were Here’, with Judith Chalmers and ‘This Is Your Life’ presented by Eamonn Andrews and later Michael Aspel.

Thames proved that it was able to respond to unexpected events with the death of Elvis Presley in Memphis on 16th August 1977. At short notice ITV cleared its evening schedules and Thames’ ‘This Is You Life’ team mounted a live tribute show at 7pm the same day.

By the early eighties, Thames daily regional magazine had become more news orientated, and was renamed Thames News. Regional news bulletins were provided for the London Weekend company to use.

In 1986 after an LWT ‘London Programme’ special about the drug problem in South London, I organised a public conference in my then role as community worker, to discuss the issue. Interest escalated and Thames asked to cover the event live. Reporter Paul Greene presented the coverage. That night Robin Houston relayed the decisions from the conference on the Thames ‘Late News’.

In the single most unhappy event in the company history of ITV, the public was genuinely shocked when Thames lost its London franchise to Carlton at the end of 1992. This was a result of a new ‘sealed bids’ franchise auction system, inspired by the growing free market orientation of the government. This may have been a suitable paradigm for the sale of washing powder but had detrimental consequences for the unique mixture of commercial and public service broadcasting that ITV represented.

This was the end of the line for Thames as an ITV programme contractor but subsequently it did plenty more production work as an independent, continuing to supply ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘The Bill’ to ITV, ‘This Is You Life’ to the BBC, and the ‘Family Affairs’ soap to the last ‘new’ terrestrial channel, Five.

Thames no longer needed the Euston Road premises and focused on Teddington. In the mid 90’s Thames Television House was partly demolished to make way for a new public sector building project. Only the centre ground floor facade of Thames’ former reception area survived and was incorporated into the new building. The revolving doors that once admitted so many stars to the old reception area, now admit only civil servants to their new offices.

The building that for 25 years played a key part in making Thames’ skyline logo a herald of quality network programmes from London is now just a memory. One thing that will not be forgotten however is that Thames, as it once proudly told us, truly had a talent for television.

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