I’ve just located a copy in France. Images of the Thames Till I end my song. Thames Television 1974 Type of production: Buying broadcasting rights.

Sarah Hursey

How did Thames catch up with the missed Corrie on Bank Holiday Monday (which rated atrociously nationally anyway) or did it just not get shown?

Very sorry its taken eight months to reply Julie Stevens I remember but not on the Avengers. I don’t remember Honor Blackman either but Channel 4 showed some pre Emma Peel episodes some years ago Blackman and McNee made a hideous record called Kinky Boots which both parties probably wished forgotten!

Are you counting Julie Stevens as an 60’s Avengers sidekick, as she is still going in her mid 80’s?
(Her daughter, who works in Midlands local radio, flagged it on Twitter last year!)

I think two or more regions COULD substitute with the same episode of the same programme (this definitely happened during the brief Granada outage of 1983) but each region would have to play out their own copy locally – Anglia couldn’t just hook up to Central, they’d have their own tape in Norwich.

How did Emmerdale Farm catch up, or like Corrie and Crossroads was it simply a case of going 4 nights a week?

Typo corrected, with thanks!

A very interesting and comprehensive article! An additional point re scheduling : the episodes of Sons and Daughters that went ahead as scheduled on some weekday afternoons were due to have been part-networked to Anglia and Tyne Tees. The first three of the episodes were replaced with alternative programming in the other regions, but they must have sourced the tapes from elsewhere and played out three episodes in the scheduled slots the following week. This left Anglia and TTT three episodes behind Thames for a while, until Thames rested the series in late December to allow them to catch up with the capital. I’m not sure if Anglia were allowed to feed the show to TTT, or vice versa, under the terms of the agreement at the time. Similarly, it seems Channel were given special dispensation to take TSW’s replacement programming.

Apologies for the delay in replying.

So after it’s first run on the network, it basically had the same status as the ITC stuff!

I guess Minder had the same status eventually.

Intrigued to know if the 2 filmed series of ‘Special Branch’ ever got repeated nationally or locally on ITV since they were originally shown.

(Obviously these days with Thames material here there & everywhere, it doesn’t really matter now!)

The Sweeney was made by Euston Films, so after its initial network run from Thames, it was sold outside of the ITV networking system to individual ITV stations for use as they saw fit. That being the case, it wasn’t being run off by Thames to the network (each company had their own copy) so wasn’t affected by the ACTT at the other stations refusing to handle Thames network material.

The first parts of Crossroads and Peyton Place look very short – 5 to 7 minutes before the middle break.

Only three trailers that I can see listed – for Cinema, News at 10 and This Week – although it’s possible another one was part of the extended ‘Promo/Intro’ billed for 19.11.43. Of course, anything after 7 the next day would have been under the London Weekend banner, so opportunities to throw forward were limited.

Curious to see the anthem at the end of the day – when did Thames drop it?

Also, the point about the rest of the network seeing the Thames clock is surprising, I’m fairly sure their MCR would have sent ITN to the network cleanly. The only time they would have sent a dirty feed is when the THS announcer was doing a plug for a “book which accompanies this series” or introducing a PPB.

I particularly like the description of the ‘clock spot’, something I hadnt given much thought to before.

Now, who IS the mystery member of the Transdiffusion crew studying TV Times at the announcer’s desk? (My hair was that long too in 1970).