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.

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.

Here is Thames, a vigorous young company, producing programmes which continue to win worldwide acclaim, able to carry proudly back to Britain for a second year the most coveted award in the whole of international broadcasting. Here is Thames earning £3m annually in foreign currency for Britain, by exporting its programmes to more than a hundred countries overseas. Yet simultaneously and paradoxically here is Thames, in common with the rest of Independent Television and the BBC, under yet another scrutiny and with yet more uncertainty about its future. It is a situation which puzzles our broadcasting colleagues throughout the world. When I go to countries like Australia, where British programmes are regarded as the excellence to which their own productions must aspire, the idea of these continuing enquiries into television is regarded as a British eccentricity. Unfortunately, it is not so amusing for the people who work in broadcasting.

What is especially difficult for us in ITV is the double standard which is so often applied by those who write about, talk about, or take part in committees about us. For our part we are prepared to admit frankly that when ITV began 22 years ago, commercial necessity produced a service that was engrossed with ratings and seeking to maintain its existence. But that was very long ago. ITV has now achieved a public service of high quality, rivalling anything that broadcasting can offer in Britain or elsewhere in the world – and limited only by expansion into an additional channel. It is no accident that ITV companies have become increasingly attractive to some of the finest talents in the BBC: men and women who would not join an inferior service however rich the rewards.

Nevertheless there are still people reluctant to acknowledge how ITV has developed, from its beginnings as the brash newcomer of 1956. The BBC, for example, still refers to its monopoly of public service broadcasting’. A respected critic, writing in the Sunday Times, suggested that a BBC play about welfare state bureaucracy ‘would have had no chance’ of being screened ‘on the commercial networks’. There remains a kind of snobbism behind such blinkered attitudes.

THE ANNAN COMMITTEE mostly managed to avoid this trap, but then made some surprising conclusions. Having recognised that ITV now offers programmes quite as good as, and in some cases superior to, the BBC; having acknowledged that ‘it is difficult to make comparisons when the BBC has two channels’ and that ‘ITV output cannot be expected to have the range which BBC can provide on two channels’; and having argued for the inauguration of a fourth channel as ‘a challenge to broadcasters’ and ‘a nursery for new forms and new methods of presenting ideas’ the Committee then promptly rejected the proposal that it should be run by the ITV companies. They claimed there would then be a risk of giving the public more of what they already had, and intensified competition between ITV and BBC.

This is out of touch with reality. The best way to make a fourth channel thrive, in a world where the viewer increasingly expects free choice of what he watches, is to dovetail it with ITV’s current service. A fourth channel having to compete against BBC’s two and ITV’s one would be fighting a losing battle, which all the taxpayer subsidy in the world could not win. The result would be an elitist service for a tiny minority of viewers, subsidised at enormous public cost. Yet one of the main areas in which ITV producers can fairly claim to have established unequalled experience and success is in popularising minority subjects. That experience, coupled with complementary – not competitive – scheduling between ITVl and ITV2, is the key to providing a new and exciting service on the fourth channel.

AS TO THE ASSERTION that ITV2 would provide ‘more of the same’, there are scores of ITV programme makers who are clamouring for the chance to prove this judgement of Annan wrong, once the straitjacket of a single channel has been removed. But if we were to assume that the staff and managements of ITV companies would want to produce on ITV2 a service identical to ITV1, the machinery of the Independent Broadcasting Authority is there to prevent such a duplication. We at Thames (and most of our colleagues in ITV) would expect to provide an ITV2 service which is obliged by statute and by IBA control to fulfil requirements not yet met by ITV or BBC. One of those, for which we put forward the original proposals in 1971, is the acquisition of programmes from independent producers for showing at peak time. We would welcome these additional freelances, though I suspect that they are neither so numerous nor so devoid of opportunity as the critics of BBC and ITV suggest. The fact remains, however, that the ITV companies are already equipped to provide a service which will meet the philosophical demands of the Annan Committee and also win a sizeable audience. Alternatives to ITV2 can do the first, but not the second.

The Annan Committee reported almost a year ago. As I write, the Home Office is about to produce the results of its deliberations on that report. So once again broadcasters have halted to await their future. We wait also to hear when and how the new IBA contracts are to be advertised and awarded. At Thames we await with confidence the confirmation that our record will ensure the continuation of our contract in the future. But we wait. And while we wait, we have to go on working.

Elsewhere in this Review you can see what ‘going on working’ means. In 1977 it meant producing 300 hours of programmes for our region and a further 700 for the ITV network. It meant raising a bountiful revenue from our advertisers, establishing new records. It meant selling more programmes overseas than any ITV company has ever done before.

Those achievements are made possible by what I believe to be the most professional staff in British television. But those bare facts could imply that Thames in 1977 was identical in all respects to Thames in 1976, ploughing the same familiar furrow. Far from it.

IN 1977 we introduced Thames At 6 – a daily regional programme which replaced the former Today and brought Andrew Gardner from ITN to be its chief presenter. Already the new programme has been praised for its impact, and this is only the first stage of impressive developments in television journalism covering local news and current affairs.

In 1977 we introduced Time For Business, a weekly 45-minute programme for the London region, not only a forum for the world of business, manufacturing and the city, but emphasising to the general public the importance of business and its contribution to their life style. Presented by the unique popularising talent of Eamonn Andrews, the programme is ITV’s first in the field. It arose directly from the consultation between business and union leaders and ITV companies, promoted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

In 1977 our outstandingly successful Light Entertainment Department produced another string of entirely new hits. There were the situation comedies The Upchat Line and Miss Jones & Son; the sparkling variety shows Night Out At The London Casino; and a range of superbly spectacular productions, including the highly acclaimed Tommy Steele And A Show, now chosen to represent ITV at this year’s Golden Rose of Montreux.

In 1977, the year in which the Annan Committee put into ITV’s mouth the words ‘If the public prefers series, why produce one-off dramas?’, Thames’ Drama Department in fact transmitted in peak time two seven-part series and fourteen ‘one-off dramas’, or plays.

DETAILS OF THESE and other innovations are in the Managing Director’s accompanying report of the year’s programmes, together with information about other imaginative projects. But it is not only in our programmes that new developments are to be found.

In 1977 our Technical and Engineering Department, in addition to its many other technological developments, launched a new Outside Broadcast unit of its own design, which packs into a single vehicle the resources of a vast studio.

In 1977 our Sales Department launched Enterprise, its own entirely new computerised airtime sales system, which provides a faster, more comprehensive service to advertisers and also increases the efficiency of our internal operation.

In 1977, with London Looks Forward, Thames created and financed an unprecedented investigation and debate about London’s future, on which the Duke of Edinburgh commented: ‘This is the first time a television company has become so deeply involved in the organisation of a project of such great public interest. It must also be the first time that a television company has managed to establish what might be described as two-way communication with the public.’

Those are considerable achievements, but it is inevitable that hundreds of other successes go unrecorded in a formal Chairman’s statement. The award of the OBE to our brilliant Controller of Light Entertainment Philip Jones and other honours to our staff – and the programme awards, both to complete production teams and to individuals like cameraman Nick Downie (Royal Television Society News Feature Award) and designers Alex Clarke and Rod Stratfold (RTS Design Award for Rock Follies) bring pleasure and pride to all of us. In the same way, the achievements of week-by-week programmes like Help!, Money-Go-Round and Magpie (which has now raised more than half a million pounds for children’s charities), go largely unsung although they remain a crucial part of our service to the public, especially to the underprivileged. These are not the routine achievements of some shapeless thing called a company, but the creation of dedicated, imaginative people; for people are the main ingredient of a television programme company.

DURING THE YEAR we have made several changes in our structure and management, building a younger team to move Thames forward. This energetic group is now led by Mr Bryan Cowgill, the outstanding BBC programme maker and channel controller, who joined us as Managing Director in October. He took over from Mr George A. Cooper who had reached his retirement age after contributing so much to ITV as well as to our company. The first Sales Director both for ABC Television and for Thames Television, Mr Cooper succeeded me as Managing Director in 1974. His knowledge and advice continue to be available to us on a consultancy basis.

AFTER TEN SUCCESSFUL YEARS, changes in the Board were inevitable. One of our earliest directors, Mr Humphrey Tilling, formerly Company Secretary of EMI Limited, and a member of its Board, also came to retirement age. The wise and polished contributions of Mr Tilling will he missed at our Board meetings, but we shall continue to enjoy hearing his scintillating after-dinner speeches at our social events. In his place, we are fortunate to have another EMI director, Mr John M. Kuipers, particularly because of Mr Kuipers experience of electronics and his recent supervision of EMI’s interests in Australia and the Far East. Retirement age was also the reason for the resignation of one of our two independent directors, Lord Wolfenden, and we were sorry to lose his guidance on educational programmes, dating back to his pioneer work on the Schools Advisory Committee in 1957, when Rediffusion Television introduced the first television programmes for schools. Succeeding him as another non-executive independent director we are fortunate to have the services and experience of the distinguished film and television producer, Lord Brabourne.

The collaboration between Bryan Cowgill and our Director of Programmes, Jeremy Isaacs, is already producing new ideas, new programmes and new ways of extending our public service. At the time of Mr Cowgill’s appointment, the Board also made other changes to the senior management. Ian Scott became Director of Administration and Finance, with Jim Shaw continuing as Director of Sales and Marketing. A new senior management team was formed to work alongside the four executive Board members: Muir Sutherland, Managing Director of Thames Television International; Bob Godfrey, technical and Engineering Director; John Hambley, Planning and Development Director; and John O’Keefe, Industrial Relations Director, with Ben Marr continuing as Company Secretary.

All the promotions involved in these moves, and those immediately resulting from them, are internal appointments from among our existing management. At the same time, we have begun to make structural changes to our departmental system where we think them necessary. Current Affairs and Documentaries have now been split, for example, into two different departments under Mike Wooller and Peter Pagnamenta. Further changes will follow, including the establishment of the ambitious Regional News Unit about which the Managing Director writes elsewhere.

NEW POLICIES ARE EMERGING at Thames, for example, in relation to sport and to filmed programmes. When Rediffusion Television, the pioneer London weekday contractor, was merged by the Authority with ABC Television, the weekend contractor for the North and Midlands, then dominating the Saturday/Sunday afternoon audiences, LWT took over ABC’s World of Sport with outstanding success; but no longer can ITV sport be concentrated into the weekend. With such international sports specialists as Bryan Cowgill, Managing Director of Thames, and Paul Fox, Managing Director of Yorkshire, recruited into the Independent Network, there should now be vigorous competition with the BBC on weekday sports coverage and commentaries.

In terms of filmed programmes, and with all the studios of Thames Television now overflowing with both live and videotaped programmes, this company must turn increasingly to the medium of film to augment its programme output. The international success of Sweeney!, in the cinema as well as on television, has proved that British drama series of the highest quality can be filmed entirely on location, and therefore Thames’ subsidiary film company, Euston Films, will extend its production.

Benefiting by all the expertise which has been gained by this company over its busy seven years, Thames Television will now take the further step of making a series of full-length feature films for television. It is hoped to revive and refurbish the reputation of British feature films at their very best, except that these films will not be produced for the cinema, hut for today’s greater audience television.

To the makers of our past and future programmes, and to every member of the staff of Thames Television, I express thanks for a highly successful year, and look forward to another period of exciting progress.

The post Chairman’s statement appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

But even before the Eighties arrive, the next couple of years are crucial to our future. We are faced by the need to secure a new contract from the Independent Broadcasting Authority and to justify its award, before and after the event. We are faced by the prospect that the Government may provide ITV with a second channel, and we must be ready to take the opportunities it would offer. But we recognise equally that this long overdue move might be even further postponed. If it is, we shall have to find other ways to ensure that our talents and energies can range more widely, and improve our service to the public even further.

PROGRAMMES ARE THE KEY to realising these aims. Conceiving programmes, creating programmes, transmitting them, selling them, making them better, bolder and sometimes bigger. So my priority as Managing Director, now and in the future, will be to work with my colleagues to ensure the excellence, invention and effectiveness of our complete range of programme production and scheduling. That process has already begun with a new annual Programme Plan developed with Jeremy Isaacs and his Controllers. The operation of this plan will be the basis of all the company’s future activities. As a result of that plan and its varied programme aspirations, we have a busy and rewarding year in prospect.

OUR NEW STRATEGY includes the development of a stronger, more comprehensive local journalism for our region with the creation of a fully-staffed Regional News Unit. This unit will also, I hope, see the introduction of lightweight electronic newsgatherjng techniques (ENG) which are such an important part of our future broadcasting technology. It will be responsible not only for the daily Thames at 6 but also for lunchtime regional news bulletins and other programmes. We shall also be developing our weekly network current affairs programme into new areas.

We intend to enlarge and improve our range of sports programmes and look afresh at what the viewing public want from sport on television. And we plan to introduce a complete new programme for the afternoon, designed by Thames, which will encompass the current variety of programmes seen during that period on ITV.

IN ADDITION to these extensive new developments we shall continue to concentrate on those areas where we have shown such outstanding success. In light entertainment we shall be producing no less than 70 situation comedies in the year, together with the variety and spectacular shows which have given the department such an unparalleled record. And it is our aim to continue to attract the finest talents in this field, as in others. The main newcomers in light entertainment are already household names: Morecambe & Wise, the record-breaking entertainers who have joined Thames to make television programmes and a feature film; and top DJ Kenny Everett, who will have his own pop music and entertainment show starting in the summer.

THE DRAMA DEPARTMENT will be producing Edward and Mrs Simpson, the story of Edward VIIIs abdication starring Edward Fox and scripted by Simon Raven, together with John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, ten new plays for peaktime and, I hope, a new run of daytime dramas from Teddington. Euston Films will have a new series of The Sweeney and will begin to work on the first dramatic episodes of Danger UXB, featuring the heroic work of army bomb disposal.

We will have two highly popular and informative series in Botanic Man, David Bellamy’s study of ecology shot on location around the world, and Hollywood, a riveting documentary series about the silent era that gave birth to the world film industry.

I HAVE BEEN QUOTED as saying that the primary aim of a television company is to make fine programmes and that ‘the rest is housekeeping’. I do not underestimate the importance of everything that goes to make up ‘housekeeping’. In addition to Jeremy Isaacs I count myself fortunate to have alongside me controlling these activities Ian Scott, Director of Administration and Finance, whose wide-ranging experience is proving invaluable; a Sales Department under Jim Shaw which is the most effective of its kind in the country; an extremely successful international sales operation led by Muir Sutherland which has trebled Thames’ income from overseas sales in three years; and under Bob Godfrey’s direction a Technical and Engineering Department of high accomplishment and many varied and impressive skills.

Our plans for this coming year will require the cooperation and enthusiasm of staff in all areas and the gradual expansion of our facilities together with the maximum utilisation of existing resources. I know that all will be forthcoming.

I regard it as a privilege, as well as a challenge, to lead the 1750 men and women of Thames in maintaining our standards of excellence in the interest of the public we serve.

The post A message from the Managing Director appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Philip Jones OBE and Verity Lambert have already made their mark and achieved the recognition they deserve. This year we have added Ian Martin’s department’s Prix Italia to Sue Turner’s Prix Jeunesse.

Next year there will be Mike Wooller’s first major documentary series for Thames, Hollywood. Peter Pagnamenta will be bringing a new look to all our current affairs programmes. And Sam Leitch, who has just joined as Head of Sport, will make his contribution to an even better programme mix from Thames.

These are the people – with their production teams – who are now planning the programmes you will see in the ’80s.

The post The programme year 1977 appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.