Thames also contributes to the ILEA careers advisory service, by making expert advice available at the regular Open Days. Thames also has one of the few training centres in the industry situated at the Teddington Studios.

But Thames’ interest in the life of London goes beyond the television business. In Jubilee year, the company mounted a conference London Looks Forward, which brought together planners, politicians and people from all walks of life to consider the future of the nation’s capital. The conference was opened by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who subsequently asked Thames to look further into the question of London’s derelict land. The resulting research was published as Wasteland, and this was the title of a follow-up conference in 1980, again opened by Prince Philip, which considered the options open to planners, developers, people and politicians in dealing with derelict ground.

A close relationship with the British Film Institute following the success of Thames’ Hollywood series led to the rediscovery and first full-scale presentation of Abel Gance’s monumental silent masterpiece Napoleon. Complete with a musical score by Carl Davis and performed live by the Wren Orchestra, the 1927 film was a central feature of the 1980 London Film Festival. Indeed, so successful was the presentation that another silent classic, King Vidor’s The Crowd, was shown the following year, again with the Wren Orchestra playing a Carl Davis score. 1982 sees the presentation of Clarence Brown’s masterpiece Flesh And The Devil, the film that created the Garbo-Gilbert legend, together with another King Vidor classic from 1928, Showpeople. It is planned to continue these silent film performances every year as a regular part of the London Film Festival.

In 1980, Thames produced Britain’s first-ever Telethon, a marathon fund-raising programme broadcast over two days. It raised more than a million pounds for charities in the London area.

…and into the future

With so many advances being made in home entertainment, and information technology, Thames will continue to play its part, by taking an interest in life beyond the screen as well as striving for excellence in what appears on it.

The post Beyond the programmes 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.

• Today
• This Week
• People & Politics
• Time For Business
• Thames at 6
• London Looks Forward
  • The Living City
  • The Future City
• Documentaries
  • Hazlitt in Love
  • The Gospel According To St Michael
  • Walt Disney (2 programmes)
  • Marriage Guidance
  • Lonely Hearts
  • The Ruth Ellis Story
  • The Hunting of Force Z
  • Hammer & Sickle
  • Billy
  • Jimmy
  • Aycliffe

OUTSIDE BROADCASTS

• Series
  • Drive In
  • A Town Called
  • Kitchen Garden
  • Wish You Were Here…?
  • Pub Entertainer of the Year
• Sport
  • Darts
  • Horse Racing from Sandown, Newmarket, Epsom, Lingfield
  • Football (7 matches, including 4 internationals)
  • Sportscene
  • Wrestling
• Events
  • Jubilee Flower Show
  • Miss Thames
  • Astrology
  • Model Railway Exhibition
  • Nurse of the Year
  • Variety Club Lunch
  • Evening Standard Drama Awards
  • Evening News Film Awards
  • Royal Film Performance
  • Great British Achievements
  • Chipperfield’s Circus (Easter and Christmas)
  • The Motor Show
  • Britannia Awards
  • The Loyal Address

LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

• Specials
  • The Benny Hill Show
  • TV Times Top Ten Awards
  • The Eric Sykes Show
  • Bruce and More Girls
  • The Peggy Lee Show
  • Max Bygraves’ Christmas Show
  • Vera Lynn Sings
• Series
  • David Nixon Show
  • Looks Familiar
  • Opportunity Knocks
  • This is Your Life
  • Whose Baby?
  • Whodunnit?
  • Wednesday at Eight
  • The Tom O’Connor Show
  • The Little and Large Tellyshow
  • Night Out at The London Casino
• Comedy Series
  • Odd Man Out
  • Get Some In
  • George and Mildred
  • What’s On Next?
  • Paradise Island
  • Miss Jones & Son
  • The Fuzz
  • The Upchat Line

CHILDREN’S

• Pre-School Learning
  • Rainbow
  • Rainbow Has A Baby
• General Interest
  • Magpie
  • Fanfare
  • Somersault to Moscow (Magpie Special)
  • …And I Write Music (Magpie Special)
• Drama
  • The Tomorrow People
  • Horse in The House
• Animation Series
  • Jamie and The Magic Torch
  • Chorlton and The Wheelies
• Entertainment
  • Michael Bentine’s Potty Time
  • Sooty
• Pre-School Entertainment
  • And Maisy Too
  • Mice and Mendelson
  • The Wotsit From Whizz-Bang

FEATURES, EDUCATION AND RELIGION

• Features
  • After Noon
  • Mavis
  • Money-Go-Round
  • London Scene
  • Superman & The Bride
  • The Story of Job
  • Problems
  • Help!
  • Our School and Hard Times
• Education
  • Seeing and Doing
  • Finding Out
  • The World Around Us
  • Writer’s Workshop
  • The English Programme
  • French Studies
  • It’s Life
  • It’s More Life
  • London: The Making of a City
• Adult Education
  • Could Do Better?
  • This Sporting Land
• Religion
  • Get Out and Push
  • Close
  • Christmas Pie
  • Drawing to an End
  • Faith In Place: Matt’s Place
  • Christmas Special
  • A Matter of Morals
  • St Nicolas Cantata

DRAMA

• Serial
  • Rooms – 61 episodes
• Series
  • Romance – 5 episodes
  • Rock Follies of ’77 – 7 episodes
  • London Belongs To Me – 7 episodes
  • The Norman Conquests
    • Table Manners
    • Living Together
    • Round & Round The Garden
• Film Series
  • The Sweeney
  • Van Der Valk
• Plays For Britain
  • Cork & Bottle
  • Last Summer
  • It’s Only Rock ’n Roll
  • The Proofing Session
  • Not Quite Cricket

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

‘The most singular feature of this whole project is that, as far as I know at least, this is the first time a television company, Thames Television, 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, through a series of programmes, articles, surveys, and a book devoted to London’s problems and the future. A real effort has been made to draw out attitudes and ideas from every possible source. And if this meeting does nothing else, it will put on record what a comprehensive cross-section of Londoners thought of their city in the late 1970’s. And I just wonder how many other capital cities could claim to have done the same? This is not just another exercise in formal democracy, with its statistical judgements expressed through the ballot box. And it’s not another conventional assessment by professionals. It is a deliberate attempt to question all sources of opinion and information, to find the explanation for such phenomena as the steady departure of people from the capital – over and above the deliberately planned exodus – and the radical, demographic and employment changes of the existing population. It is a positive response to this situation by people who care about what happens to London, who want to go on living and working and enjoying themselves in this marvellous and ancient city.’

HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in his opening address to the London Looks Forward Conference, 4 July 1977.

The post London looks forward appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

On June 22, one-and-a-half million Londoners watched a unique evening of television when Thames devoted four hours to exploring Londons present state and future prospects. This was the culmination of two months of special programmes, and prefaced a two-day conference, all part of Thames’ London Looks Forward project.

The project also included a unique research study of Londoners’ attitudes, a new book on London planning, and a series of specially-commissioned background papers.

The eight documentaries that preceded 22 June ‘evening of London’ revolved around the homes and lives of four London families, all from different areas and social groups. Made by the Today team and broadcast on consecutive Fridays from April, the films surveyed London through the families’ eyes taking planning issues to the people, and at the same time evoking the peoples’ experience for the planners. Many distinguished planners and decision-makers came to Thames’ studios on June 22, first to watch a special 90-minute documentary on London’s present and future, and then to join in live televised debate and answer the criticisms voiced in the programme. The four families were among the studio audience who heard, and questioned, the varying philosophies proposed.

The London Looks Forward unit is currently investigating two major problems which affect London’s present and future – those of derelict land, and the lack of playspace for children.

THE CONFERENCE

Howard Thomas, in his welcoming message to all attending the Conference, described the project as aiming to ‘help Londoners learn about and contribute to the future planning of their great city’, and expressed Thames’ gratitude to the many people and organisations whose enthusiastic and inspired help’ had been essential to the success of the project. HRH Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh opened the London Looks Forward Conference on Monday 4 July, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Prince Philip, who had played a formative part in pre-conference discussions, set the tone for the Conference by exhorting participants to concentrate on specific means of action, rather than general aims, and to reconcile conflicts in search of a common sense of purpose.

Conference Chairman Max Nicholson then launched the first of six working sessions which covered the project’s primary themes. The speakers, all actively involved in shaping London’s development, ranged across the planning spectrum, from trades unionists to academics, from Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Shore to Terry Harris of the Albany Community Arts Centre and Peter Large, Chairman of the Jubilee Committee on mobility for the disabled.

For two intensive days, 200 invited members joined the Conference speakers in lively uninhibited discussion. A massive number of facts and ideas were generated, as points of contention and agreement were discovered between parties and people who were often meeting for the first time.

During the Conference, the Today programme was broadcast live from the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and transmitted impromptu interviews with Conference participants. LBC also gave full coverage to the event; its ‘AM’ programme gave up-to-the-minute reports on Conference proceedings and interviews with speakers. In a special half-hour programme on the evening of July 6, Prince Philip and other leading contributors to the project discussed their views of the Conference and their ideas for future action.

THE FUTURE

London Looks Forwards initial achievement has been to bring together a wide range of views, experience and interests to seek out fresh ideas and areas of agreement; that is also the future aim of the London Looks Forward unit, now in operation under the Conference Director John Hambley.

In particular the project will focus on what Londoners want of their city, and what they can do to improve it both by their own actions and by entering the continuing debate on the capital’s future.

On the research side, the London Looks Forward unit is now investigating dereliction and playspace, two issues at the heart of Londoners’ discontent with their environment. And with reason, for in inner London alone there is estimated to be some 2,000 acres of wasteland; the capital as a whole contains over 20 million square feet of disused industrial buildings. How has this appalling situation arisen, why does it persist and what should the government and the people of London be doing about it? These are some of the questions which the research is aiming to find out.

Even with all that vacant space, there are still not enough places for the kids to play. London Looks Forward’s work on playspace will start by running a survey to find out what sort of play facilities people in London actually want and can afford; it will be asking why official targets for provision of open space set in the early 1950s are still far from being reached by many London boroughs, and how local authorities, both of their own volition and together with local residents, can improve the situation.

In addition, the unit has put forward ideas for making short programmes or programme-slots on schemes initiated by Londoners for London. The aim would be to interest viewers in what is being done at a grass roots’ level, by people like them.

The post The programmes, the conference and the future appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.