A thing that might be surprising to many of you is the cable TV industry in Argentina was growing very fast. Cable TV channels growth very fast during 90s and 83% of Argentine households have cable TV subscription in 2010. This is very contrast with terrestial TV industry at that time, since they were just recovered from the sink of the late 80s, which resulted the soon-to-be-famous Canal 11 and 13 got privatized. Programming on Canal 13 (as the same with other commercial TV at that time) only transmitted from 1PM (shortly became noon, then 11 AM) to midnight (soon became 12:30 AM). Cable companies then took that oppoturnity to let the CHristians lease the slots when Canal 13 wasn’t transmitting on cable, and this resulted the closedown timeslots were Christians stuff. However, at some nights, the Midnight Movie program would results its programs were extended to 2AM. By the 2000/2001, however, the networks found this was a successful, so weekdays programming were transmitted from 11AM to 3AM the next day, with Saturday programming were transmitted from 10AM to 1AM next day, while on Sunday it only transmitted from 11AM to midnight. As the results, those Christians stuff were replaced by cablesystems’ information programming.
In fall 2005, Canal 13 fully overhauled its programming: transmission were changed from 7AM (it became 6:30AM, and then 6AM) to 12:30 AM on terrestial, while on satellite, SMS bingo programs would be broadcast until 2AM, then foreign series would be filled until 3:30AM to 4AM, then the same closedown sequence would be made for the satellite feed.
From 1952, the very first edition of Today. The program was ahead of its time in many ways; it even included a news ticker (it appears at the 2:15 mark):
A scene from the 1984 UK docudrama Threads which was a co-production between the BBC, the Nine Network, and Western-World Television Inc. It would air on Nine in June 1985.
This show was freaking awesome back in the day - 24-hour TV was in its infancy, 5am News was one year old, I was 10 and used to set my alarm for 4:55 and sneak downstairs and watch this as a primary school kid! Everything was dope
Above taped by yours truly - watching this newscast unfold, you can still feel the urgency from the delayed start to the typo at the end. I’m still amazed by this broadcast.
Also taped by me. Other nights as a kid, I would be mesmerized by these updates at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and so on. It’s hard to describe how different this time was compared to now with news channels on all night everywhere.
These updates were punchy as.
Also great about this newscast was the long close of ITN’s epic theme from the time - double the usual length and really nice - and the fact they showed long segments from CNN. You simply did not see American newscasts in British free-to-air TV anywhere else at the time. And Sky News was only about to begin in ‘89 to limited audiences.
I loved ITN’s presentation at the time - the graphics, the backdrops, music, the anchors, the maps (like that one of Naples). It was all so cool looking in the late 80s. So much Middle East news - it was like the theme of the 80s, along with famine in Africa.
Watching this last one, imagine being young in the 80s watching all the uber-cool overnight stuff they used to have on Thames at the time - risqué talk shows, original stuff - and looking forward to these live updates from ITN!
The other extremely cool thing about that ITN clip - indeed the ITV heyday - was the notion of having those live announcers in the local regions just announcing programs all through the night. I mean, wow, just wow! I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time - the idea would never get past a first meeting these days. Somehow, it was just so 80s and so cool in Britain to have, as I remember them, these ladies in little booths at the Thames studio (and probably across Britain) keeping people company all night. They just sounded like they smoked all night at the studio in between program announcements! Can you imagine!
The other thing about that ITN bulletin was that it was 5-6am 7 days a week. Indeed, nothing came out of the ITN studios on ITV until 1PM after that, except for mid-morning updates. Of course, TV-am operated from 6 to around 9:30. Can you imagine the unnecessary duplication of resources!?
