General TV History

Here’s the Industry Today theme used by HSV7, ADS7 and STW9 …

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I did not know Wollonggong was the real gotham city :stuck_out_tongue:

Something a little random but an interesting throw back to earlier days of UK TV.

As many would be aware ITV breakfast (TVAM or GMTV) was a seperate broadcaster to the franchisee who broadcast the rest of the day. At 9.15 and later 9.25 the breakfast company would handover to the local broadcaster.

This handover would also happen on Friday’s between Thames (later Carlton) and LWT.

In the 70s (for Thames/LWT) and 80s (for everyone when breakfast launched) these handovers weren’t very smooth. Technology wasn’t what it is now and with the change from one company to another sync would be lost and the result was not pretty.

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I always found it odd that there was a seperate weekend ITV licence for London. When ITV adopted nationwide branding in 2002, the anomaly was gone.

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There was also a weekday/weekend split in the Midlands too but it was done away with during one of the early franchise rounds.

Even after they consolidated branding in London technically the 2 licenses still existed, there was just no difference in branding. However since then I believe the licenses have been merged as well.

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The handover from TVAM to regional broadcasters also suffered from loss of sync before technology eliminated the problem;

In the early 80s there was a 10 minute break between TVAM ending and regional broadcasters starting up… this was to allow engineers to manually switch links… computer switching eventually eliminated this problem too

It was during this break on some days that the IBA would broadcast “engineering announcements”

Correct: ATV weekdays, ABC weekends. The same in the original North of England franchise - Granada on weekdays, ABC on weekends.

ABC was particularly done over by the abolition of weekend franchises, having effectively lost their franchises through no fault of their own. From memory, they bid for the London weekend franchise but lost out to the consortium that formed London Weekend (later LWT), and would eventually end up in a shortgun merger with Rediffusion to form Thames Television

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Speaking of UK Television, this was a long-time favourite for those watching Anglia. Uploader Paul Hatfield.

Many of the signature tunes and stings were well known to Australian audiences as they used at the very beginning of many early programs.

I used to see them on programs I watched as a kid, never realizing what they were and then many years later when I lived in the UK hearing and seeing more modern versions of the same IDs.

My favorite was always the classic LWT river ID;

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Channel Nine Perth Ident featuring everyone who works there… (December 2003)

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Weather presenting 1976 style. Imagine what mischief Tim Bailey could get up to with a black marker in hand during his weather reports.

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I imagine the result would be something like this;

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I’m surprised something like this hasn’t already happened with Tim Bailey;

I think perhaps that’s enough jokes in the weather penis genre?

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That satellite picture is the size of a postage stamp! Was probably ground breaking at the time, though.

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Kudos to the genius in the props department who came up with the rotating weather board. Who needs whizz bang computer graphics?

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Well it was 1976, the technology for flashy weather graphics and satellite forecasts which is commonplace these days was probably the stuff of science fiction back then! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But on a serious note, I wonder when Nine poached Alan Wilkie from Seven?

I think the most technical innovation in the early days was Rosemary Margan standing behind a clear perspex screen while she wrote the temperatures on the large map of Victoria. To viewers it appeared like she was writing the numbers backwards so that they appeared the right way on screen, but in reality she was writing the numbers the right way they just flipped the picture so it appeared right on screen.

YouTube: 1emmauni

Meanwhile, in Adelaide at SAS10 they had Helen Cutting writing the temperatures on a giant blackboard, requiring her to have her back to camera much of the time and being subject to some less than subtle camerawork with her short skirts on when she’s reaching up to write the temps for Darwin! She also wasn’t allowed to speak, the newsreader would read out the forecast while she was doing her thing.

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TVB in Hong Kong have Freddy the weatherman;

I spent 4 years in London from age 10, and taped a heap of Thames/ITV/ITN material mainly. It was a truly classic era - ITN at its zenith, timeless and classy packages and themes, and fantastic general entertainment as well such as Dame Edna and Clive James. Here are some of my personally-recorded favourites. Even as a 10-year-old, I used to sneak downstairs before 5:00AM to catch ITN! The Tiananmen Square Massacre tape - I had a day off school that day.










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Yes some great packages there, excellent themes and some outstanding presenters too.

The credit role on the morning news makes me a bit jealous, the number of people involved in the production of one half hour news cast… sigh