Tonight’s TV… in 1967 

17 June 2015 tbs.pm/5185

The Times 19670617

BBC2 Colour clock c1967From The Times for Saturday 17 June 1967 comes this run down of what you could be watching. Things worth noting:

  • This was your only chance to see episode 5 of the Doctor Who adventure The Evil of the Daleks – that episode, plus all the others except episode 2, has not been retained in the BBC archives and has not been located elsewhere at the time of writing.
  • BBC-2’s extemely limited hours: about 4.5
  • Just how much regional variation this is between ITV companies
  • The curious unwillingness of The Times to use TWW’s name or initials for the main listing, but shoving them in happily under Teledu Cymru’s
  • ABC and ATV are arguing at this point and Rediffusion clearly has the London rights to The Avengers this season, making the series “part networked” at this point (of these listings, only Grampian chooses to take it from ABC)
  • BBC Wales is deemed by the BBC to be a separate channel at this point – a replacement for BBC-1 with network programmes shifted out of the way of Welsh programmes much as would happen later with Channel 4 and S4C

You Say

11 responses to this article

Victor Field 18 June 2015 at 12:28 pm

So “The Dick Van Dyke Show” is a comedy but “The Monkees” isn’t? Interesting.

Dave Rhodes 20 June 2015 at 12:45 pm

Amazingly, there are twelve different adult education series being shown across the ITV companies in the early afternoon – but middle-sized regions like Anglia and Southern don’t bother with any, possibly saving them for equivalent slots on Sunday.

‘On the Margin’ on BBC1 at 9.15 is a repeat from BBC2, billed in the genome as ‘by and starring Alan Bennett’ – presumably the sort of smart LE that London Weekend were hoping to pull off in ’68, but largely failed with.

Oddities include ‘Wrestling Result’ at 6.27 on ATV – and the ratings-killing ‘Your Witness’ at 9.50 on BBC1 ; the latter surely a Sunday programme misplaced on a Saturday. ‘Your Witness’ leads to an oddly-early shutdown for a Saturday evening too.

Dave Rhodes 20 June 2015 at 1:23 pm

Just spotted another scheduling quirk. Westward and Channel taking the national news at 9.25, when the rest of the network has it at 9. Would they have taped the national feed, or did ITN offer a second ‘live’ bulletin, I wonder?

Arthur Nibble 21 June 2015 at 1:36 am

I take it the wrestling result was for a bout in the London area?

Viewers in “West of England and South Wales” (ahem) were able to watch two Van Dyke brothers for 45 consecutive minutes if they could stomach it, as Jerry Van Dyke starred in “My Mother The Car”, rated one of the worst three USA sitcoms ever – its premise being that a man buys a 1928 automobile which turns out to be his deceased mother reincarnated. Luckily, Dick’s show overran the last ten of Jerry’s if the going was tough. At least Jerry found fame instead of notoriety over 20 years later in the hit US sitcom “Coach”.

Russ J Graham 21 June 2015 at 12:46 pm

It’s the same wrestling bout as seen on ABC from 4-5pm; ATV just carried half of the programme, fading out halfway through with the words “We’ll bring you the results from this match at 6.27″(!)

Les 8 October 2015 at 2:32 pm

In london, the avengers was on friday nights at 8 .. Which meant abc had to supply a shorter version for london, as the news was at 8.55.

In autumn 66, atv experimented with putting family programmes on at 4pm on saturdays (including the puppet mouse topo gigio, from the london palladium). They then ran the wrestling at 5.15 for an hour. Some stations, like southern and anglia also did this (anglia had batman at 4, with topo gigio at 4.30). Most put the wrestling back at 4 .. But atv continued to run robin hood at 4, with the odd wrestling schedule above. For a while they ran half at 4.30, the second half at 5.15. Eventually wrestling was back at 4.

David Barron 26 October 2015 at 8:51 pm

I wonder if there were any Monkees fans in Wales, as they would have been annoyed to see a quiz in Welsh instead of The Monkees TV show on BBC1.

n hewit 4 February 2016 at 4:19 pm

The only true Network programme on ITV appears to be ATV’s George and the Dragon starring Peggy Mount of Ada Larkin fame in the popular Monday evening ATV comedy the Larkins on Monday evenings at 8PM at the start of the decade. Such was the popularity of the programme in our house, that one particular loud Bellow, “EDDAY”, shocked my mum and caused her waters to break. As the Larkins were cockneys technically it could be said that “I was born to the sound of Bow Bells, possibly explains why all time favourite series are mainly London Based, including the Sweeney, The Bill and at this point Call The Midwife. One possible explanation why the Companies buried their differences at this point in the schedule was because situation comedy was in short supply and was mainly produced by ABC, ATV , or Granada, Rediffusion was no Thames in terms of Light Entertainment. Granada even had to produce the London based Variety spectaculars for the Weekday Network to rival ATV’S Audience rating winner, Sunday Night at the London Programme. Granada transmitting live on Monday evenings from a purpose built TV Theatre in Chelsea, ‘Chelsea at Eight ‘(and later Nine) in the late fifties, AR preferring to stage opera such as Electra for which they gained Kudos among the establishment, taking out advertisments for such High Brow fare in the serious broadsheets !

Ted 15 February 2016 at 3:26 pm

Re: David Barron

The Wenvoe transmitter carried the Welsh and West of England regional services on two different frequencies. The Western region on Ch. 5 and the Welsh region on Ch. 13, so viewers always had the choice of the Welsh opt-out and the Western region.

Mark Boulton 25 July 2017 at 4:40 pm

That clock shot dates from somewhere between November 1969 and mid (May?) 1971, when BBC1’s colour service had started. Before that a roman-numeral clock, yellow on a blue background was used, branded /B/B/C/2/ COLOUR.

The 2-with-a-spot logo wasn’t used until late ’69 – until then, the original fat, wide 2 from 1964 was used but with electronic colour added. In effect, anyone watching BBC2 in 1967/68 on a black-and-white set wouldn’t notice anything had changed.

Tat Wood 12 May 2020 at 1:32 am

Of course, if you really wanted to see ‘Evil of the Daleks’ episode 5 you were in luck as on July 20th 1968 it got its one and only repeat.

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