Tonight’s Yorkshire TV… in 1971 

7 September 2016 tbs.pm/9478

TVTimes tells us what was on YTV on Tuesday 7 September 1971. Things worth noting include:

  • Granada is providing the network with four hours of coverage of the TUC conference in Blackpool
  • Houseparty at 3pm is only 15 minutes, barely enough time to toss a salad
  • Play Better Tennis at 3.15pm and Yoga for Health at 3.40pm are both being passed off as adult education. Only you can decide if this is stretching the term too far
  • Quite why the execrable CBC series Moment of Truth is being described as a ‘matinee’ is anyone’s guess. This show ran five days a week for a year on the CBC from December 1964. It was recorded in black and white, one of two items (totalling just under 2 hours) not in colour on YTV today
  • The Yak books I am faintly familiar with. The Yak series at 4.40pm is a new one on me
  • Episode 22 (of 24) of season 1 (of 5) of The Odd Couple is a premiere for ITV. This episode went out on ABC in America on 12 March 1971
  • This replaces Crossroads, which is showing on Anglia and ATV but not on neighbouring Tyne Tees
  • Devil’s Doorway at 7pm was a box office bomb for MGM. Relentlessly depressing and terribly plodding, 1950s westerns were a common standby for ITV in this period
  • Anglia has Ambush at Tomahawk Gap (Columbia, 1953, colour); TTT has Gunfight at Comanche Creek (Allied Artists, 1963, colour); and ATV has Crimson Kimono (Columbia, 1959, black and white) – a film noir rather than a western – in place of the terrible Devil’s Doorway
  • An hour and a half of ABC Weekend survivors start at 8.30pm with the sitcom Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, now made by Thames and in colour
  • Billy Whitelaw returns to Armchair Theatre at 9pm, again a programme now made by Thames and in colour
  • A sitcom can go almost anywhere in the schedule quite comfortably; a play less so. Armchair Theatre was perfect Sunday night entertainment. With ABC’s move to weekdays in London, that’s not possible, but Tuesday night still seems an odd placement
  • Anglia gets the golden tones of Patrick Allen and the top tunes of Johnny Dankworth in to illustrate a Survival about dolphins at 10.30pm. No, really

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You Say

14 responses to this article

Arthur Nibble 7 September 2016 at 2:10 pm

That’s the father of politically controversial tennis player Buster Mottram teaching us how to play the sport.

That’s the father of Level 42’s keyboard player Mike Lindup (and composer of the theme tune to “Rising Damp”) helping out Johnny Dankworth in “Survival”.

“Room 222” shown on the Midland channel was an American comedy drama series about a history class set in said room of a Californian school. Made between 1969 and 1974, it lasted 112 episodes.

The excitable Keith Macklin on snooker duty. Wonder how he reacted when the final black was potted?

Of the acts on “Lift Off”, Sweet were enjoying their first hit, Chicory Tip’s was yet to arrive, and Pickettywitch’s chart time had passed, though singer Polly Brown gained notoriety by blacking up to become vocalist Sarah Leone in the duo Sweet Dreams, who enjoyed a top ten hit with a cover of Abba’s “Honey Honey”.

Mark Roberts 7 September 2016 at 4:45 pm

The Armchair Theatre episode is available on DVD!

Paul Mason 7 September 2016 at 5:52 pm

Notice how Yorkshire ITV was starting earlier in the afternoon , ignoring the conferences which happened every autumn YTV started at 3.15pm in prep for “midday to midnight” ITV the following year. I remember the Yoga For Health programme. I also remember the Odd Couple who on TV were Jack Klugman and Tony Randall in the Matthau and Lemmon roles.

Sheldon Hall 7 September 2016 at 8:42 pm

Devil’s Doorway is rather good, I think; but the grammar implies that all 1950s westerns were “Relentlessly depressing and terribly plodding”, not just that one.

Dave Rhodes 7 September 2016 at 8:55 pm

I’d suggest the tennis/yoga programmes are absolutely legitimate as adult education – and something broadcasters might consider now as an antidote to the obesity panic. Incidentally, YTV carved out quite a niche in sports instructionals in their early years, believe it or not including Fencing, as well as Skiing, with ’68 Winter Olympian, Gina Hawthorn.

As Mark rightly says, that night’s Armchair Theatre is on DVD – and an engaging hour it makes too, in spite of the off-putting title.

The versatile Keith Macklin on Snooker duty as Arthur notes – he also hosted the first series of Pot Black on BBC2 in 1969.

Victor Field 9 September 2016 at 6:08 am

” “Room 222” shown on the Midland channel was an American comedy drama series about a history class set in said room of a Californian school.”

By all accounts it’s extremely good, and given heavy involvement of James L. Brooks and Gene Reynolds (“Lou Grant,” “*A*S*H”), we safely say it is. Sadly it doesn’t seem to have been shown by Thames/LWT…

Arthur Nibble 9 September 2016 at 10:55 am

Does anyone know who the chap is on that front cover? Was he an actual well known wrestler?

garry robin simpson 14 September 2016 at 8:26 pm

Apart from Sport,News Flashes and Trade Union Congress and Party Conference”s. Why did it take until the Autumn of 1972 before The Attorney General gave I.T.V. the permission to broadcast First Report and Entertainment National and Regional Programming from the Daytime Hours of 12.00pm until the start of Children”s Television at 4.15pm and why did this not effect B.B.C. 1 and 2?. A 51 year old former Disabled carer. From the New Forest.Thanks.

Russ J Graham 14 September 2016 at 9:23 pm

The Postmaster General (not the Attorney General) had restricted all hours of broadcasting for several reasons. First, to protect productivity. The last thing the country needed in the recovery period after the war and then in the parlous economic state of the world in the 1950s and 1960s was for people to throw sickies because something good was on television. Second, to protect the BBC. Every second on air makes ITV more money; every second on air costs the BBC more money, because the BBC has a fixed income and ITV can charge what it likes for adverts and has more advert slots the longer it is on air. Third, television was seen by the great and good of society who, then as now, did not watch it, as being a time sink, a waste of mental power, the idiot box, boring, unsociable, cheap, mentally lazy. Encouraging people to consume more of it was an anathema to them. Fourth, to protect the advertising income of the newspapers (when there was a Conservative government) and to reduce ITV’s megaprofits (when there was a Labour government). Extending ITV’s hours, in particular, caused both.

It was, however, a Tory government that disclaimed the powers to restrict the hours… and then brought them back again a few months later when the oil shock and the miners’ strike threatened electricity supplies, leading to the famous ‘three-day week’. The incoming Labour government in 1974 did not take up the powers again.

garry robin simpson 14 September 2016 at 9:57 pm

Thank You Russ for replying to my post. I love your work. Is it true you are thinking of typing a History of Satellite and Cable Television? U.K. or World wide? From the New Forest. God Bless.

Russ J Graham 15 September 2016 at 12:00 pm

Nope.

garry robin simpson 15 September 2016 at 2:58 pm

Thank You. Do you have a copy of the first ever National TVTimes. With your I.T.V. Region at the top right of the front page [In my case Southern] from I believe 2nd to 9th September 1969.Does Channel Television still have it”s own version of TVTimes Magazine? Thank You.

Russ J Graham 15 September 2016 at 5:39 pm

Yes we do. A picture of the cover can be found here.

Channel Viewer became Channel Television Times became Channel TVTimes and closed when the government removed the exclusive right to publish schedules from the broadcasters in 1991, which rendered the magazine unprofitable.

Glenn Aylett 17 September 2016 at 11:21 pm

Yoga For Health was an odd one that seemed to appear across ITV in the seventies. From what I can remember of it, top American yogi Richard Hittleman put Lynn Marshall and some other woman called Cheryl through their yoga moves in a studio that looked like a Chinese bordello. No doubt it fulfilled the IBA’s requirement to be educational, but to a lot of people it looked like a bunch of stoned hippies doing strange movements in a funny looking room

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