Tonight’s Yorkshire Television… in 1969 

12 October 2016 tbs.pm/9776

TVTimes tells us what was on YTV on Sunday 12 October 1969. Things worth noting include:

  • The TVTimes is going through a phase of giving the listings in small print and highlighting six or so programmes in detail for readers. Get your tanks off my lawn
  • Kenneth Kendall takes a close look at heterosexual sex at 12.40pm in ATV’s Your Living Body, a piece of adult education that was quite dry despite its subject matter. This was 1969, remember
  • 2pm sees Sunday Sport, a local programme from YTV hosted by Southern’s ubiquitous Fred Dinenage, whom God preserve
  • The Moonraker, at 3.30pm, is a 1958 Associated British Picture Corporation costume drama, which had its budget lavished on Technicolor rather than its stars, who are all great but decidedly B-pic. For all that, it’s a perfect Sunday afternoon matinee, worth a watch while waiting for your tea
  • A glance at the Grade Organisation-represented stars, Jack Parnell’s presence with his orchestra and the content of the programme means Music Hall at 8.25 screams “ATV”. ATV London has been gone a little over a year, but LWT’s failure to supply watchable, mass-audience programmes to ITV on the weekend has seen the crew at Elstree rushing back to fill the void
  • And again at 11.40, as Tonight with David Nixon shows. Frost on Sunday is resting and LWT has nothing to replace it, until next year when they will (disastrously all round) poach Simon Dee from BBC-1
  • From Here to Eternity at 9.25pm was a monster hit when released in 1953 and appears to be making its UK television debut here. The film, which is still worth watching – go, buy it on DVD, you won’t be disappointed – won 8 Oscars; it would’ve been 9 if Columbia hadn’t put forward both Lancaster and Clift for the Best Actor nod and split the vote (it went to William Holden for his role in the Paramount wartime pot-boiler Stalag 17)

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4 responses to this article

Arthur Vasey 12 October 2016 at 2:45 pm

SUNDAY AFTERNOON FOOTBALL: Most ITV regions had their own football programme on a Sunday afternoon, covering one of the regional games played the previous Saturday – some areas had no – or very few – League teams and often had to settle for LWT’s The Big Match – YTV’s contribution was Sunday Sport – Fred Dinenage got around a lot – mostly presenting for Southern, but presenting Gambit for Anglia, occasionally deputising for Dickie Davies on World Of Sport – and here presenting YTV’s Sunday Sport programme – was he the usual presenter, or was he deputising for Keith Macklin, who I think worked for YTV?

ATV had Star Soccer and Anglia had Match Of The Week and Tyne-Tees’s contribution was Shoot – depending on what teams were playing at home, that would be the main match – in order of priority, it was Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Darlington – and they would show edited highlights from a second match from another ITV region.

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL: Not the James Herriot book – or something to do with the hymn All Things Bright And Beautiful – this was the show that replaced Tingha and Tucker – I recall it being similar, but not as good.

Absent from YTV’s schedule is The Golden Shot – did they just not show it that week – or were they just Golden Shot refuseniks and didn’t take it at all? Or put it out another night, not realising that it was meant to be shown live?

Mark Jeffries 12 October 2016 at 6:08 pm

The 5:00 item, “Julia,” is a standard issue U.S. domestic sitcom of the time, complete with widowed mom heroine–except that the mom was the great Diahann Carroll and this was the first U.S. series to portray an African-American lead as something other than a maid or servant (“Amos ‘n’ Andy” had black professionals in supporting roles, but the leads were stereotyped as cab drivers, servants or seemingly, as in the Kingfish, jobless). It was noteworthy as a rare American one-camera sitcom of the time that didn’t have a canned laugh track–creator Hal Kanter won a rare battle with NBC to not have it. (He lost two decades later, though, when 20th Television re-issued the series to syndication with a laugh track.) Although successful, the show ended after three series when Carroll and Kanter wanted to pursue other avenues. The episode shown above is the fourth episode of the first series, airing the year before in the U.S. (along with the episode of “Hawaii Five-O” at 7:25, the sixth episode of that renowned crimebuster’s first series–be there. Aloha. If ITV aired the preview trailers for the next episode that always ended with Jack Lord’s famous signoff.)

Paul Mason 13 October 2016 at 6:22 am

Slightly off topic but when Ask Aspel (a children’s TV BBC request show/hosted by Michael Aspel in the 1970s) was on on a Sunday requests for football highlights were turned down because only ITV was allowed to show football on.Sundays.
Sunday LD 1-4 football started around 1974/75.

Arthur Nibble 14 October 2016 at 11:33 am

I wonder how many people actually joined the TVT Gemini Car Club?

I didn’t realise the LWT situation was so bad that ATV London in all but name was called upon to bail out the schedules. Fascinating. Thanks for that.

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