The short period between the start of TVS in 1982, and the arrival of breakfast television on the ITV network in 1983 gave rise to an intriguing new habit in the history of daily start-up routines. It will always be of interest to know how regional, daily start-ups would have developed if they had not been curtailed and later swept away by the arrival of the breakfast contractor.
Whereas previously the start-up had been seen as ‘engineers territory’ with transmitter information, tuning signals and so on, suddenly the focus changed to the viewer, and TVS was among the first to use a programme menu as part of the standard sequence. Good though this idea may have seemed, it was the seminal moment that started the shift away from presentation as a tool of corporate identity, to a promotional method of audience building.
It may seem obvious in retrospect that a menu would be an ideal part of these daily events, but it had not often been attempted before. It was importing to the commercial sector something that the BBC had been doing for years. The IBA badge topped the menu slide, and was possibly the first occasion than the IBA logo had shared a caption with programme names.
The music was as usual specially commissioned. This piece together with its Central and TSW counterparts were the last of the classic ITV start-up commissions. New companies that came later were in the 24-hour television era, and had no need of start-ups or closedowns. The arrival of this piece, composed by Paul Hart, was the beginning of a slow end for start-ups.
‘The New Forest’, originally ‘New Forest Rondo’, was nicknamed ‘TVS Gallop’ by a journalist, and the unofficial name stuck with the public in the South. It was a bravura composition, conforming for the last ever time to the traditional requirement of an opening fanfare, melodic middle and crescendo to climax for final verse. Tradition was further undermined by mix to clock, BBC style, rather than dramatic symbol form up. Nevertheless, it was a good piece for the tradition to go out on…
Without the arrival of breakfast television one year later, one imagines that all start-up routines might have progressed in this direction.
‘Viewers topple engineers’ is perhaps a meaningless headline, but would have been correct. Lovers of on-screen presentation paraphernalia can only shed a tear at what might have been, and a realisation that this was the point at which the magic of ‘TV company as icon’ began to unravel, and the point at which programme titles took centre stage. Independent Television screen presentation would never be the same again
