22nd September 1955 and Independent Television launches in London.  The culmination of almost 10 years of campaigning, arguments and political divisions and at 7.15pm the band of the British Grenadiers plays Cockaigne by Elgar and Leslie Mitchell, one of the BBC's first television voices, announces "This is London.  This is channel 9 on Band III, which brings you programmes by Associated- Rediffusion, every week from Monday to Friday".

Of course, although this was ITV's first night - and also the first night for TV commercials with Gibbs SR leading the pack - it is a joint production of both ATV and AR, so perhaps doesn't count as AR's true first night.

The BBC's television service didn't respond to the challenge of "the commercial" on the night.  But the BBC Light Programme on 1500 metres Long Wave did.  At just before 7pm, they killed Grace Archer, a matter of no little interest to the 80% of the country out of reach of the flickering picture of the new service.

AR's first full night, alone, was on the Friday.  And they were literally alone.  Another commercial company would come on air on Saturday, but in the same region.  So 5 days a week, AR had no choice but to make any UK-originated material it chose to show.  Almost 35 hours to be filled from their own resources.  Needless to say, money began to hemorrhage from both companies during the following week.

It would be around 4 months before the Birmingham station would open, introducing a new contractor in ABC into the weekends to compete with ATV in London and supply programming to AR on telecine.  Only at that point would ATV, in its Midlands guise, start to trade with AR, providing all but the best programming to supplement AR's London output.