Before the advent of 24 hour television, before breakfast television, back when the hours of British television were strictly controlled by the government, this was your morning's entertainment. The ITA strictly regulated what appeared before the programmes began and the running order was always identical. A typical Saturday pre-programme schedule would be (according to the ITA Yearbook of the time):

• 10:00.00 ITA Testcard (liable to interruption)
  13:00.00 Black screen in silence
  13:10.00 ITA Tuning Caption
  13:10.30 Start-up music begins over ITA Tuning Caption
  13:13.37 ITA authority announcement
  13:13.50 Company symbol appears
  13:14.00 Company identification and announcements
  13:14.30 Production company ident for following programme
  13:15.00 FIRST PROGRAMME

This varied according to the company and region, some having longer or shorter pieces of music than the average as their opening tunes. Because the limits on broadcast hours did not include certain material (presentation material did not count, we are pleased to note!), companies could come on air with an opening sequence in the morning, have schools or adult education programmes, shut down, reopen with an opening sequence for news, shut down, reopen with an opening sequence for sport or an outside broadcast, shut down, then finally reopen with a (often extended) opening sequence in time for children's programmes or general entertainment in the evening.

All in all, it made each day's television an 'event' - so much so that if the start-up music was ever changed (and it was the same day in, day out for each broadcaster), television companies were flooded with complaints. The tunes themselves were specially commissioned by the board of each company to fit into their corporate identity.