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The
end of the 'Swinging Sixties' was proving to be a momentous time
in British history; the Beatles were about to split up, man
landed on the moon in 1969 and both ITV and BBC-1 were, at last,
permitted by the GPO to commence a colour television service.
However
all was not a bed of roses for ITV during this period - as well
as the costs incurred by the franchise reorganisation which took
place in 1968, the switchover to colour production facilities
had placed a major drain on the resources of most of the
franchises. Initially, no premium was being charged for colour
commercials – which were more expensive to make, if not show.
The franchise changes had also resulted in a temporary decline
in ITV's viewing figures - even if a particular region had kept
its own particular ITV contractor (such as Anglia and Southern),
from 1968 onwards there were various alterations to the
programming schedule made as a result of changes that had
occured elsewhere in the ITV network. These meant that popular
and long-running entertainment programmes such as ‘Double Your
Money’ and ‘Take Your Pick’ from Rediffusion suddenly
vanished from the schedules to be replaced by unfamiliar
alternatives.
This
caused the number of viewers to dip as a consequence, and this
deficit was accentuated by the fact that BBC-1 was gaining
viewers at the expense of ITV during the 1960s as a result of
producing programmes that the majority of viewers actually
wanted to watch, as opposed to the staid and thoroughly
conservative middle class BBC Television Service output of most
of the 1950s - ITV had been a 'rude wake-up call' to the BBC in
this respect.
On
top of all of this, the Emley Moor transmitter mast had recently
collapsed which proved to be a setback to the newly formed
Yorkshire franchise. Looking on the bright side though, ITV had
much to celebrate during this period and it had just completed
its longest continuous broadcast in its history, coverage of the
moon landings, which ran from 6pm on 20 July 1969 to 9am the
following morning. The coverage was an ITN production which
mixed news and commentary on the moon landing (presented by
Alastair Burnet along with a team in the 'Moon Studio' which
included TVTimes's Science Editor Peter Fairley) together with a
variety spectacular presented by David Frost which also
incorporated a phone-in session.
Plus
of course there was the launch of colour itself for ITV - ITA
chairman Lord Aylestone (successor to Lord Hill) performed the
switch on ceremony, but the number of colour TV sets that had
been sold was still relatively very small (around 270,000 by the
end of 1969) due to their expense and the very limited colour
coverage. Only four main transmitters (Crystal Palace -
LWT/Thames, Sutton Coldfield - ATV, Winter Hill - Granada, and
Emley Moor - Yorkshire) were colour capable for ITV and BBC-1
from day one, and no other transmitters or relays were equipped
to handle the UHF ITV/BBC-1 colour service at that time.
The
GPO gave the go ahead for ITV and BBC to commence colour
transmissions at midnight on the Friday-Saturday 15 November
1969, but it was several months before South/West Wales (HTV),
Southern and Central Scotland (STV) had colour capability. Tyne
Tees and parts of Anglia followed suit within a year but in all
of these cases it was still only the main transmitter of each
region that was suitably equipped for the UHF colour service and
not their relays or other transmitters within the region - the
huge cost of £250,000 per high power transmitter was to blame.
This
caused a great deal of frustration and resentment amongst
viewers in other parts of the country - especially in places
such as North Wales who for a long time had to endure watching
trailers for programmes which were only shown in colour in South
and West Wales. Some areas such as the Channel Islands were not
transmitting in colour until as late as 1975 (though in
Channel's case it was due to the technical difficulties of
establishing a permanent link to England), and, although BBC-2
was already providing colour programmes in more areas from an
earlier date, BBC-2 alone was not enough to sell colour TV's in
huge numbers.
And
not all programmes were in colour from day one - the high costs
of equipping studios was to blame here; cameras cost up to
£25,000 each and video tape recorders cost £70,000 each. LWT's
early financial problems (for example) were predominantly caused
by these very high colour-start-up costs which were only
resolved with further financial backing from people such as
Rupert Murdoch, though Thames and Harlech/HTV had been assisted
by the foresight provided by their predecessors (ABC and TWW
respectively) in preparing for colour. It is ironic that the two
franchises which had done more than most in terms of prior
preparation had been franchise losers (though for ABC it was
more akin to a major reorganisation).
In
conclusion, 1969 had proven to be simultaneously traumatic,
challenging and invigorating for ITV. It no longer ruled the
popular roost - BBC-1 had turned into a serious and formidable
competitor - and the new franchises still had significant
teething problems (technical, logistical and in terms of gaining
the loyalty of viewers), but the light was most certainly
visible at the end of the tunnel. ITV still wanted a second
channel to compete with the BBC 'on equal terms' (as ITV
perceived - wrongly - to be the situation) but political
upheavals were to postpone such a move for another twelve years
(or indeed twenty-eight, since the fourth channel was awarded to
a separate organisation). But with hindsight the various
franchises had more than enough to contend with during the final
years of the 1960s and the introduction of an 'ITV2' could well
have been the undoing of much of the ITV network if it had been
introduced simultaneously with the franchise changes. |
