Tonight’s HTV and Channel 4… in 1990 

19 June 2018 tbs.pm/66792

The TVTimes tells us what’s on HTV and Channel 4 on Tuesday 19 June 1990. Things worth noting include…

On HTV:

  • For many years made in-house by Yorkshire Television, the returning series of Farmhouse Kitchen is now produced by an independent company – a possible pre-emptive preparation for the Broadcasting Act to be passed by Parliament on 1 November.
  • To accommodate live coverage of the World Cup, the early-evening regional news is truncated to a 15 minute slot, with subsequent programmes pulled ahead by a quarter of an hour – or in the case of The Bill, three-quarters of an hour.
  • This evening’s football fixture is a first-round match from Group A of the tournament, as host nation Italy face a nation competing in what would be their last World Cup campaign in the same guise. Goals each by Salvatore Schillaci (top scorer of the tournament) and Roberto Baggio sealed victory for the Italians, alongside top place in the qualifying group, although Czechoslovakia had the consolation of qualifying for the second round following earlier wins against the other teams in the group: United States and Austria. Highlights of their tie on the same day are scattered throughout the broadcast.
  • (For the record, the BBC’s World Cup focus on this day was on Group D, with live coverage of West Germany – another team playing under that particular moniker for the last time – against Colombia on BBC-2 starting at 4.30pm, incorporating highlights of the other match in that group, Yugoslavia – again, never to be part of a World Cup campaign after this tournament – versus the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the match promoted by a patriotic Ulrika Jonsson and Lorraine Kelly on the cover of this edition of TVTimes took place on Saturday 16 June, with the Scots trumping the Swedes by two goals to one.)
  • There are three windows within the day’s ITV schedule with regional variations: 1.20 to 3.15; 5.10 to 6.45; and post-News at Ten. HTV are still running with their ‘Night Club’ strand for late-night broadcasting, which brings together classic American drama, a French film, CBS’ ongoing Sunday evening ‘newsmagazine’, and an edition of About Britain from one of the smaller ITV companies. Coverage of a tennis tournament means Central viewers see the evening’s film an hour later than in other parts of the country.

On Channel 4:

  • Starting the day is The Art of Landscape, a combination of relaxing imagery and music which has featured on numerous television channels since 1987, most recently as a programme strand on the Information TV network on Sky Digital platform.
  • What would today be classed as “social experiment television”, The Television Village at 8.00pm was structured, and is certainly promoted by TVTimes, as being more in the vein of Right to Reply than Gogglebox. While up against News at Ten is Sticky Moments, a platform which allowed Julian Clary to display more of his true persona than his earlier and subsequent work with the BBC and ITV.

External links

You Say

9 responses to this article

Dave Rhodes 19 June 2018 at 1:04 pm

The ‘indie’ behind Farmhouse Kitchen is the creation of Graham and Mary Watts – ex YTV staffers. More on their background here: http://www.pipspatch.com/2013/03/19/mary-and-graham-watts/

ISTR Marilyn Webb and husband producing a gardening programme for Yorkshire via their indie around this time.

Arthur Nibble 19 June 2018 at 1:42 pm

“Coronation Street” at 1.20 on TSW?

“Jake And The Fatman” (shown at owl time on Granada and TSW) starred William “Cannon” Conrad as J. L. “Fatman” McCabe in a crime drama from CBS which lasted 105 episodes.

“Set of Six” on Channel 4 starred Rowland Rivron as each of the Scrote sextuplets in different episodes. Not Rowland’s only Channel 4 serial comic outing, as he’d teamed up with Jools Holland the previous year for “The Groovy Fellers”, which was a very rare breed – a comedy made by Border!

Jason D'Arcy 19 June 2018 at 1:43 pm

I’m not keen on all those messy new timings for daytime programming… sending my OCD off! It’s due to the News at 5.40pm no doubt which was brought in a year before. This was amended thankfully.

Ray Oliver 19 June 2018 at 4:00 pm

Remembering ‘Sticky Moments”: a sort of cut-down, “gayed-up” version of the Generation Game, always made me wish that the BBC would try Julian Clary out on the real thing. I can’t see him being any worse than the most recent version!

Robert Michael Fearn 19 June 2018 at 7:14 pm

No S4C listings? How very bizarre! Viewers in the Principality would of been a bit cheesed off.

Paul Mason 23 June 2018 at 12:34 am

The people of Wales would only have to wait one more year before HTV and S4C listings could be found in Radio and TV Times from 1991 onwards.

Alan Keeling 26 June 2018 at 3:38 pm

Channel Four revived The Lone Ranger in 1989, in a suitable 5pm slot and screened all eight seasons of the series until sometime in 1994.

Andrew M Swift 27 July 2020 at 1:21 am

The Sullivans being shown on HTV when many regions had completed the run. The run being transmitted on HTV is of an episode post-WW2 as Penny Downie (Patti Sullivan, wife of Tom) is credited here

Andrew M Swift 27 July 2020 at 1:26 am

Incidentally Penny Downie has lived and worked over here since the mid-1980s guest-starring in countless shows on British TV.

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