We continue with our look at ITV basically falling headfirst into a skip with some press reports of the time (mainly from the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, as those are the two papers I have easiest access to)…
What The Papers Said
As you can imagine, ITV going into a coma was major news:
Daily Mirror, Wednesday 8th August 1979 – Front Page
ALL ITV programmes could be blacked out by the weekend. […] Singer Andy Williams was turned away yesterday when he went to ATV’s Elstree studios to appear on the Muppet Show. Thames say they may have to scrap the latest series of comedian Tom O’Connor’s London Night Out.
And Yorkshire have had to postpone recording the next Sandbaggers secret service series and Derek Nimmo’s Life Begins at Forty. Harlech stopped transmitting last night when The TV technicians started nationwide guerilla action after they were offered a 20 per cent rise in reply to their demand for 25 per cent.
Tempers frayed when workers were suspended for refusing to work overtime and others walked out in protest.
A spokesman for ACTT, the largest union involved in the dispute, said they had offered to go to arbitration, but ITV had turned them down.
Note the early version of the apology caption in the corner of the article, snapped by the Mirror off a telly – “We are sorry to tell you that there will be no further programmes on this channel today. We will give you more information tomorrow.” And because I’m that sort of person, I tried to recreate it in a teletext editor.
From page 16 of the same edition of the Mirror, we see what was meant to be broadcast on Thames that day, instead of the blue caption – note the oddly hopeful statement indicating “Industrial action may affect ITV programmes”. Bit of an understatement, that…
The Daily Express, front page, 8th August 1979 – includes details on the failed HTV news broadcast. Meanwhile, the first person to appear on Crossroads has died. Babylon (70s ITV) is burning!
From the TV listings of the same edition of The Express. This is what may have been shown on these ITV regions as it slipped over the edge, allowing for all sorts of random things to be replaced with blue screens…
Of special note is the fact that Sophia Loren might have been on at 10:35 in the morning in Anglia. Not a show of any kind, just Sophia Loren, on her own? I mean, obviously not – it must have been a brief documentary about her or something – but the idea of her just popping up and reading out kid’s birthdays (right in the middle of the usual summer morning kid’s programmes) is too amusing to ignore.
Imagine if she linked into Runaround at the end, and then apologised when it didn’t appear. Imagine Sophia Loren talking about “striking members of the ACTT”.
Skipping ahead to Saturday 11th August, the Daily Mirror confirms the nationwide blackout. At this point there’s still some vague hope (outside of the actual industry, perhaps) that it might be sorted out within the next week.
Unfortunately the recent developments have revealed how far ahead the Mirror’s TV coverage is written. “Britain’s Strongest Man” is “wacky”?
“But you’ve got to search hard for anything worthwhile.” The IBA Engineering Announcements are worth a look, Mirror TV Critic Bloke!
And here we have a section of the front page of the Express that same Saturday. Pretty much the same thing as before with no further new information – but check out that side article! RABIES IS HERE! RABIES MEANS DEATH! And then the actual article casually reveals that it was all a false alarm. Classic Express. The twats.
That edition’s TV listings are also caught on the hop. The now-familiar disclaimer looks absurdly optimistic.
Sadly, it seems that we’ll never find out what the bloody hell “BONKERS with Cleo Laine” was all about. The mind boggles at what that might have entailed. “Jazz ‘n’ jewellery, jazz ‘n’ jewellery…“
The following Monday’s Daily Mirror (13th August 1979) now has a slightly more realistic disclaimer: “ITV programmes are published in case there is a settlement of the industrial action which has stopped broadcasts.”
No Jamie And The Magic Torch today. Or “Sidekicks”, whatever that was – it seems to have been considered important enough to print in capitals.
But what was going on over in Jersey?
Are you ready for a through analysis of Channel Televison’s listings, covering the late summer and early autumn of 1979? Well, you’d better be, or else the Major will have some stern words to say to you upon your next visit to Benest’s of Milbrook (and FINE PRICE! ST. CLEMENT’S CLOSE ROAD).
As you might have guessed, upon the first Monday after the strike began all the national newspapers haven’t yet adjusted to whatever the new schedules of ITV’s only station were. This is what the Daily Mirror lists on that date:
Lucas Tanner probably went out as usual, but would have probably been joined by a couple of other films and inported ITC shows. By Tuesday, the various TV newspaper listings are being adjusted to acommodate the strike action.
The Mirror only prints the London and Midland ITV listings in the vain hope of everyone having a meeting and sorting everything out, along with the still inaccurate Channel listings.
By August 17th it’s pretty clear that this state of affairs isn’t being resolved any time soon, although the papers are still printing what would have been on normally in London and the Midlands. However, they do seem to be printing Channel’s actual line up now. From the Mirror on this day:
The giveaway being that you can see their local news has been extended to a full hour – which apparently included a brief rundown of national / international news. This is said to have involved someone driving to the northernmost part of the islands, switching the car radio to Radio 4, hurriedly scribbling down everything that was said, and then racing back to the studios to re-write it into a script.
In the same edition and on the same page, mention is made of the choice every viewer has at this point – watch the two BBC channels, or nothing at all. Everybody naturally goes for the former.
Despite the very 70s / 80s complaint of TOO MANY REPEATS COME ON BBC, this article makes no mention of the fact that one of them is Spike Milligan’s Q (Q7, to be precise). Despite Spike himself being pictured right above this column, the writer goes on at length about Des O’Connor Tonight, which was on BBC1 at that point before the eventual move to Thames.
Admittedly this would be because it’s only being repeated in the London area. The reason being this.
On Saturday 18 August, the Daily Mirror has a weird spell of desperate, screaming denial by printing a full range of ITV programmes that are not being broadcast. That’s because they’d already set the pages out beforehand and had to print them, but I like the idea of everyone at a newspaper office going insane from no BJ And The Bear.
However, the same edition does have this interesting little nugget of info in a corner of the page:
Your TV Top Ten
With all areas except Channel hit by the ITV dispute BBC-1 had the top ten to itself in the week ended August 12. Here are the JICTAR ratings:
1 Seaside Special
2 Des O’Connor Tonight
3 To Catch a Thief
4 Sword of Justice
5 It Ain’t Half Hot Mum
6 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
7 Return to Paradise
8 Star Trek
9 The Golden Fiddle Awards
10 Juke Box Jury
This is a bit of a diversion, but here’s what the less recognisable bits of that Top 10 might be. “To Catch A Thief” was most likely the Alfred Hitchcock film from 1955. “Sword Of Justice” was a Glen A. Larson show imported from the States, about “the weekly adventures of wealthy playboy soldier-of-fortune Jack Cole“.
Meanwhile, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is again very probably an old movie version, perhaps the 1939 one with Charles Laughton – there was another from 1923 starring Lon Chaney, but as that was a silent film it’s less likely.
“Return To Paradise” was possibly yet another old movie, this time a Gary Cooper vehicle from 1953 (“An American drifter comes to a remote Polynesian island controlled by a Puritanical missionary and turns the social life of the island upside-down“).
Finally, precisely what “The Golden Fiddle Awards” was is unclear, although a quick search for it does turn up a Daily Record-sponsored compilation LP released the same year, featuring “the 250 players of the Golden Fiddle Orchestra and the 150 singers of the Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus“. Okay then!
Monday 20 August 1979 seems to have been the date where the newspapers were able to fully adjust their page layouts to fit the situation, finally dropping the intended ITV schedules and just printing Channel’s. This is from the Mirror on 22nd August:
The pictured movie at 8.25, “Seven Ways From Sundown”, clearly stars one Venetia Stevenson. According to The Movie Database, this is a Western about the following: “A Texas Ranger must capture an outlaw and take him-in, while tangling with savage Apaches and greedy bounty-hunters on the way back to jail“. So, standard cowboy shite.
And if you’re wondering what in the Christ “Kum Kum” is, it’s a Japanese anime that was also shown in some other ITV regions (not at this time, obviously) – HTV also ran it in the late 70s and very early 80s.
…But why isn’t Coronation Street on in Guernsey?
Finally, a quick look at the average viewer’s odd conception of what Channel TV was broadcasting at this point. Including, it would seem, a tabloid newspaper journalist.
MISSING “Crossroads”? Desperate for Ena? Longing to see Reggie and Anna again?
I was — and then I remembered the Channel[.]
So I packed a toothbrush and headed for Jersey which boasts the only ITV company still operating during the strike.
As I arrived, the sun was simmering the sea and blistering the bodies out in front of the hotel. But there was no time for all that.
My fingers trembled as pushed the “on” button.
Saturday afternoon – my first dose of “World of Sport” for weeks. Who would be on, I wondered, as the set warmed to life.
It was the test card – Channel doesn’t start broadcasting till 5 o’clock.
I dunked my disappointment in a cup of tea and settled down to wait – and watched cricket – on the Beeb.
It was the sort of Indian summer I hadn’t planned. But come seven o’clock it would be a whole new ball-game. “The Bionic Woman” would be on. It said so in the local paper.
Sure enough, there she was. My little electronic lovely doing battle with the baddies of darkest Africa. As I watched her triumphing over evil, I relaxed like a junkie after his first fix.
So this was what ITV was like. The memories flooded back.
The rest of the article features a lot of random tourists saying how they only miss the racing, or how they’re more interested in the Michael Caine film being shown on BBC1, or how they didn’t realise ITV was still going over here. It’s quite a contrast to how local viewers are said to have praised this new version of the service.
And then there’s a quote from Roy and Mary Smith, a couple who went on holiday specifically to the Channel Islands just to watch ITV. According to Mary:
I booked our holiday thinking we could see all our telly favourites. I expected to watch “Coronation Street” and “Crossroads” when I got here. Instead all I’ve found is old American films. It’s such a disappointment.
A rather more serious quote comes from Ken Killip, Channel’s managing director:
Our local advertising has increased since the start of the dispute, but because we have a marketing arrangement with Westward, our national advertising has died. There’s no doubt that if the strike goes on for much longer we would be in serious trouble.
NEXT TIME: Finally! We’re welcomed, welcomed, welcomed home...