The TVTimes tells us what’s on ABC on Sunday 28 July 1968. Things worth noting include:

• After 640+ weekends, this is ABC’s last day on air.
• Yesterday, all but one programme came from ABC themselves. Today is the exact opposite, being mostly handed over to ATV except for the Weekend Sport, the film and the final ‘goodbye’ programme.
• They come on air an hour earlier than usual, in order to catch Communion from the Lambeth Conference rather than going to a provincial church near to where Saturday’s football match had been played.
• As usual, after the Morning Service ends, the station – and the transmitters – go off air, allowing all involved to nip home (or to the pub) for Sunday lunch.

• We’re back on air for 2.10pm for adult education – barely – before heading off to Weekend Sport. In the winter this programme was called World of Soccer and, unsurprisingly, concentrated on football. There’s no football in July at this point in history, but the programme continues with a different name and different sports.
• Hours of broadcasting were limited by law at this point, but there were a couple of exceptions to this: religion, adult education and outside broadcasts (the latter restricted to 300 hours a year to stop the exception being misused for general entertainment). This means that the clock only starts ticking today at 3.20pm, despite around three hours of programmes already having been broadcast.
• Quite a catch for The Golden Shot to have got Sammy Davis Jr on one of his visits to the UK, helped by his London agents being The Grade Organisation.
• The final religious ‘closed period’ of ITV 1.0 is kicked off at 6.15pm with the Tree House Family. This is the same programme as the Tinga and Tucker Club but with Christianity hammered into it. For viewers in the Midlands, Tinga and Tucker was therefore a six-days-a-week programme for kids with Jean Morton. For viewers outside of ATVLand, the Tree House Family was a once-a-week religious programme for kids with Jean Morton. The result was confusion whenever Midlanders and outsiders talk about the programme.
• A scoop for ATV at 6.35pm as Brian Connell gets to interview Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in amongst the 500 bishops, archbishops and metropolitans (there’s a joke there somewhere) at the Lambeth Conference.
• More from ATV at 8.25pm with the summertime replacement for the Palladium Show. A classic ATV variety bill here: a presenter who is big in the States but almost unknown in the UK introduces a cast of second-string and past-prime European stars singing and dancing on stage for an hour.
• The film at 9.25 and 10.25pm is the classic The Man Who Watched Trains Go By from 1952. Quite why ABC are promoting it as – shock horror – For Adults Only is an open question, as it was rated ‘A’ in 1952 and on its DVD release in 2008 got the modern equivalent rating: PG. The TVTimes says it’s “a nightmare of violence, desire and murder”. Nope, not even in 1952, let alone in 1968 or 2018.

• Braden… on the Box at 11.10 is undersold in the northern editions of the TVTimes. In London, it functions as ATV London’s last programme, a goodbye to weekends in the region that ATV have provided since 24 September 1955 and thus an analysis of the disappearance of ITV 1.0 and the beginning of ITV 2.0. In the north it’s billed merely as a return to TV for Braden that happens to be discussing television, with the only clue that it’s focussed on the changeover being the last sentence, left over in the editing from the London description.
• We close with Goodbye from ABC at 11.55. David Hamilton and Keith Martin are in the continuity studio in Didsbury. Down in Aston, Phillip Elsmore and Sheila Kennedy are reading roughly the same script for Midlands viewers.
• TVTimes gives a big billing to this programme; TVWorld in the Midlands, 50% owned by ABC, doesn’t, giving it all of three lines and leaving the changeover itself largely unremarked across the magazine. In TVTimes regions with contract changes, they had splashed big on the new companies and formats – Granada, Yorkshire and Thames/LWT.
• The programme itself shamelessly wallows in ABC nostalgia, majoring heavily on ABC’s early years. They show clips from many obscure programmes and happily show stills where said programmes have already been lost.
• John Benson is absent from the northern version, despite being chief announcer, as he was already in London assisting Geoffrey Lugg with setting up the new presentation department of Thames.
• Also absent was John Edmunds, who had recently departed to join the BBC, but he was acknowledged as he had been a staff announcer for ABC for almost the whole life of the company.
• The northern edition talked of the Didsbury studios closing; in the Midlands, Alpha Television was continuing until nearer the launch of colour, under ATV management, so Elsmore and Kennedy thank the staff of the jointly owned facilities.
• The programme was prerecorded earlier in the evening on videotape, for the ease of providing the video and film clips and the stills, presumably, coming back live to the respective announcers for them to say a final goodbye at the end.

• Both programmes made a point of mentioning that ABC was becoming Thames and thus wasn’t disappearing completely: the same people would be making similar programmes in future. Two weeks before, John Benson had even popped up in the north to do some in-vision announcing with the new Thames Television backdrop behind him. ABC clearly saw Thames as their continuing presence in ITV!

The post Tonight’s ABC Weekend TV… in 1968 appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The TVTimes tells us what’s on ABC on Saturday 27 July 1968. Things worth noting include:

• With one exception – Rediffusion’s The Gamblers at 9.05pm – everything today is coming from ABC. No other company gets a look-in except for outside broadcast items in ABC’s own World of Sport.

• ABC opens at 1.15pm for 50 minutes of pretty heavyweight adult education programmes.
  • The last in the series of The Middle Years presented by Ludovic Kennedy. The splendidly named Hilde Himmelweit, the ever brilliant Richard Hoggart and Polly’s father Philip Toynbee discuss how it feels to be middle-aged.
  • Fit for Life at 1.40pm is also sociology on the television – the 1960s being the peak of scientific sociology being seen as a potential cure-all. The GP and the psychiatrist talking to John Pett go unnamed because of the British Medical Association’s then-rule that practicing doctors where not allowed to advertise, and appearing on TV was in itself an advertisement.
• ABC produces the last World of Sport before handing it over to London Weekend from next week. The programme started in January 1965 and was presented by Eamonn Andrews with Richard (Dickie) Davies as his deputy. With Andrews off to Thames to host their daily magazine programme Today, Davies gets a promotion, with LWT promoting Fred Dinenage to the deputy spot.
  • The sports on offer today were diving from ATV, horse racing from ABC, athletics from Harlech, motor racing from ABC and wrestling from ATV, with the whole programme billed as an Independent Television Production. It was made at Teddington.

• The repeat of Life with Cooper marks the end of Tommy’s long association with ABC. However, Tommy and the series moved to Thames and Tuesday nights, renamed Cooper King-Size, as David Hamilton points out on air.

• The TVTimes in the North makes a big deal of Opportunity Knocks! being a special devoted to the closure of ABC at Didsbury – although Yorkshire Television would make some of its programmes there whilst they waited for their own studios in Kirkstall Road to be completed. In other TVTimes regions, the magazine would simply refer to this being a special edition to mark the closure of ITV’s Didsbury studios, with ABC’s name left out of it.
  • This special edition of OpNox! had no new talent in it, instead inviting back former contestants who had gone on to bigger things and showing the television audience around the backstage areas of the studio. The special, like much of OpNox! at ABC and at Thames, was produced by Royston Mayoh.
• The Horne a’Plenty sketch show at 8.35pm was another survivor into the new Thames, lasting one more series before the death of the brilliant Kenneth Horne brought it to a premature close.
• It was not unusual for Granada and Rediffusion programmes to turn up at the weekend – and ABC programmes to pop up on weekdays – across the major contractors as well as the minors. ABC and ATV’s petty bickering over the Sunday schedules had led to ABC pointedly selling The Avengers to Rediffusion and squeezing both ATVs out of one of the most popular programmes on British television. In return, ABC picked up several Rediffusion dramas, amongst them being The Gamblers at 9.05pm, which in turn squeezed blameless Granada out of some big hitters.
  • All this created a bonanza for the schedulers at the minor ITV companies, allowing them to pick and choose which networking of The Avengers and The Gamblers and the like to show according to what they felt their region would prefer rather than just going with the usual flow.

• At 10.15pm, it’s the final ABC Armchair Theatre, it losing the ‘ABC’ in the process of moving to Thames and a less comfortable weekday slot (other regions already didn’t mention the ‘ABC’ bit either). By happy coincidence, this is the 400th edition of the strand – which viewers in London miss, as ATV London dropped the programme in favour of a repeat of Gideon’s Way, which can’t help but feel like a small bit of spite from Sir Lew.
  • In typical Armchair Theatre style, the description of ‘The Ballad of the Artificial Mash’ sounds pretty sexist until the last sentence, which hints at a slightly more feminist outcome to the plot. We may never know, as the episode is missing from the archives.
• Sunday night had no epilogue, allowing the station to make a clean break as they went off air for the last time. So 11.15pm (approximately) sees the last ever religious talk at closedown in the North – Granada had never done them and Yorkshire launched continuing that policy.
  • This epilogue is by ABC’s religious adviser, and although it doesn’t survive in the archives, take my word for it that it was truly surreal. Ian Meckenzie opened with the most bizarre and tortured metaphor in the history of late night sermons, solemnly telling viewers that “Jesus was like the Independent Television Authority” and going on to note that the “disciples are like the [ITV] contractors”. It was ludicrous.

The post Tonight’s ABC Weekend TV… in 1968 appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Associated-Rediffusion on weekdays in London was stiff and formal. ATV London on weekends was bright and friendly. The difference between the two was clear.

Granada on weekdays in the North was austere and gaunt. ABC on weekends was cosmopolitan and laid back. The difference, again, was clear.

But what to do in the Midlands? ATV’s weekday bright and friendly is not an antonym for cosmopolitan and laid back. Defining the difference between the two was much harder.

ABC Midlands worked hard on this, using different camera angles and studio layouts to that of ATV Midlands for presentation – despite the two both coming from the same room and using the same facilities at the Alpha studios in Aston.

ATV favoured putting the announcer in a fairly tight close-up, little more than head and shoulders, against a plain background with a fixed camera.

ABC had to try to be different. The presentation studio at Alpha was unusually large – not huge by any means, but bigger than the average. That allowed for some freedom for Geoffrey Lugg and the others in ABC’s presentation department. They added a full set – on casters so it could be installed on Saturday mornings and easily removed on Sunday nights – and moved the camera back to present more of the announcer’s body. A low, comfortable chair encouraged the announcer to relax and lean back into the continuity set, compared to the close-up over a desk format of ATV that forced announcers to lean forwards.

This style of presentation was sufficiently different from that of ATV Midlands to stand out – although ABC’s Howard Thomas remained frustrated that he couldn’t compete on image with his weekday rivals in Birmingham – and also different enough to be used in the north during the day until about 1960 (and on Sunday mornings until 1964) for cheaper joint continuity, without diluting the difference between Granada and ABC.

The set itself was flexible, thanks to dotting the shelves with ornaments. Seasonal differences were easy to introduce – fresh flowers in a vase in the spring, more books and fewer knick-knacks in the autumn – and easy to decorate for Christmas and other special occasions.

Of note was the unusual use of the colour version of the ABC triangle logo on the wall – ABC was gone 18 months before colour came to ITV – and, in this picture, a copy of TVWorld, the ABC-ATV jointly owned listings magazine, waiting for the announcer to use to improvise to fill time between programmes.

The post Presenting the difference appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Video of John Benson announcing at the start of The Eamonn Andrews Show courtesy of TvTimes1966 on YouTube

John Benson makes the ABC North authority announcement between Perpetuum Mobile and the ABC March, used 1959-1968

The announcer’s announcer, the “herald of them all” according to Southern’s Christopher Robbie as he prepared to close that station for the final time, was John Benson. His voice was to become famous nationally thanks to its rich tones working wonderfully in a range of television quiz shows – it’s him saying “And now, from Norwich, it’s the quiz of the week!” at the start of Sale of the Century. He was ABC North’s chief announcer for many years, going freelance upon the establishment of Thames, where he was paid by the second to announce, and made a good living from it. He died in 1995.

Video of the titles of Sale of the Century courtesy of allenjeremy on YouTube

The post John Benson appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The ITA did not specify the same level of local news coverage for ABC as for Granada and ATV Midlands. But this was more due to the UK broadcasting tradition, dating back to the pre-war BBC Regional Service on the radio. The tradition had it that there was no local news at weekends other than sports. It was assumed that a good Friday evening local bulletin would take care of the subject until the Monday.

Late afternoon in the newsroom of ABC At Large, ABC’s weekly round-up of the region’s news and affairs. The news staff are preparing bulletins for the evening’s programme while David Mahlowe, who introduces it, rehearses in front of the cameras.

The newsroom at ABC’s Manchester Studios is the nerve centre of this programme. Into it are fed pictures from the studio, film from telecine or live outside broadcast coverage of stories in the North and Midlands.

ABC At Large has been the first to highlight many problems in these areas, and has won a large audience for its liveliness and integrity.

The weekend ITV companies, ABC and ATV London could easily cover sports results, weather and traffic information as part of their continuity effort. This was okay as far as it went, but ABC in particular did not want to be seen as “less substantial” than ATV Midlands or Granada. ABC, of its own accord, chose to produce a level of regional news coverage in excess of the ITA’s weekend requirements.

Another choice was the type of regional ‘news’ that would be covered by ABC. It would not be local in the sense that we use today, but would look at issues of concern to the region as a whole. It had a proto-northern and -midland ‘cultural’ slant, in a time before devolution was thought of. It was more ‘middle class’ in tone than Granada ever managed – the sort of local news provided by Granada, with warehouses on fire in Salford, was not of interest to ABC.

It would not be economical to set up an ABC northern or midland newsroom, just to duplicate Granada’s five-day effort for ABC’s two days. Taking news from an “off the air” Granada or ATV Midlands, like LWT with Thames in the 1980s, or even paying their rival newsrooms to provide copy at weekends was unthinkable. ABC took the decision to go for stories on ‘northern and midland life’ in terms of lifestyle, music, culture, ‘events’ and sports. This had the effect of showcasing the north and midlands for their ‘non-London’ strengths.

With programmes at best two days a week, a review format was the obvious choice and making use of ABC’s luxurious outside broadcast fleet, the largest in the network, was a must. Apart from a Saturday evening roundup of sports results, and coverage of any major regional stories, ABC would concentrate on ‘looking over their area’ at the end of the week.

An early programmes developed for this purpose was ABC at Large, the programme title after which this website is named. The weekly show, initially late on Saturday evenings, though later moved to Sunday afternoons, had filmed reports as a staple. The programme was introduced for several years by David Mahlowe, who was later to become one of the ‘stalwart’ voices reading the clips on Granada’s What the Papers Say. He was also known for presenting ABC’s upmarket arts magazine Tempo, which was the South Bank Show of its time. Tim Brinton, and the young and relatively unknown Desmond Wilcox, ably assisted him.

The show would open with a roundup of local news, read by one of the continuity announcers brought specially to a main studio in Didsbury. It was a joint programme for north and midlands, although it came from Manchester, and no attempt was ever made at separate editions for ABC’s two regions.

What this meant in effect was that for the weekend only, these two Independent Television regions became one, and a tall map on the wall behind the ‘newsreader’ showed the ABC ‘region’ as white within a shaded England, the north and midlands ‘as one’. This gave the surreal impression that the part of the country that mattered was that part north of Watford, and south of that point was some rather parochial place called ‘London’ that “need not concern us at ABC”.

This extraordinary state of affairs struck one as surreal, even as a child. After a few minutes of carefully selected regional stories (upbeat, cultural, pan regional and never a warehouse fire in sight) the announcer would hand back to the main presenter, who would introduce a series of filmed features, usually prepared earlier in the week about aspects of northern and midland life.

If anything the show was a topical magazine, with a strong regional perspective, rather than a news bulletin. The programme won awards, including one for an edition in which Tim Brinton lived with a pensioner, on that pensioner’s normal budget, for a week – a new idea then. Desmond Wilcox got his first taste for social issues on the show. ABC at Large was seasonal, and ran from March to October each year from the late fifties to the mid-sixties. By then the formula required refreshing, and in 1964 ABC at Large was supplemented by ABC Weekend, taking over the vacated Saturday night slot.

This programme was more discussion orientated, but specialised in ‘provocative’ studio debate, reports and occasional controversies. In an era before ‘vox pops’, it was the journalists participating who said the provocative things to each other, then a new idea. The programme was introduced by Barry Westwood, Gillian Reynolds and Mary Griffiths, but as before the show opened with a regional news round-up, usually read by John Benson or John Edmunds in front of the surreal map of an alternative England without the south-east.

Desmond Wilcox was in evidence again, and interviewed Harold Wilson at some length on the show in 1966, with Wilson appearing in his alternative capacity as a ‘northern constituency MP’ rather than Prime Minister. Again the show was seasonal and typically ran for six or seven months of the year, though the winter months as opposed to ABC at Large in the summer. ABC Weekend ran from 1964 to 1968, but was dropped about six months before ABC closed, the team going off to London to adapt the poor Rediffusion local output into the exemplary Thames Today.

Another controversial series, The National Stakes, ran late at nights for several years in the mid-sixties. Again it specialised in strong debate, and tackled subjects then in the news and thought to be controversial, like divorce, abortion and capital punishment. It is remarkable how ABC at Large, ABC Weekend, The National Stakes and Fighting Talk are forgotten today when they were popular and award winning in their time. They were seen as topical magazines dealing in ‘issues’ rather than parochial incidents and were the direct ancestors of the ‘issue’ shows that make up much of Channel Four’s topical output today.

One early edition of ABC at Large was censured by the ITA for ‘a reckless lack of restraint’ on a social campaigning issue of the time. Howard Thomas, the MD of ABC was said to be delighted. It showed that ABC was lively, attention seeking, and dynamic – as always, a trailblazer. It was always company policy to stand out from the dour Granada or the lighter ATV Midlands. “Be as daring as you wish,” he told the producers, “it all gets us noticed.”

The post Here is the news appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

ABC WEEKEND TELEVISION – NORTH (1956-1968)

Notional Date: June 1964
Announcers: John Benson, Jill Bechley
Music: Perpetuum Mobile (Roberts), used 1962-1968; ABC March (Bliss), used 1956-1968

At one and the same time, the ABC start-up routine manages to be both an industry standard, and a daring departure from the norm. A departure, in that the choice of two company theme tunes with the Authority announcement between did away with the need for a pause in the main theme to make the announcement. This meant the company symbol could form up with its own discrete piece of music and not be reliant upon a crescendo in the main piece.

ABC were a company very conscious of the need to promote their name and image. This they did with non-stop gusto, throughout the sixties.

With a two day weekend contract in the North and Midlands, they found it essential to fight back against the five day domination of Granada and ATV respectively. Their chosen method was strong and dynamic branding, and the daily opening routine set the standard for the rest of the day.

Perpetuum Mobile was composed by Michael Roberts, a member of the company staff who wrote string music as a hobby. At three minutes and three seconds it was only just long enough to cover the minimum time the tuning signal required. Accordingly, the company symbol which followed had its own music.

Perpetuum was not the first piece ABC had used. In the early years Busy Batchelor and Mr Punch had been tried, but with a major revamp of ABC style at the end of the fifties, Perpetuum was introduced and together with its later use by ABC when they became Thames, was the stalwart of the genre for almost thirty years.

Taking ABC and Thames together, this was the longest lived start-up theme in Independent Television history, and the only one to have been used in all four major regions, over time.

The symbol form up over the second piece, the ABC March, is the principal ‘tour de force’ of television ident graphics of the sixties. It makes no bones about being an icon, intending to be one, exhorting the viewer to give respect to the authority of the station and taking a declamatory tone throughout. The pulsating triangle is screen size and dominant, the serif letters neat and symmetrical beneath.

This 28 second piece was also used as a local ident from time to time, and was always the choice for lunchtime closedowns after the Sunday morning service.

The crisp and businesslike tones of John Benson are heard between the pieces, giving the standard Authority announcement. For collectors of these licensing statements this is both definitive and stylish. The wording conveys authority, the intonation and inflection is word perfect but the use of the non-standard ‘you’re tuned to’ very daring for the time, adding real character. Amongst collectors of these gems, this is considered a great example of station identification. Listen to the way he mentions ‘channels nine and ten’ giving absolute equality of status to both.

John Benson was regarded by many in the trade, as the definitive Independent Television continuity announcer of the sixties. He was with ABC for thirteen years, and went on to work for Thames thereafter.

When ABC moved to London in 1968, they took these start-up practices with them, only substituting the Thames music for the ABC March.

This approach to company identity set the standard for many other companies to follow. The ABC Midland start-up was similar, but used John Edmunds, and later Bill Steel for the recorded announcement.

ABC and ATV were each contracted to produce 22 Sunday morning services per year, with STV, Anglia, Southern and TWW producing two each. These ABC and ATV church broadcasts came from all over the country, usually from the same town as had hosted their outside broadcast vans for football matches the day before.

The churches were often outside the company areas, but this was an economical measure that made good sense. The ABC Teddington fleet could easily cover a London service, and this was never a problem for rival ATV.

It is the elegance of this start-up routine, from an age without electronic caption creation, that inspired the original Transdiffusion children, and created their interest in television presentation as a hobby. We have a lot to thank ABC for today.

This article originally appeared on Transdiffusion before 2001. It has been republished with the addition of the animated ABC start-up recreation by Dave Jeffery.

The post Type specimen appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The post Tele-snaps: serif ident appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

⬆︎ ABC’s clock from 1956… probably. See our article on how we recreated this lost clock from three different descriptions.

The post Tele-snaps: clocks appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The ITA did not specify the same level of local news coverage for ABC as for Granada and ATV Midlands. But this was more due to the UK broadcasting tradition, dating back to the pre-war BBC Regional Service on the radio. The tradition had it that there was no local news at weekends other than sports. It was assumed that a good Friday evening local bulletin would take care of the subject until the Monday.

Late afternoon in the newsroom of ABC At Large, ABC’s weekly round-up of the region’s news and affairs. The news staff are preparing bulletins for the evening’s programme while David Mahlowe, who introduces it, rehearses in front of the cameras.

The newsroom at ABC’s Manchester Studios is the nerve centre of this programme. Into it are fed pictures from the studio, film from telecine or live outside broadcast coverage of stories in the North and Midlands.

ABC At Large has been the first to highlight many problems in these areas, and has won a large audience for its liveliness and integrity.

The weekend ITV companies, ABC and ATV London could easily cover sports results, weather and traffic information as part of their continuity effort. This was okay as far as it went, but ABC in particular did not want to be seen as “less substantial” than ATV Midlands or Granada. ABC, of its own accord, chose to produce a level of regional news coverage in excess of the ITA’s weekend requirements.

Another choice was the type of regional ‘news’ that would be covered by ABC. It would not be local in the sense that we use today, but would look at issues of concern to the region as a whole. It had a proto-northern and -midland ‘cultural’ slant, in a time before devolution was thought of. It was more ‘middle class’ in tone than Granada ever managed – the sort of local news provided by Granada, with warehouses on fire in Salford, was not of interest to ABC.

It would not be economical to set up an ABC northern or midland newsroom, just to duplicate Granada’s five-day effort for ABC’s two days. Taking news from an “off the air” Granada or ATV Midlands, like LWT with Thames in the 1980s, or even paying their rival newsrooms to provide copy at weekends was unthinkable. ABC took the decision to go for stories on ‘northern and midland life’ in terms of lifestyle, music, culture, ‘events’ and sports. This had the effect of showcasing the north and midlands for their ‘non-London’ strengths.

With programmes at best two days a week, a review format was the obvious choice and making use of ABC’s luxurious outside broadcast fleet, the largest in the network, was a must. Apart from a Saturday evening roundup of sports results, and coverage of any major regional stories, ABC would concentrate on ‘looking over their area’ at the end of the week.

The first of the programmes developed for this purpose was “ABC at Large”, the programme title after which this website is named. The weekly show, initially late on Saturday evenings, though later moved to Sunday afternoons, had filmed reports as a staple. The programme was introduced for several years by David Mahlowe, who was later to become one of the ‘stalwart’ voices reading the clips on Granada’s “What the Papers Say”. He was also known for presenting ABC’s upmarket arts magazine “Tempo”, which was the ‘South Bank Show’ of its time. Tim Brinton, and the young and relatively unknown Desmond Wilcox, ably assisted him.

The show would open with a roundup of local news, read by one of the continuity announcers brought specially to a main studio in Didsbury. It was a joint programme for north and midlands, although it came from Manchester, and no attempt was ever made at separate editions for ABC’s two regions.

What this meant in effect was that for the weekend only, these two Independent Television regions became one, and a tall map on the wall behind the ‘newsreader’ showed the ABC ‘region’ as white within a shaded England, the north and midlands ‘as one’. This gave the surreal impression that the part of the country that mattered was that part north of Watford, and south of that point was some rather parochial place called ‘London’ that “need not concern us at ABC”.

This extraordinary state of affairs struck one as surreal, even as a child. After a few minutes of carefully selected regional stories (upbeat, cultural, pan regional and never a warehouse fire in sight) the announcer would hand back to the main presenter, who would introduce a series of filmed features, usually prepared earlier in the week about aspects of northern and midland life.

If anything the show was a topical magazine, with a strong regional perspective, rather than a news bulletin. The programme won awards, including one for an edition in which Tim Brinton lived with a pensioner, on that pensioner’s normal budget, for a week – a new idea then. Desmond Wilcox got his first taste for social issues on the show. “ABC at Large” was seasonal, and ran from March to October each year from the late fifties to the mid-sixties. By then the formula required refreshing, and in 1964 “ABC at Large” was supplemented by “ABC Weekend”, taking over the vacated Saturday night slot.

This programme was more discussion orientated, but specialised in ‘provocative’ studio debate, reports and occasional controversies. In an era before ‘vox pops’, it was the journalists participating who said the provocative things to each other, then a new idea. The programme was introduced by Barry Westwood, Gillian Reynolds and Mary Griffiths, but as before the show opened with a regional news round-up, usually read by John Benson or John Edmunds in front of the surreal map of an alternative England without the south-east.

Desmond Wilcox was in evidence again, and interviewed Harold Wilson at some length on the show in 1966, with Wilson appearing in his alternative capacity as a ‘northern constituency MP’ rather than Prime Minister. Again the show was seasonal and typically ran for six or seven months of the year, though the winter months as opposed to “ABC at Large” in the summer. “ABC Weekend” ran from 1964 to 1968, but was dropped about six months before ABC closed, the team going off to London to adapt the poor Rediffusion local output into the exemplary “Thames Today”.

Another controversial series, “The National Stakes” ran late at nights for several years in the mid-sixties. Again it specialised in strong debate, and tackled subjects then in the news and thought to be controversial, like divorce, abortion and capital punishment. It is remarkable how “ABC at Large”, “ABC Weekend”, “The National Stakes” and “Fighting Talk” are forgotten today when they were popular and award winning in their time. They were seen as topical magazines dealing in ‘issues’ rather than parochial incidents and were the direct ancestors of the ‘issue’ shows that make up much of Channel Four’s topical output today.

One early edition of “ABC at Large” was censured by the ITA for ‘a reckless lack of restraint’ on a social campaigning issue of the time. Howard Thomas, the MD of ABC was said to be delighted. It showed that ABC was lively, attention seeking, and dynamic – as always, a trailblazer. It was always company policy to stand out from the dour Granada or the lighter ATV Midlands. “Be as daring as you wish,” he told the producers, “it all gets us noticed.”

The post Here is the news appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The post All things end appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

ABC was operating in a challenging environment. The post war world had spawned a younger generation, with for the first time money to spend and aspirations to fulfil. A growing national wealth in the fifties reached its apogee in the swinging England of the mid-sixties, and ABC rode the crest of a wave of cultural freedom such as the British people had not known before. It is hard now to convey the optimism of those times. In an odd way, it is the nearest the British ever came to having an equivalent of “The American Dream”. The idea that with enough effort and dedication anyone could achieve anything was very strong.

Britain at the time was of course far from being a Utopia. These impressions were more apparent than real and hardship and poverty still lurked in inner city pockets. Compared with the recessions and growing wealth gap of later years though, this was a period of real growth in disposable incomes, and an ever-higher standard of living for most. Trying to ‘better yourself’, whether by enterprise or education was a shared ambition, and young people almost for the first time, strongly identified with each other as a contemporary group. Shared TV and record buying experience were the staple of young conversation. Staying in, ‘watching the telly’ had not yet become an activity for the older generation, and even family viewing was still regarded as ‘cool’ in a way that would not be accepted today.

President Kennedy, The Beatles, Harold Wilson, Cinema films in colour, pirate radio ships like Radio Caroline and Wonderful Radio London breaking the BBC’s radio near-monopoly, mini skirts, long hair for men – these were the symbols and icons of an age that felt itself the very cutting edge of modernity. Scientific developments abounded. The space race, the dash to the moon, the first heart transplants, nuclear power, and the early uses of mainframe computer power in the private sector – these all created a “can do” culture, which had not been as strong before or since. The ‘scientist’ as expert, was the priest of a more secular age and the citizen sat at home enthralled.

The Open University was debated and planned (though not yet launched). Popular science programmes allowed the public a ‘stake’ in scientific research for the first time, and even such trivia as “Green Shield (trading) Stamps” created a feeling of sharing in mutual prosperity. With cheap package holidays, working men could travel abroad, often for the first time since D-Day in 1944. The whole ethos of the sixties, was of course an escape from the privations of the Second World War, and the conformity of the mid-fifties. People wanted, and needed a release. The very creation of ITV in 1955 was the key in the door for that release. Even in serious subjects, big change was underway. Abortions, divorce, family planning, sexual law reform, even an end to hanging – these were the touchstone issues for a new generation of politically aware youth. It was the first time that politics had broadened out from the traditional emphasis on economic issues, to take in the more social (and socialistic) concerns of the youthful idealists.

True, much of the political change was lead by politicians a generation older than the youth culture referred to, but for the first time there was a feeling that the ideas were feeding up from the governed to the governing – and being acted upon. The four major ITV companies were a power in the land. Though all four concerned themselves with all programming genres (except for Granada, which solidly refused for years, to do networked variety shows) there was nevertheless a specialisation. Rediffusion, though with a weakness for the quiz show, tended to concern itself, in the later evening anyway with remarkably heavyweight programming. ATV brought the showbusiness to ITV. Granada brought the gritty realism and good documentaries.

ABC, as the smallest of the “big four” (though ironically, with a parent corporation that was bigger than ATV or Granada enjoyed at the time) set out to bring cosmopolitan taste, and a touch of real style, to its regional and provincial franchises. Whether it was in the companies extraordinarily vivid selection of programme signature tunes, the invariably startling design of programme title graphics, the widespread use of outside broadcast facilities or the very familiarity of the station hosts – it was always a company that stood out, felt different, and achieved magic in what it set out to do.

The post Golden age appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Lew Grade’s reaction is not on record, but the pleasure of Rediffusion in landing yet another series of ABC’s The Avengers can only be imagined.

It was company policy that the weekends should be balanced and contain something for “each member of the family”. Adult education on Saturday mornings, highbrow arts for late Sunday lunch, family programmes for Sunday tea-time and even a concession to ATV’s priorities with ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’. Educate, inform, and entertain was an axiom that could have been applied to ABC as much as the BBC.

In a political move curious by today’s standards, ABC pressed the Authority to allow them to extend broadcasting hours for the sole purpose of creating more adult education material. At a time when the Open University was no more than a twinkle in Harold Wilson’s eye, ABC, in association with ATV, chose to spend more on programmes where no advertising was permitted.

Though the costs were partly softened by the permitted extra averaging of peak advertising time, it is doubtful whether ABC, or indeed ATV, ever made money on these programmes. The dividend was, however, the ethos of public service bestowed on the company by the ITA’s evident pleasure at these developments.

ABC did for adult education what Associated-Rediffusion did for schools programmes – to establish the network firmly in the public service ethos.

The post A balanced weekend appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.