Truisms all, but particularly pertinent to television; a virile young industry, learning fast, changing with the pattern of public demand, and growing at the accelerated pace of all development in electronics processes.

As a company ABC TV has always been very awake to this changing face. While establishing its resources, it has also been especially busy anticipating the demands of promising and probable developments.

A switching of the line standards was something to expect. The arrival of colour television was another. Decisions have now been taken on the standards, but in 1950 – when the new technical block was being planned for Teddington – the questions was still wide open, and suggested the adoption of equipment that would work equally well on 405, 525 or 625. Fortunately manufacturers, too, were then beginning to recognise this need and cameras and monitors designed for quick switching between standards were on the way.

But as very little had been done to produce equipment for signal switching and distribution in a multi-standard form, ABC engineers started development along these lines themselves. And with the obvious advantages then being offered by transistorisation they naturally concentrated on designing equipment that employed this new technique to the full. The result has been a complete range of modular devices for the routing of signals, and with a performance capable of handling colour – another facet of the future ABC had been investigating in the most practical way possible, through experimentation.

As the BBC were already putting a great deal of effort and brainpower into their design for British colour television, based on the American NTSC system, ABC decided that and experimental and development work they did would be of more value if directed at the embryo SECAM system. Out of this pioneering work, done with the co-operation of GEC, has come some very worthwhile equipment refinements, real flexibility and a lot of novel advantages in the arrangement and design of their technical facilities, and a valuable familiarity with the problems that colour television will bring.

And, most practical of all, it has now led to the SECAM system being given high-power transmission trials. One of the best examples of the Company’s foresight is embodied in the very skeleton of the new Teddington block.

With the future promising an influx of new equipment, and new applications of technical space calling for massive reshuffling of facilities, ABC introduced a unique element into the design of the block. The entire floor of the technical area is a pre-cast concrete network of one-foot square holes, supported over a void that can be pressurised with fresh air during operation and is deep enough to crawl in.

Above the ceiling is a similar void that can be exhausted. As a result, equipment can be placed wherever it is needed, and supplied with cooling air and cables simply by cutting corresponding holes in the tiles covering the floor and ceiling grills.

Other examples of their eye to the future can be found in the equipment they have chosen; telecine and VTR machines that are instantly switchable between line standards, easily and quickly adaptable for colour; lighting installations with sufficient reserve capacity for colour productions.

Or in the arrangement of their facilities; the interlocking of production areas and routing of signals through one, central apparatus area; the special VTR suite equipped for electronic editing.

Perhaps the best composite example of ABC’s planning is Teddington as a whole. It is one of the most modern studio centres in Europe. But the drive towards tomorrow is the same throughout the Company.

Written for and published in ‘ABC in Focus’, 1963

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In the midlands, the only economic option was to bunk up with rival weekday company ATV. Neither company had set its heart on the midlands and neither saw its ultimate future to lie there. With no real centre to the region (Birmingham was the official centre, but Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby all claimed to be more vibrant) both ‘Associateds’ felt that, with large London production facilities available nearby, the midlands was just too close to support two more studio buildings.

The result of this apparent lack of faith was the birth of Alpha Television. Based in the run down industrial area of Aston, a former village subsumed into the sprawl of Birmingham, the joint company provided facilities to both companies with an agreeable economy of scale from the beginning.

If the idea of joint facilities – nothing new in London or the midlands – was broached by ABC when starting operations in the north, no record remains of Granada’s response. Quay Street remained a Granada-exclusive centre, and ABC never operated from there.

Instead, the area west of the Pennines was scoured in order to find a premises that matched 3 criteria:

1. That it was large enough to house 3 studios;
2. It was already owned by ABPC or at least available cheaply;
3. If it was owned by ABPC, they would not feel the loss through the change of use.

Didsbury was the answer. This well-to-do suburb of Manchester was well connected by road and rail, close enough to get to the important centres of the region, far enough from the city to be quiet. Above all it contained a building that matched all three criteria, more or less – the ABC Capital Cinema.

The Capital was large enough for one main stage with audience on the ground floor, one videoing stage on the first floor, with a presentation and news studio (no more than a room) tucked away to the side of the smaller stage.

The building, obviously, was already in the family; the remaining criterion – that the parent corporation should not be put out by its loss – was fulfilled easily. The cinema operations of ABPC, while not loss making, were beginning to feel the pinch as tastes changed. The Capital wasn’t losing money – but it wasn’t making enough for ABPC to notice the loss.

To the sound of anguished disapproval from local residents, Associated British Cinemas announced the closure of the Capital, Didsbury; at the same time ABPC announced the location of their new northern studios. The two announcements concerned the same building.

The comparatively small space provided by the Capital Studios compared to the likes of Granada’s Quay Street and Associated-Rediffusion’s grand plans in Wembley were soon apparent. Space in an office block in the centre of Manchester was purchased for the advertising department – a building that to this day retains the name “Television House” and a suite of offices that now houses – of all things – the Independent Television Commission’s northern office.

ABC also went on to develop small news studios and advertising offices elsewhere in its region (the ABC cinema in Liverpool gave up an upstairs office to ABC Weekend’s news department, while ABC’s famously pushy advertising executives moved into Permanent House in Leeds, uncomfortably close to both Granada and Associated-Rediffusion’s own northern sales departments).

But for all this, the towns of Didsbury, Aston and Teddington were to be forever linked in the minds of viewers to ABC Weekend TV.

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When ABC Weekend TV upped-sticks and moved to London to become Thames Television, the famous studios at Didsbury were consigned to history.

Ironically, the last productions to be made at Didsbury were made by ABC on behalf of Yorkshire Television, who were had begun broadcasting from Leeds, reflecting the new geographical (as opposed to chronological) split in the north.

After production finally ceased at Didsbury – YTV having completed its Kirkstall Road studios – the building eventually ended up under control of a university, who used it for cinema and television studies.

All things end, and so it was with the Capitol Studios, pulled down to make room for senior citizens accommodation. One is left wondering if the new inhabitants are aware that they are sleeping, eating and socialising in the same space that once rang with the sound of Hughie Green offering opportunity a knock at someone’s door, Steed delivering a blow to an assailant, or even a man in a booth saying “ABC, your weekend television in the north”

Photos courtesy of Kif Bowden-Smith, Tim Disney and Hector Hill

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