Chorussed the fans –

“We love you Beatles,

Oh! yes we do.

Wherever you go,

We’ll follow you.

When you are not near us

We are blue.

Oh! Beatles, we love you”.

Within twenty-four hours of The Beatles’ triumphant return from America, the four undisputed kings of the pop-world were at Teddington rehearsing for their first ‘home again’ TV show – ABC’s “Big Night Out”.

George, Paul, John and Ringo had landed at London Airport in the cold, grey hours of Saturday morning to be greeted by the screams of 10,000 eager and delighted fans. And no less tumultuous a welcome awaited the Liverpool group when they arrived at the studios to keep their date with ABC.

Fans Gather Overnight
Beatles fans began to gather outside the studio gates hours in advance of the planned arrival of the four boys. Many hundreds of youngsters had made their way to Teddington straight after a long vigil at the airport the day before and had camped out all night in the hope of catching yet another fleeting glimpse of their idols.

“They’re Coming Up by Boat!”
ABC officials, concerned for the safety of their much mobbed star guests, had worked out an elaborate plan to dodge the mad, wild, scrambling crowd gathered around the gates. From a secret rendezvous the Beatles were taken by car to the river and transferred to a police launch for the rest of the journey to Teddington. But somehow the secret leaked out and word quickly spread among the fans, “They’re coming up by boat.”

Riverside Pandemonium
For a time then it was pandemonium. Crush barriers and commissionaires were swept aside as thousands of Beatlemaniacs rushed to throng the river bank. Harrassed [sic] but good natured ABC security guards finally managed to restore some semblance of order. But not before several over-eager teenagers had fallen into the water and been dragged back on the bank again, soaked to the skin.

By the time the police launch drew alongside the landing stage shortly after 11.00 a.m., excitement was at fever pitch. The Beatles, standing in the cockpit and smiling broadly, acknowledged a roar of greeting, stepped ashore, paused for a moment for the photographers and then, with a final wave to their fans, made a dash for the safety of Studio 1.

Half-an-hour later the rehearsals for “Big Night Out” were under way and, as the boys went through their paces with programme hosts Mike and Bernie Winters, other TV cameras were recording the scene for inclusion in another ABC scoop, “The Beatles Are Back!” – a 30 minute documentary covering the first 48 hours of their return to Britain.

Split Second Timing
Produced by Lloyd Shirley and directed by Tom Clegg, “The Beatles are Back!”, which was transmitted over the National Network on Sunday night, was, in itself, a major achievement in television programming and split second timing. Researchers, writers, cameramen and production staff had worked around the clock from early on Saturday morning evolving a format, shooting material on film or video tape, marrying the two together and getting the programme on the air in time to live up to ABC’s reputation for spot-on technicality.

Said producer Lloyd Shirley, “It was a race against time and there were moments when it looked as though we couldn’t possibly make it on schedule. But we had a great team and the Beatles couldn’t have been more helpful so everything worked fine.”

It was not until hours after “The Beatles Are Back!!” had gone out over the air that George, Paul, John and Ringo finally left Teddington, their recording stint over and “Big Night Out” safely on the shelf. It had been another long and tiring day. And outside in the darkness the patient fans were still waiting.

The Beatles and all the other top Mersey groups are heading for Montreux. Not in person but on videotape – to the festival of world TV light entertainment in April.

Official Entry
ABC TV learnt this week that their special Lucky Stars show ‘The Merseybeats’ which was transmitted on the ITV Network last December, has been selected as the official Independent Television entry for the Montreux Golden Rose Award.

Golden Rose
Another accolade for the Mersey groups, Thank Your Lucky Stars, producer Philip Jones and ABC TV who are hoping to add the Golden Rose to the two Melody Maker awards for the top pop-music show won by Lucky Stars over the last two years.

ABC TV plan to give viewers across the National Network more exciting light entertainment shows, with Sunday night series ‘Blackpool – Night Out’ in the summer.

Top Performers
Starting on July 5th and continuing for 10 weeks in the Sunday Palladium slot, this will be a one-hour variety show transmitted live from ABC’s new theatre at Blackpool. As well as featuring much of the comedy and musical talent that abounds in the North today, the show will star all the top-line performers in Blackpool for the summer season.

‘Blackpool – Night Out’ will be the best evening of entertainment that ABC TV has brought viewers yet.

With the story of ABC TV’s Beatles scoop comes more news of the Company’s success in the light entertainment field. ‘Big Night Out’ – the popular variety show which viewers in the rest of the country see on Saturday nights – is to be screened on the London ITV channel on Tuesdays by Associated-Rediffusion, the weekday contractor. First London screening will be The Beatles’ home-coming show on March 3rd at 8.0 p.m.

When they heard about the deal, Mike and Bernie Winters – regular hosts and comedians on ‘Big Night Out’ – said “We are excited at the news, it’s great that the London audience will get to see the show – now everybody in the country will see The Beatles and see us too”.

Programme Tribute
A-R’s decision to take ‘Big Night Out’ is the crowning tribute to a show which has been building a great reputation for itself amongst ABC TV’s own weekend audience in the North and Midlands. The programme was devised in June 1962 with a strong regional flavour, and billing a lot of the tremendous variety talent that exists in ABC TV’s area. Today the show has won national acclaim – and even international recognition when it was sold to Australia last summer. ABC TV has even bigger plans for maintaining the show’s success – and viewers across the whole country can look forward to some very exciting Big Nights Out in the near future.

ABC’s candid cameramen capture more moments from the Great Day at Teddington. The four boys seconds before they stepped ashore, Paul McCartney smiling a greeting to his excited fans, and George Harrison and John Lennon in conversation during a break in the ‘Big Night Out’ rehearsals.

On January 19th 1963, four hesitant, rather young lads turned up nervously at the main entrance to ABC’s Teddington studios, to appear for the first time on TV in ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’. No one took any notice of them arriving. The commissionaire had their names, but to the rest of the world they were virtually unknown. On the scripts in their hands, their names appeared way down the bill.

Back in Style
Today – only a little over a year later – those same four boys returned in triumph to Teddington Studios. But this time it was through the back way, by river, because their entry to the front of the studios was barred by thousands of screaming and struggling girls who had waited, many of them all night, to catch a glimpse of their idols and the biggest rave Britain (and now the States) has known since the war . . . The Beatles.

First Producer
Waiting to welcome the boys was producer Philip Jones, who directed their debut on ABC TV last year. Phil – who has made a big name for himself in TV light entertainment with Lucky Stars, Big Night Out and ABC spectaculars starring Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee – will be directing the Beatles again tonight on their first British TV show since their return from America.

The post Beatles big TV scoop!! appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The man behind the
TV legend – by
MOLLY SEYMOUR

You know Eamonn Andrews as a star of the television screen… the man with the well-known face and voice. But Eamonn has other loves beside audiences.

Those other loves are called Grainne and Emma — his wife and daughter.

On your television screen, he is very much in control. Smoothly efficient and never the man to get flustered. Off screen, he likes to relax in his home — for he believes a home should look lived-in.

Eamonn was born in Synge Street, the same Dublin street which bred George Bernard Shaw. He was the eldest of five sons in a desperately poor family.

He knew the difficulties of shrinking housekeeping money, of parents who were often in fear of running into debt and he ran errands and bought what bits he could to help his mother out.

One day, he used to tell himself, I shall have a home of my own. He has it now. It stands at Chiswick, and the Thames flows past the bottom of the garden. Grainne planned all the decorations, a white home, with pale yellow shutters buttoned back from windows draped with fragile curtains.

Inside, there are close-fitting saxe-blue carpets everywhere, and rose-red chairs. The lamps — empire pattern and gilded — have the same rose-red shades and there is the warmth of real friendliness about the place. There are enchanting mirror-lined niches in which the most fascinating indoor plants stand.

They both adore flowers and their garden is a picture. Grainne confesses that she used to paint flowers, and will again when she has the time. You can see, as soon as you step inside, that this house is the home of lovers.

Eamonn met Grainne at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. It was, he says, love at first sight, though it took him two years to pop tne question.

Theirs was a dream wedding, with a glorious procession of bridesmaids carrying enormous sprays of carnations — the happiest day of his life, Eamonn says.

But bad luck turns up in strange ways. Grainne was struck down with a tubercular hip, and spent nine months in hospital. For a long time no one was sure whether she would lose her leg, or spend the rest of her life on crutches, perhaps permanently lame.

Luck, and first-class medical attention were with her, and she recovered.

Because they had no child, Grainne suggested they should adopt one. Eamonn was all for it, and they set about the search.

This was perhaps the happiest time of all for them and they were so delighted with the idea that they didn’t worry whether their adopted child would be a boy or girl.

Eamonn was at work on a television show when a message came from Grainne. She simply must speak to him, she said. She had heard from the home that a baby girl was available might she fetch the little thing? The answer was: “Of course.”

This was one of the moments when Eamonn would most liked to have been with her. But duty was duty, and he had to stay. The moment the show was over. Eamonn shot down to Chiswick in his car — and has never done the trip so fast since.

Grainne must have heard him coming, for she opened the door to him, the baby in her arms. Perhaps that was one of the supreme moments in their lives.

They called her Emma. Today she is between two and three years old, a gay, fat little girl with roguish, laughing eyes. She is devoted to Quiz, the grey poodle, and he to her.

Eamonn Andrews, they say, was bom with a silver spoon in his mouth. But he has worked hard to make good.

He loves his home. He adores his friends. In an emergency he can get a meal, clean up, mind the baby — which he does remarkably well —and all this with a smile… for he is that sort of man.

RUPERT BUTLER
takes a look at the
new Sunday series

It could become the most talked about TV show of all. It is 40 minutes each Sunday of sheer unpredictability. To attempt to forecast what might happen is as pointless as trying to say when the world will end.

The central figure is Eamonn Andrews, for so long a stalwart of the BBC that one is mildly surprised he’s not still producing so-and-so’s aunt, cousin, husband, school-friend or shipmate on This Is Your Life.

Just what is The Eamonn Andrews Show? Well, here is what it is not. It is not preplanned, not pre-rehearsed, and not (except in skeleton form) pre-scripted.

For the next 26 weeks, personalities in the public eye will be brought to Teddington Studios, Middlesex and confronted by Eamonn.

He will talk to them, listen to them and maybe hear them sing, play and entertain. It all depends on who they are and just why they are on the show.

Let’s repeat — nothing is planned, nothing is rehearsed, if, for example, the show features a man who has hit the headlines by flying around the world in a flying saucer, he will meet Eamonn as a stranger and talk to him informally and “off the cuff.”

Of course, Eamonn will have done some homework on his guest — provided there was time. He will have studied a biography and looked through newspaper cuttings. But there will be no prior contact.

“Instead,” I was told, “the guest will sit outside the set sipping a drink until he’s called. He’ll be wondering what is in store for him — and so will Eamonn.”

The show will be transmitted “live.” Right up to the moment it goes on the air, there’s room to bring along topically offbeat people.

When one celebrity has been interviewed, he will remain on the set and meet the next guest whom he will be able to question or chat with.

“By the end of the show,” says Eamonn, “I could be talking about anything and everything to some six well-known people at the same time.”

Don’t get the idea, though, that The Eamonn Andrews Show is all chat. If a pop singer has made his mark, he’ll be on the scene, too. There will be a glittering late night sophistication about the whole proceedings.

Eamonn Andrews hopes to remain in control of things, but his guests will be allowed to pull any amount of tricks on him. It’s all part of the fun, all part of a desire to make The Eamonn Andrews Show a segment of late night viewing that no one will want to miss.

A programme spokesman said: “We are avoiding like the plague the ‘all pals together’ party where everyone laughs at private jokes and there’s general bonhomie.

“That sort of show looks phoney and sounds phoney. We wouldn’t hesitate to put two people on the screen who positively loathe each other. To us, controversy isn’t a dirty word.”

As far as is possible, guest celebrities for the following week will be announced by Eamonn after each show and he will invite viewers to submit questions they would like answered by the people concerned.

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From ABC TV News, the house magazine of ABC, April 1962

Already a large amount of cable has been laid and units are being fixed into the racks in Central Apparatus Room – the whole place is full of wiremen crawling around the void under the ‘waffle floor’ or running cables into the studio trunking. Painters have got the undercoat finishes on the walls and the control desks have had their woodwork polished ready for a final finish when installation is completed.

SMOOTH PASSAGE…

Camera tests have been made on the studio floor and the odd humps and hollows smoothed out before the lino is laid. The working area of Studio One is over 7,000 sq. feet – so the lino laying is no small job.

To give the best possible chance of keeping a flat floor, any high spots on the concrete screed were ground down, then the asphalt laid with extreme care, being continuously checked by level, and straightedge – and finally by running a camera on a crane over the floor and watching the output on a line strobe monitor (a sort of electronic straightedge!).

Now that the main building work is practically finished, many smaller jobs are being tackled, and Make-up and Wardrobe have both been invaded by bricklayers, carpenters, glaziers and the like. It makes a change from actors – and what is more, before long it will be possible to walk under cover from these departments to any studio – which will make a change for actors! In spite of what you might think in Manchester, Teddington is not always bathed in Mediterranean sunshine.

WORLD BEATER…

The Planning and Installation boys are kept pretty busy making sure all the bits of equipment go together, and feeding information to Marryat and Place’s wiremen. Three Cintel Telecine machines and an R.C.A. recorder have been negotiated up the goods-lift (with fractions of an inch clearance in one case) and should be working in advance of the studio equipment. Then comes the job of transferring Master Control and C.A.R., which is going to be a great day indeed.

Meanwhile, it all looks very exciting and those visitors who are allowed to penetrate into the first floor are obviously highly impressed. There seems little doubt that Teddington No. 1 will soon be a first-class studio able to stand comparison with anything elsewhere in the country (or in the world for that matter) and will set the pattern for future ABC studios.

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That is the way Teddington’s Property Master TONY O’TOOLE describes his first day at ABC. Like most Irishmen, Tony is a loquacious talker with a lively turn of wit, delivered in a broad lilting Dublin accent. Getting him to talk about himself presented no great difficulties. The snag was that the stories he insisted on telling would take up more space than this column could afford, so a heavy edit brought forth the following facts, and I only wish they could be written with the accent in which they were delivered.

Tony, christened Michael Anthony, was born in Dublin a short while after the revolution… “which, I might hasten to add, I had absolutely nothing to do with, in spite of what Devalera might have said.

“In spite of the fact that my father was in the Irish Resistance movement, my uncles in the British Army and Navy respectively, and that my grandfather fought in the American Civil War, I meself am a peace lovin’ man and I’ll break the arm of any **** who says I’m not, any time”.

EMIGRATES TO ENGLAND

Before coming to England in 1943, Tony, in company with two others, purchased a canal barge, with the idea of ferrying peat, but… “unfortunately, on the maiden voyage, so to speak, the horse dropped dead. He may have broken his neck going under a bridge, I dunno, anyway, he was a gonner… so the Irish Emigration list to England had three more names added to it, and arrived in England at the ripe old age of 15.

“Ireland was neutral of course, so I made the great decision to contribute to the war effort by joining Moss Empires. There wasn’t a place on the board straight away, so they made me a page boy with about fifty thousand brass buttons”.

From there Tony worked his way slowly through the varied jobs that show business has to offer… callboy, props, electrics, ASM, Production Manager and Property Master… and so to ABC.

SOME EXPLOSION…

Tony has always been interested in special effects and explosions, and it was one such episode that led, almost directly, to Tony’s change of employers.

“We was on location making the war film V1, y’see, and there was this great big building. Bert and I rigged the explosion in the front to blow one of the windows out. ‘Is it OK?’ they shouted. We stuck our heads out and replied ‘ready when you are’ – and with that the whole building went up! I got blown into the water tank and BERT AKEHURST (he’s still with me I’m glad to say) lost some of his clothes. We had a spell of inactivity after that little one…”

Tony’s store has come a long way from those early days. It now comprises two floors and houses over three thousand items, from 15 feet high cacti to complete suites of furniture.

Apart from the stock of property items, the hired props coming into the studios to be used on productions can also prove a headache. Tony has had to deal with vultures, a lion, penguins, and donkeys in his time, but the show which provided him with the most headaches – and incidentally, the most enjoyment – was “After Hours”.

“You had to be a bit touched to be connected with that show… it helped tremendously! I remember wanting to ask Promotion’s RON WALSBY something – he was stage manager then and was also rehearsing a Cossack dance – so I had to join in, bobbing up and down while talking.

“I also remember in the early days, I went shopping in Kingston for Ad-mag kitchen dressings with a woman driver of a hire car service we used in those days. To my amusement – but not the driver’s – an old saleslady came up with the following advice: ‘For two young people starting out in the world I’d buy something a little more expensive…'”

Tony lives in Brighton with his wife and 11-year-old electronics-mad son, and nine-year-old Jacqueline who desperately wants to be his secretary. Tony ‘digs’ locally and goes home weekends, where he relaxes when necessary by interior decorating. One of his favourite interests – and least talked about -is raising funds for a Thames Ditton orphanage.

Looking back, reminiscing, Tony is pleased with life at ABC. “That French Resistance series when we went to France was the thing. I was in charge of explosions and things. We stayed in San Viatre, and what a night we had celebrating my birthday with the locals, with sou’westers and rubber boots filled to overflowing with champagne. They got the town band to play when we left. If I had stayed for a couple of more weeks I could have been Mayor, I tell you. Me and my explosions – I was the biggest noise they’d ever heard!

“Ah well, that’s how it goes . . .”

The post Man of property appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Three arrowheads; three chords; a familiar triangle symbol – and another ABC programme is announced.

It could be Thank Your Lucky Stars, The Sunday Break, ABC At Large, or one of many well known weekend programmes. At 9.35 on Sunday, 17 February, it was Armchair Theatre presenting ‘The Paradise Suite’ another play specially written for ABC and scheduled for screening across the ITV Network; another full scale-television production…

It started with an idea by author Robert Muller. It was acted out-against a set imagined by award-winning designer Voytek – on the floor of Studio 1 at Teddington. It was directed by Philip Saville. And it was the product of a system, a highly refined process, a time-tied progression of skilled technical events; the product of many uncredited experts, and a great deal of modern equipment.

This is an outline of that process, of the technical demands made by every television production, and the specialised way in which they are met by ABC TV.

The point of main activity is the Control Suite. Here, in a fluorescent cockpit of intense concentration, soundproofed against the world outside and set ideally with an eagle’s-nest view of the studio, the centre point is the Director. In front of him is a bank of monitor screens showing every picture source available for his selection. Flanking him him are some of the assistants and controls he will rely upon to link and blend all the elements that make a programme. Each assistant is an expert, in control of equipment

that is the latest the industry has to offer, as advanced as ABC’s development engineers can make it. And each is an integral part of a close-locked team that must do more than co-operate; must think in every dimension and, under the Director, hold the overall effect paramount. To achieve this in the new Teddington block, the operators and equipment have been grouped in the most practical way possible.

Three soundproofed compartments, viewed left to right from the studio, handle Vision, Production and Sound. The first is concerned with lighting and cameras, the second is manned by the Production Assistant, Director, Vision Mixer and Technical Supervisor, and the third by a Sound Mixer and Grams Operator. On ‘transmission’ – the final run-through of a programme for recording or ‘live’ (immediate) transmission – each is responsible for supplying the Director with a set sequence

of elements. These are demanded by the production, or issue from the Director’s interpretation, and are arranged, refined and fixed upon during rehearsal.

Most of these elements originate on the studio floor, through action controlled by the Director via the Floor Manager, and cameras and microphones directed by means of an elaborate intercom or ‘talk-back’ system. Other elements can be woven in from a variety of sources; from film,

tape recordings (video and sound), outside broadcast feeds, gramophone records and other studios. But whatever the source, final control of use must be the Director’s. And in working to achieve this in its simplest form, ABC engineers are pace-setters. Wherever possible, they have designed or adapted picture and sound source equipment for pre-setting, and made selection and operation available by the press of a button in the Control Suite.

This then is the place where programmes are put together; where the Director is king-pin. But between him and the finished product leaving the Control Suite, for recording or transmission, stands the final check of the Technical Supervisor. He has the last adjustment of sound and picture. Like a checker on a factory floor, only his acceptance passes the product as Well Made.

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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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Then the lower rank of hotels started offering radio rooms, so the top hotels, keen to stay ahead, moved the radio into the guests’ room – usually built-in to the wall and offering a choice of three stations – the National, the Regional and a foreign entertainment station like Normandie, Luxembourg or Paris PTT.

When the lower rank copied this innovation in the late 1940s, the top hotels converted their radio room to a television room. One 405-line TV surrounded by semi-comfortable armchairs, usually rusted in to the BBC Television Service even after ITV began in 1955 and generally surrounded by dozing older people.

Of course, the lower rank of hotels again copied this, and a television room was something expected of all but the smallest and cheapest hotels by the 1960s. So the poshest of the posh hotels went one better and started to put television sets in the guests’ rooms.

Free from the tyranny of the majority, guests could now choose to watch ITV rather than the more staid BBC output of the television room. The very very top hotels even added 405/625 dual standard sets, giving guests a rare chance to see the new BBC-2.

By the late 1960s, people staying in the “best” hotels expected en suite facilities, a kettle or at least 24-hour room service providing a pot of tea on demand and a large, 18″ television in the corner. These televisions, as with ones starting to become popular at home, had pre-tunable selection buttons, offering each channel at a push (generally a very hefty push that made a satisfying clunking sound and set the TV rocking slightly). And like the ones at home, they had 4 buttons available.

The debate over what to do with the fourth channel – allocated spectrum when BBC-2 launched but never used – had been going on since the establishment of ITV in 1955. A second ITV service to compete with the first and break the advertising monopoly of the rich ITV companies was the argument most often made in Conservative circles. For Labour, the goal was a BBC-3, although the thought chilled the BBC themselves who had no idea how to pay for it. The Liberals considered an educational network to be the best use, while the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland, still to gain much in the way of representation, wanted a dedicated public service broadcaster for their nations. A tiny group of progressive socialists and patrician Tories thought the best use would be an “open” broadcaster, providing small independent companies an outlet to serve the minorities of the UK, funded out of ITV’s profits.

While these arguments trundled on in parliament, conference fringe events and the letters page of The Times and The Observer, another idea was put into action.

The British Travel Association had noted both the unused button and the fact that the top hotels had their television and radio pictures “piped in”, rather than picked up off-air. The hotels noted that the concierge services, providing advice on what to visit and offering tickets for the main attractions, were popular but often formed large queues of people who didn’t even know what they could see, let alone intended to buy tickets. And ABC TV in Teddington noted that they had studios and staff idle on weekdays and a use for the spare capacity would be very good for the bottom line.

The result was Welcome TV. Piped to the top hotels from ABC and presented by ABC announcers – Sheila Kennedy in the picture above, for instance – it provided a short package of British Tourist Authority films and event guides. Guests could be informed about when the changing of the guard took place, what to expect from the weather, and a run down of the top West End shows. Armed with this information, the guest could then go to the hotel concierge already informed about what was available, and the concierge could then sell theatre tickets, make restaurant bookings and provide a map – all with a healthy cut going to the hotel. It was win-win for everybody.

Alas, it didn’t really work. Despite keeping the information bite-sized and providing lots of opportunities to catch each programme, people were reluctant to switch on the television early in the morning – such a decadent, sloppy thing to do – and just as unlikely to pop it on of a lunchtime. By the time the evening came round, the guest had already decided what to do, or had at least queued at the concierge desk and asked him for advice. Then ABC became Thames and the spare capacity at Teddington was needed for a weekday service and so evaporated. The economic reverses of the early 1970s choked off the tourism boom and with it the generous funding for the new, statutory, British Tourist Authority, which replaced the British Travel Association in 1969.

Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting forgotten piece of television history and an example of how spare capacity in a broadcasting system will always be filled, be it with “pirate” stations or piped-in tourist TV.

Article source: https://www.transdiffusion.org/2014/12/15/abc-and-the-fourth-channel

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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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