Morning and afternoon delights...

Nothing to do all day? Now you can just watch the telly... ITV announces the commencement of daytime programming, October 1972.

The beginnings of daytime television...

This morning, at about 9.25am, I sat down to watch an episode of Gerry Anderson’s Stingray – on DVD, of course – it’s a very long time since Stingray last featured in the television schedules (fourteen years and four months to be exact). This always happens around this time of year on any notably sunny morning, the fine weather serving to rekindle memories of summer holiday repeats in the early 1970s. For several years, Stingray was a staple of these early morning schedules, with episodes appearing in 1973, ’74 and ’76, then again in 1982 and 1987. Although other Gerry Anderson titles were shown in similar slots (including Captain Scarlet and Fireball XL5), it’s Stingray that I’ve always associated most strongly with these daytime broadcasts. Despite its underwater setting, Stingray episodes often had a bright, sunlit appearance (exemplified by the generic shots of Marineville, which was almost always depicted against a blue, summery sky). I think the association was in place for me as early as 1965 when, during a period of notably fine weather that lasted into the early autumn, I remember being bought a wooden jigsaw depicting Stingray’s Marineville headquarters. The blue sky may have been a painted backdrop, but to me it might as well have been the real thing. Stingray, and summer skies... a lifelong, pavlovian association was beginning to form...

1976 was a memorably fine summer and once again, our local ITV station ATV chose to schedule morning repeats of Stingray, beginning, somewhat frustratingly, about two weeks prior to the end of term. Unlike earlier repeat runs, where two episodes had been shown per week, the 1976 repeats were limited to a single broadcast, on Thursday mornings, typically at around 11am. Naturally, my brother and myself made sure to watch every episode, preserving audio recordings of their soundtracks (the audio also preserved the temporary breakdown of the episode Set Sail For Adventure which ground to a halt during the opening titles, forcing continuity announcer Simon Bates [yes, that Simon Bates] to extemporise pointlessly for about twenty seconds while the fault was fixed).

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The whole phenomenon of watching old television during the summer holidays is familiar to many, especially anyone of the right age during the 1970s, which is when the whole thing got started. It was ITV who took the initiative, when in October 1972, after five years of unsuccessful representations to various governments, the network finally got its way, and a new schedule of daytime programmes was introduced. For those like me who remembered the classics of the 1960s, this provided the opportunity to miss countless episodes of Danger Man, Strange Report and so on, which were broadcast on weekday afternoons when I was at school. During term time, the morning schedules were set aside for educational broadcasts, but when these ended for the holidays, a new slot became vacant, and it was here, in the ATV region, that repeats of Stingray and Captain Scarlet began to figure from July 1973.

The BBC had made some attempts to do likewise in 1972, with the classic serial The Flashing Blade featuring on school holiday mornings, but the schedule was piecemeal, and aside from sports coverage, the service tended to close down again at around 11am. A similar situation prevailed in 1973, with daily episodes of The Adventures of Tintin, followed by a factual half hour item and closedown at 11am. A similar line-up would continue through the 1970s, with incremental increases in the amount of children’s programming being broadcast, although the mid-morning closedown remained a staple (most likely retained as a scheduled maintenance block for transmitter engineers). By this time, ITV was running a complete daytime schedule, the likes of which would not be seen on the rival station for several years.

Of course, the extended broadcasting hours were more than a mere excuse to show afternoon repeats, and ITV threw a not inconsiderable budget into providing new series, tailor-made for the daytime audience, which a TVTimes article identified as ‘the housewife, the child, the shiftworker, the pensioner, the sick or disabled.’ New soaps were commissioned, including the perennial Emmerdale Farm, alongside now forgotten offerings like Harriet’s Back in Town, a story centered on a recently-divorced woman played by Pauline Yates (perhaps best known for her role as the wife of Reginald Perrin). There were new quiz programmes including Mr. and Mrs. and, a few years later, television’s first serious delve into its own archives with the nostalgia gameshow Those Wonderful TV Times. There was a much-trumpeted lunchtime news bulletin, pitched as a daytime equivalent of New at Ten; and there were brand new programmes for the very young, an audience whom ITV had traditionally left in the capable hands of their rival’s Watch With Mother. Both Pipkins and Rainbow made their debut during ITV’s first week of daytime television in October 1972, and would remain staples of the lunchtime schedule for the forseeable future. 

The arrival of a full daytime programme schedule, as opposed to the earlier model of schools, sport and closedowns was indeed a watershed moment in British television, the first paviour on the way towards today’s style of broadcasting. Daytime programming has long been taken as read, across all networks, and broadcasters now largely continue to show programmes through the night. Children now have their own dedicated channels, leaving the main networks clear to show cookery and DIY programmes in their morning and afternoon schedules where once old series and films held sway. Such vintage items have, however, recently found a new home in the form of vintage TV and film channel Talking Pictures TV, whose archaic nomenclature belies the fact that its programme schedule is comprised largely of items from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The surfeit of television channels is a situation that is unlikely to endure. With downloads fast becoming the preferred form of delivery for television programming, the traditional schedule is likely to disappear within the next decade, leaving viewers to browse menus of material available on demand at any time. The most hopeful outcome of this will be to drive out today’s plethora of largely superfluous channels broadcasting low-quality cheaply acquired material to notional audiences who probably aren’t even watching. The present broadcasting model needs slimming down: less than one hundred specialist channels would suffice to cater for the majority of viewers, and the instant availability of downloads obviates the need for so many different iterations of Sky Movies, to take just one example. Shopping channels will struggle to survive – indeed, it’s a wonder that in the age of online shopping any still exist.

Twenty years from now, the very idea of a programme schedule will seem as quaint as the 1950s Interlude does to modern viewers; and those summer broadcasts of the 1970s, when daytime television was strange and new will be almost unimaginable. Like summers themselves, their time was fleeting, but the memory – and their legacy – endures.