IT Eggs and BB Cheese

Our first TV set was a GEC model like this antique. Yes, I am that old...

The bewildering world of multi-channel entertainment in the 1960s.

I’m the kind of person who can look at Sky’s online listings, or indeed any TV guide magazine and, in classic old buffer mode, declare that: ‘when I were a lad, all this were fields.’ In fact, it’s probably just as well that the television of my childhood offered so few alternatives, or I’d never have learned to read and write. Or, in all probability, walk. Imagine if there had been a channel dedicated to children’s television, available all day, back in the 1960s... no, let’s not go there.

When I was born, ITV was still a youngster itself – a mere six years old – and had been broadcasting in the Midlands for just five years. Of course, to me, it had always existed. As far as I was concerned, television itself had always existed, and it was impossible to conceive of a world without it. There were still only two channels, and although I was only three when it happened, I can still dimly recollect the arrival of BBC2. The most obvious sign of its arrival came in the form of Play School, which was also broadcast on BBC1: but even then, I knew that this new programme came from the new BBC channel.

I wasn’t able to watch BBC2 until about five years later, when the first 625-line set arrived in our house. You may not believe this, but I could actually perceive the difference in picture quality between BBC2 and the other channels, which were still, at that time, broadcasting in 405 lines. By modern standards, it was like comparing HD with SD. And we were still only watching in black and white.

Our first television set was a GEC model that my dad got through working for the company. It had a single channel selector knob, which was marked off with various meaningless channel numbers, two of which corresponded to the ITV and BBC frequencies in our area. The screen was reasonably proportioned, but extremely convex, and the valves inside the set glowed brightly when it was warmed up. The light streaming through the ventilation slots in the hardboard back of the telly contributed to the illusion that there were little people inside, and I can clearly remember gazing through the slots during Sunday Night at the London Palladium to see if I could see the participants from behind.

Although there were only two channels to choose from, ITV was known by a baffling number of different names. There was ITA (Independent Television Authority) whose branding appeared on the test pattern from the local transmitting station; then, there was our regional ITV operator, which in the Midlands was ATV. Adding to the confusion, on Saturdays and Sundays ATV was replaced by ABC for reasons I couldn’t comprehend. The news came from something called ITN, and the whole was known collectively as ITV. Confused? So too were the manufacturers of TV sets: at least one of ours had its channel buttons identified as ITA rather than ITV. One of them enticingly came with a ‘spare’ channel selector button, labelled ITA*. I waited with baited breath to see what, if anything might come of this spare channel, and would occasionally switch over to the invitable mass of static on the offchance that ‘ITV2’ had gone to air unannounced.

For some time, I think I imagined that the official name of ITV was ITN: that, after all, was where the news came from, and television doesn't get any more official than that. My mind always played with the sound of different words and thus, as a stupid private joke between my brother and myself, ITV (or, in my mind, ITN) became known, as ‘IT Eggs.’ Maintaining the dairy connection, the BBC was, inevitably ‘BB Cheese.’ Eggs or cheese. That, then was the choice available to the viewers of the 1960s...

Even with the addition of BBC2, there were still a mere three TV channels available to the viewers of Great Britain, as opposed to the ten billion – or, possibly infinity – of the modern era. One way in which you could experience a ‘new’ British TV station was, of course, to go on holiday. In those days, ITV was divided into regional programme providers, the content of which could vary wildly depending on where you lived. On holiday in the South West in 1971, I was able to tune in to Westward Television where, for the first and only time, I saw the famous Gus Honeybun, a moth-eaten glove puppet who sent out birthday greetings to young viewers. Some time later, during the mid 70s, holidays to Wales offered the chance to see episodes of older ITV series that were being repeated during the afternoon, such as Danger Man and The Saint, both of which were long gone from ATV in the midlands.

As mentioned above, our local station, ATV, yielded place at the weekends to ABC. This was the same ABC that ran the chain of cinemas, and their inverted triangular logo (which to my mind was copied from the green triangle in Quality Street) was a familiar sight on Saturdays and Sundays. ABC felt like a completely different channel from ATV, and its whole on-screen presence was oddly unfamiliar, like inviting a rarely-seen relative into the living room. ABC actually employed a woman continuity announcer, a rarity for the era, which added even further to its unsettling strangeness. They also showed series like Space Patrol, which I didn’t like at all. Good old ATV gave us Fireball XL5, all warm and cuddly, while ABC tried to scare us behind the sofa with music concrête and scary characters with beards (I was actually frightened of beards as a toddler). To be fair to ABC, they did give us Batman and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, amongst others. And we mustn’t forget The Avengers, which I was allowed to watch from the age of 6.

The three channel ‘duopoly’ in British television extended right through the 1970s. Now and then, the possibility of a fourth channel was raised in the media, and I confidently expected to see ‘ITV2’ within a few years. After all, it was only fair. BBC had two channels, why shouldn’t ITV? And what, you may wonder, did I expect to see on this new ITV channel? Repeats, of course. Even then, I was more interested in older programmes that I’d missed than anything new that ITV had to offer.

As things turned out, I was half right: because when Channel 4 finally went to air in November 1982, it included a fair few older programmes in its schedules, presumably as a relatively cheap means of filling up airtime. In the first week of broadcasting, we were offered The Avengers (absent from most of the ITV network since the early 70s), and over the coming months, oldies like Danger Man and Car 54 Where Are You? would return to the screen courtesy of Channel 4.

My diary for 1982 mentions the C4 opening night (although for me the highlight of that evening’s programmes was a BBC repeat of Sgt. Bilko at 23.05):

Channel 4 opens – on schedule, at 4.45 with routine word/number quiz prog ‘Countdown’. Best things are Paul Hogan show 8.30 (OK) & ‘The Comic Strip Presents – 'Five Go Mad in Dorset' (10.15).

By the time Channel 5 arrived, I had pretty well lost interest in the prospect of new television stations; added to which, the signal was so poor that it was virtually unwatchable. I later discovered that the signal strength made no difference at all...