BBC and ITV square up to win the ratings battle for Christmas Day... fifty years ago.
Last time, we visited the TV schedules from fifty years ago, and found both ITV and BBC in reasonably traditional form. Films, stage spectacles and musical items dominated on both networks, while the only offering that would endure to the modern era was one of the most traditional: a ghost story. Not a single sitcom was in evidence, and soap opera had still to make its undesirable entry to the BBC schedules. On both networks, the big days for populist festive fare were Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Although television was already firmly established in most British homes, it’s interesting to reflect that, for many people, family activities were probably still favoured over the television at the festive season. By 1974, in that year’s edition of The Likely Lads, Bob Ferris reflects that on ‘Christmas night, full of food’, all he wanted to do was to ‘sit down and watch the box’. Times were changing, and Christmas TV would become an increasingly dominant part of the whole festive experience during the 1970s and onwards to the present day.
On BBC1, Christmas Day 1972 got started at 9.30am with an item called This is Christmas Morning, about which the Radio Times compiler waxed lyrical without actually telling us very much. At 10.00 Mr. Benn popped up (he did, after all, live in Festive Road), followed by a news summary. A Christmas Service and Christmas Appeal were followed at 11.30 by A Stocking Full of Stars, a comedy and cartoon compilation for children, co-hosted by avuncular favourites Roy Castle and Michael Aspel, and broadcast from the National Children's Home at Harpenden. Nothing so far in the schedule to offend modern sensibilities… but not so fast, because at 1.30pm came the unaccountably popular Black and White Minstrel Show. Now as then, we’ll skip very quickly on to the next item, Top of the Pops 72, but we can’t linger long here either. By this time established as a Christmas tradition, TOTP would always feature a round-up of the year’s hits during the festive season, most often on Christmas Day afternoon. Unfortunately, one of the two presenters is even more unwelcome in the modern era than the George Mitchell Minstrels…
At 3.00pm came the traditional Christmas broadcast by the Queen, a broadcasting tradition that was then in its fortieth year, having started on radio in 1932 before television took up the baton in 1957. I was never specially interested in the Royal Family or the Queen (other than as a piece of philatelic iconography), but our mum always liked to watch the Queen’s Speech, so I’m sure we left the TV on after Top of the Pops. It was almost certainly turned off or turned over before the next item, Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus. I wouldn’t have been tempted back for the next item either, a televised version of the pantomime Dick Whittington, recorded at the Wimbledon Theatre and starring the unlikely combination of Dick Emery and Peter Noone… to say nothing of Stratford Johns. The news at 5.45 was followed by a new Christmas Day TV tradition in the form of Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game. By this time on Christmas Day, our mum was usually poised to unveil a huge cold collation that would see us through the evening. I well recall filling up plates at the table and taking them into the front room to eat in front of the telly.
If the stars of comedy and variety had been notable by their absence up to now, then the next item on the schedule would make up for it. Christmas Night With the Stars was a well established TV tradition, dating back to 1958, and this year’s instalment, hosted by the Two Ronnies, featured specially recorded festive snippets from current comedies including The Goodies, The Liver Birds and Dad’s Army. It was to be the last such compilation until the tradition was briefly revived in 1994. The big draw of the day was undoubtedly The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show at 8.15.
A big movie was, of course, inevitable, and this year’s offering was neil Simon’s comedy, Barefoot in the Park, in its 1967 adaptation for the screen starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. This ran until 11pm when tradition reared its resistible head with a festive edition of old-time music hall nostalgia in the form of The Good Old Days. Finally, to round off the day’s viewing, Z Cars and Kelloggs Special ‘K’ stalwart John Slater told viewers A Christmas Story (the Radio Times offers no clue as to what it might have been).
Over on BBC2, the Christmas Day schedules found room for Play School, kicking off broadcasts at 11.00am, before a cartoon film with music, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, The Point. Other items during the day included the documentary film strand Look, Stranger, and a retrospective of the year’s golfing action which had been dominated by names including Tony Jacklin and Lee Trevino. The Queen at 3.00 was followed by Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Technicolor production of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Going into the evening, we find an edition of Call My Bluff and a wordless film, The Stallion, relating the adventures of an escaped horse on Dartmoor, before the mid-evening schedule settled into full-on BBC2 mode with La Sylphide, a film from French television of a romantic ballet.
Arguably the best item on offer across all three channels this Christmas was another ghost story, albeit one dressed up in modern garb. Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape would go on to acquire legendary status, and provided a notable TV role for Michael Bryant who had just guest starred in a memorable episode of Colditz (see my earlier blog for more detail). Athough to modern viewers the story is marred by mysogyny and stereotypical characterisations, the core idea of traumatic happenings being somehow ‘recorded’ in their immediate environment still has resonance today and is often revisited by similarly paranormal productions.
The schedule was rounded off by a repeat of yesterday’s America, and a special edition of The Dick Cavett Show featuring legendary song-and-dance man Fred Astaire.
Meanwhile, over on the commercial channel, Christmas Day had got started with a concert of carols from the Royal Festival Hall, followed by a festive edition of the long forgotten cut-out cartoon series The Enchanted House. At 9.30, viewers were treated to the sight of ‘Leslie Crowther in a children’s ward’ (as referenced in the 1974 Christmas edition of The Likely Lads). ‘A Merry Morning’ was something of an ITV tradition, and this year’s programme came from the King Edward VII Orthopadeic Hospital, Sheffield, where ukulele man Alan Randall added to the festive fun. A Christmas edition of film magazine Clapperboard was followed by a Christmas Morning Service, taking programmes up to twelve noon, when the 1939 cartoon film Gulliver’s Travels was given an airing.
There was to be no escape from circuses, with ITV offering The Big Top at 1.15, with Billy Smart’s big rivals, Chipperfields, providing the acts under the ringmastership of David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton. A wildlife film, The Flight of the Snow Geese, straddled the hour from 2.00pm till 3.00pm when the Queen’s Speech also appeared. Afternoon entertainment was provided by the Morecambe and Wise 1966 cinema vehicle That Riviera Touch, which I remember being promoted quite heavily (ITV would finally bring the duo up to date when they decamped to Thames later in the decade). We certainly watched this before bailing out at 4.50 when Opportunity Knocks presented a 45-minute Christmas special. Hughie Green on top of turkey and christmas pudding was really too much to stomach.
Things took a turn for the better after the ITN News at 5.35, with ITV presenting its own comedic line up, with the All-Star Comedy Carnival. Scheduled deliberately to clash with the BBC alternative, viewers could watch one or the other, or perhaps shuttle between the two (this was, of course, before the days of the remote control). At 7.30 came the one and only soap opera in the Christmas schedules, in the form of Coronation Street, of which the TVTimes listing says: ‘at last the 1940’s (sic) show’. I’ve no idea what that might have been, but it sounds a far cry from the life-and-death-drama and shout-fests that the soaps currently insist on dishing up on Christmas Day. A festive Comedians followed at 8.00 before the evening’s big film, 1966’s Khartoum starring Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson. The ITN News cut into it at 10.15, while the evening was rounded off with The Love Goddesses, a film documentary about some of the iconic females of cinema.
It’s interesting to reflect that, of all the festive offerings on television this year, very few have endured into the modern era. The most often repeated (albeit mostly in truncated or clip form) must be The Morecambe and Wise Show, whilst the two comedy carnivals have, miraculously survived. The BBC edition was rebroadcast in recent years, whilst ITV’s is available on DVD. Other years are much less well represented in the archive. The compilations were never repeated, and seem to have been considered as disposable items, good for one year only, perhaps explaining how so many of them came to be junked. Back in 1972, full-length festive episodes of contemporary comedy series were much harder to find, and it’s notable to see no such examples on repeat as would increasingly become the case in later years. One should also reflect that, despite the preponderance of colour movies in the schedules, many (including ourselves) were still viewing in monochrome. The cost of a colour set in 1972 was £225, equivalent to over £3,000 today, and such expensive luxuries were well outside the budget of many families.
Those old schedules also tell us that Christmas television was a long way from being set in stone, and both networks were still very much feeling their way into the future, propping up their festive line-ups with reliable entertainment staples like films, circuses and variety. I would argue, though, that despite the huge array of channels available to modern viewers, there is less choice and diversity of content, and far too many formats and programmes look to have come to stay, seemingly forever. Could the BBC conceive of Christmas today without the obligatory staples of Strictly Come Dancing, EastEnders, Call the Midwife, Michael McIntyre et al? I doubt it. Programmes like these have become the schedulers’ crutch and will likely endure for however long ‘real time’ broadcast television has left to live. Personally, I’ll give it less than ten years. Who knows what we’ll be watching by then… or even how.
Next time, we’ll move onto 1972’s Boxing Day highlights.
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