ITV@70

 

               

I wasn’t watching ITV yesterday (Monday 22 September), so I didn’t notice if the channel chose to mark its seventieth anniversary in any way, even if was just the ‘and finally’ item on the evening news. Somehow, I doubt it. Ten years ago, I seem to recall a similar lack of celebration when the channel turned sixty. At the Network label, we put out a lavish box set in celebration of the sixtieth anniversary (for which I did the artwork), but I suspect that the people responsible for on air promos and content at the station aren’t really focused on the past, and events of seven decades ago must seem positively prehistoric and beyond the lifespan of even their extended families.

It was a different story back in 1976, when the network celebrated its 21st anniversary. The TV Times included a ‘souvenir supplement’ reproducing its first ever cover (above), and a selection of others providing a timeline of memorable programming. On the night itself, Eamonn Andrews hosted a two-hour celebration ITV – This is Your Life, the contents of which can well be imagined. My diary mentions the inclusion of clips from The Prisoner, Thunderbirds and even The Adventures of Twizzle (which may account for how a solitary episode came to survive in the archive). Viewers in the ATV region were also getting to see The Prisoner on late night repeats, although, ironically, I wasn’t allowed to stop up to watch on this particular week, as the episode had been pushed back half an hour to make room for ‘The Independent Broadcasting Authority Banquet’. Quite why the network chose to televise a black tie junket for its executives and members of Parliament I can’t imagine. It certainly can’t have attracted many viewers.

You might have imagined that the anniversary provided an excuse to present a season of vintage programmes, in much the same way as the BBC had done back in the summer of '76 with its own ‘Festival Forty’. But the BBC had a channel to spare, whereas at ITV, such a celebratory season would have played havoc with scheduling and wasn’t likely to prove popular with advertisers. As a general rule, ITV has never really gone in for this kind of commemorative scheduling: if viewers wanted older programmes, they had to seek them out in the afternoons and late-night slots where occasional vintage items acted as filler for much of the 1970s.

In 1980, ITV’s quarter century was commemorated in print with a lavish coffee table book, produced in association with Michael Joseph. Imagine such a publication appearing today, when the only piece of vintage television that’s regularly enshrined in print is Dr. Who. The TV Times once again acknowledged the occasion with a silver jubilee edition, although the evening itself was marked only by a forty five-minute celebration, hidden away at 11.30pm. My diary recorded the fact of ITV’s 25th anniversary, but I didn’t bother with this self-congratulatory programme. The main event of the evening was The French Connection over on BBC1. The TV Times did rather better, with a nostalgic item at the back of the issue, including yet another reproduction of that 1955 Lucille Ball cover and the schedule for the channel’s first evening of broadcasting. Remarkably, we find something called Crossroads scheduled at 7.30, but this was a discussion forum – the infamous motel still lay nine years in the future. The early evening included ‘Flickwiz’, described as ‘a magazine programme for boys and girls’, but with a logo that, in print, could be interpreted somewhat differently…

My archive of TV Times pdfs fizzles out around 1983, so I can’t report on what, if anything, might have appeared at the time of ITV’s subsequent anniversaries. By the time the channel turned 50, in 2005, it was a ‘do it yourself’ celebration, as Tim Beddows pulled out numerous items from his personal archive to present one of his legendary film shows (for an audience of one!). The day’s programme, recorded in my diary, comprised The Persuaders (Someone Waiting); Return of the Saint (The Nightmare Man); The Adventurer (which broke down); The Saint (The Lawless Lady); Man in a Suitcase (Castle in the Clouds) and finally, Gideon’s Way (The Wall), all projected from 16mm or 35mm film prints. It wasn’t all ITV, though: we also found room for a ‘musical interlude from the BBC circa 1930s/40s’, an edition of Noel Gordon’s Lunchbox, and a vintage advertising film about the benefits of electricity which will no doubt resurface on Talking Pictures’ Footage Detectives sometime, if it hasn’t already (where would they be without Tim’s film archive?)

So there it is – ITV has been going for seventy years, if anyone cares. Without it, we’d never have had The Prisoner, The Sweeney, The Avengers, anything from Gerry Anderson and countless other classic series that have acquired the status of icons. These days, apart from Robert Peston and Tom Bradby, I barely bother with the channel, or indeed much else from contemporary television.

Back in 2015, I’m not sure if I’d have given ITV another decade, but it’s still here, with an extended presence as a streaming service, not to mention four freeview/satellite channels and a YouTube channel. Where they’ll be in another ten years is anybody’s guess, as the television viewing experience continues to fragment into ever increasing subscription services. If there’s still anything resembling today’s scheduled broadcast television around in 2035, I’ll be very surprised… assuming I’m even here to see it.