ITV Schools on 4

HTV sold the ads on S4C, and I believe TV-am also sold the ads for S4C for between 6:00 and 9:25am. This clip shows an S4C ad break not going to plan at HTV:

I've never been able to discover whether HTV fed the ads into S4C's pres suite as an outside source, or whether S4C was routed via HTV to insert the ads, on the way to the transmitters (Which of course was C4's method in the rest of the UK)

When is that clip from - don't remember that ident (presumably only used for sport) at all. Doesn't fit in at all with any 80s or 90s S4C look.


And vaguely back on track, was "Open College" the ITV/C4 version of Open University? Did it air just in weekend slots?

My bet would be that it was the same as with Channel 4.

HTV would've also had to deal with West's Channel 4 commercials.

My understanding is that S4C got whatever Channel 4 had for free, meaning they paid nothing for ratings bankers like Friends but got the full benefit from selling advertising.

In that respect, leeching is perhaps a better fitting term.

I don't know the arrangements post 1993, but pre 1992 S4C was financed from the same pool of money the IBA collected from all the ITV companies (inc HTV West and HTV Wales) for 'The Fourth Channel'. I can't remember the proportion of the total sum that went to S4C, it was something in the order of 10-20% of the total, the rest obviously going to C4.

It probably was, but then I wonder about the routing and switching for the Tv-am inserted ads from 1989 until the end of 1992 ?

Links from the "Open College" as well, Channel 4's short lived rival to the open university.

As mentioned, S4C were happy to make use of C4 properties. We lived on the border and when we got the game cards to play along with Housey Housey on The Big Breakfast (which surprised me greatly by having Mark and Gaby on the front, rather than Chris and Gaby), the ones that came through our door had S4C branding, rather than C4.



ITV Wales still do a few programmes for them, Y Byd A Bedwar, the long-running current affairs show, started on HTV forty years ago and is still going today, produced by ITV Wales.



Presumably one reason why they had to be very explicitly S4C branded was it was possible in quite a few places in Wales, like where we were, to pick up both, so it was important for schools to know which ones they were watching so they didn't acidentally record the S4C output when they were trying to record a C4 programme, or vice versa. For a while in the early nineties S4C had a DOG on all their English language output, but it only lasted a few months before being dropped due to numerous complaints.



One other main purpose was to include Welsh language programming in peaktime. Before that it was the worst of both worlds, because every time the Beeb or ITV showed a Welsh language programme in primetime they had to displace an English one, to the displeasure of those who didn't speak Welsh, but then it meant if Welsh programmes were just in off-peak slots, it was a poor service to Welsh speakers. I've got the Welsh Radio Times from Christmas 1981, the last Christmas before S4C, and on Christmas Day all the Welsh language programmes were in a block on BBC2 from 9-11am, while in the rest of the UK it wasn't broadcasting. That was convenient for English speakers, but not very good for Welsh speakers.

So the idea was that you now had three channels entirely in English, while still having Welsh language programmes in a prominent spot. Of course, that just meant the arguments about having to stay up late to watch English language stuff on BBC1 and ITV was just replaced by arguments about having to stay up late to watch English language stuff from C4, but at least that wasn't previously available at all in Wales.

There were occasions when S4C made a bit more about C4 shows, on SOTCAA they mention how they started promoting the comedy show Absolutely a bit more, making their own trailers for it, when they realised it featured the Welsh performer John Sparkes and there were often sketches set in Wales. Some of the Absolutely sketches did, as a joke, have Welsh subtitles in the programme, and S4C promptly did their own, correcting the spellings, for the trailer!



It was on C4 at lunchtime and also at TVam at weekends, although TVam transmissions were paused for quite a while during the strike, which didn't really help establish it. Open College, as its name suggests, specialised in more vocational education than the OU.

But it was what they were obliged to do, and it along with Ch4 are publicly owned institutions (albeit in different ways)

Any profits made from showing popular C4 shows would have been far absorbed by the costs of their other obligations. Hence it got public funding as well as selling advertising. Think of it more as a charitable donation rather than parasitical

Yep - unlike the popular perception us Welsh aren't braindead yokels and we "got" what S4C was.

Yes, it was no different to the relationship between HTV and Granada for example - same, but different.