1959 General Election
Watch: Next on:
Friday, 19:00 on BBC Parliament
Synopsis
To mark its 50th anniversary, David Dimbleby introduces an archive broadcast of the BBC's General Election results programme from 8 October 1959, presented by Richard Dimbleby, Alan Whicker and Cliff Michelmore.
This is to my knowledge the first time this has ever been shown since it was first broadcast 50 years ago, leaving just 2001 as the only election programme not to be given a repeat. Should be fun!
I'm glad we get to see BBC election coverage from years gone by. It's interesting seeing how much the technology used has improved and how different the presenting style is nowadays.
It's a shame that we don't get to view old ITN election programmes to compare, though. I've only seen snippets from ITN's coverage and it would be great to see two different perspectives.
Ever so slightly strange moment there before the intro, of having a fullscreen BBC tv 'Bat's Wings' ident appear in place of the usual menu for a little while, accompanied by the BBC Parliament music bed!
What surprised me was actually how good the coverage was. They were doing down-the-lines in a perfectly good way, and had quite a number of OBs or studios available.
Sure there were sync issues on cuts to the OBs (synchronisers were unheard of, and genlocking was still tricky - not sure there was Natlock then)