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That's right, it only ran for a few months, twice a week I think. Presented by Suzi Quatro and Vince Hill, and during the experimental first year of ITV daytime when they tried out all kinds of things in the morning, before This Morning arrived for the second year.

For some reason the TVam strike passed me by at the start, I never watched the news in those days, so the first I heard of it was when I tuned in one Saturday (which I didn't always, I was usually a Beeb loyalist) and was baffled as to why they were showing a repeat of the Wide Awake Club - before Tommy Boyd popped in at the ad break to say it was a repeat and not to write in. But then I started watching a lot more TVam because all kinds of oddities used to pop up.

Is it really true the viewer went up during the strike?

Supposedly, though Roland Rat is quite often credited with saving the station too (even though he"left" the station before the strike period), but he didn't generate enough revenue to avoid what happened with their coverage of the Brighton Bombings in 1984.

I suspect its mix of oddities in presentation and what it showed as filler material because of the strike probably helped more than the strike itself, that and the vast reduction in costs that were pursued later.

Further to the TV-AM strike, here's a segment from the BBC's Storm in an Eggcup documentary, originally aired as part of its TV Hell night in 1992 and repeated again standalone nearly a year later.

Starts at 2:22, this segment starts at the Brighton Bombing coverage:


The rest of this documentary is on YouTube but the one thing I never realised up until now was that news of the sacking of those who went on strike was actually broken on News at Ten.

Its a great documentary. Its interesting to see some staff never went out on strike. Mind you during early 88 there had G'day from oz to help.

I'm pretty sure all the technical staff went out on strike (the ACTT was for technicians), anyone else would have been in another Union and not in dispute. I'm not sure if secondary action was illegal by then. If any didn't strike it would have been made very difficult for them, just look at how the presenters entered the building


There was a site called the 234 which told the story of the strike from the point of view of the strikers. I think it's gone offline though

Secondary action was made Illegal by then. 234 site is still around but on archive. As you pointed out 7 years ago http://web.archive.org/web/20021211183533/www.the-234.com/interest.htm

I think I have that link bookmarked somewhere but didn't have a chance to rake it out.

How on earth did you look up a post of mine from that long ago?

I had that TVAM thread bookmarked I have few thread bookmarked or noted down

HERE Is THE MAD DEATH: one of the most bleak and disturbing drama series ever made by BBC Scotland filmed in the early 80s and is about outbreak of Rabbies...

Wonderful thumbnail for this thread on the homepage!

Did the BBC ever repeat the series? or were UK Gold the only ones? The one series i would LOVE to see from BBC Scotand Vaults is Scotch on the rocks.