Channel Television during the 1979 ITV Strike

Impressive, but not as impressive as the Channel TV Mobile Outside Broadcast Unit from the late 80’s. Seen here during an edition of Morning Worship. https://t.co/lgQCE6xXXa pic.twitter.com/kSAjfYlsnj

— The Channel Archive (@ChannelArchive) April 16, 2019

I guess in the circumstances just getting an audio feed from a church and putting up a slide with a photo of the church would have been more than adequate?

I guess the IBA would have been pretty lenient about the various contractually required parts of the schedule which Channel were unable to provide during the strike?

I don't think so, but there was a mini one I think resulting from the three day week and all three channels having to close at or before 22:30hrs.

Didn't ILR also have a good profitable time during this strike, being the only commercial broadcast service available?

You might be right, though probably Capital still accounted for 50% of the network's total revenue!

Some observations from someone who lived (and worked) through all of this. Channel Television was unionised like all the other ITV companies. It was simply that ACTT didn't call its members in the Channel islands out on strike. Hence, any of the fantasy scenarios suggested in the 40 pages of posts would have been blacked by ACTT straight away. Channel couldn't ever have provided a national feed because a) there was absolutely no ntechnical facility for it to do so and b) ACTT would have shut down Channel on the spot. Equally fantasies about taking sport from French TV (ahem - how????) .... ignoring the standards conversion and the fact that CTV didn;t have any usable off-air feeds; how would they have paid for such programming??

Someone asked about the schedules. Here are a few taken at random from the pages of Channel TV Times:
SATURDAY Sep 8th: 5.00pm Puffin's Birthday Gteetings 5.05 Tarzan 6.00 Animated Classics: Oliver Twist 6.50 Wind in the Wires (aviation documentary) 7.20 The New Avengers 8.20 feature Film: The Hot Rock (Robert Redford, George Segal) 10.10 The Cabot Connection 11.5 Weather & Closedown
SUNDAY Sep 9th: 5.00pm Puffin 5.05 Tarzan 6.00 Channel News and Weather 6.05 Good News (religious) 6.15 Animated Classics: Oliver Twist pt.2 7.05 Never Go With Strangers (COI type docu) 7.25 The New Avengers 8.25 Feature Film: The Andromeda Strain (Arthur Hill, Kate Reid) 10.45 Wildlife Cinema 11.10 Epilogue, Weather, Closedown
WEDNESDAY Sep 12th: 1.20pm Channel News, What's On and Weather 1.30 Close down 5.00 Puffin 5.05 Kum Kum 5.30 Dynomutt The Dog Wonder 6.00 Report at Six Extra 7.00 Asian Notebook 7.30 Emergency! 8.25 Feature Film: In The Matter Of Karen Ann Quinlan (Piper Laurie, Brian keith) 10.05 Channel Late News and Weather 10.10 The Terronauts 11.05 Actualities ei Previsions Meterorologiques (French news & weather) 11.15 Epilogue, Weather, Close down

While the strike was on, my union - Equity - wasn't in dispute so we continued to be employed. But there was nothing for me to do, so I took off for Jersey for a spell, recorded commercial voiceovers and provided a useful pair of hands. The reason I was sent up to the north of Jersey to pick up Radio Victory news and scribble it down was that Channel had an agreement with LBC to take the news. It was all above board, but there wasn't a way LBC could feed the scripts to Channel. No email, no Fax machine!!

The return to normal on 24th October would certainly have had normal CTV continuity and News. At STV we did the normal startup at 5.40pm; the only bit I changed was instead of "This is Scottish Television", I said "This IS Scottish Television"! As noted way back in this thread, STV had local continuity and commercials including in vision closedown from me.

Can i ask if there was a reason why CTV closed down after 10 minutes on September the 12th?

Because there was a strike on and Channel were concentrating their efforts on primetime.

Presumerably in those days quite normal to switch on and then off for obligated programmes. This is even more useful in a strike. Can more schedules be provided please

Wouldn't it have been easier to simply open at 5 and concentrate all their resources for primetime?

The afternoon news and schedule was designed to inform the viewer of that night's schedule. The schedules were put in place on an ad hoc basis, so a day to day schedule would be created in the morning, and provided in the afternoon, at lunchtime, when people were off work on lunch break etc.

Channel still had the obligation to the IBA to provide its normally scheduled local programming, and the lunchtime bulletin was part of that. It also allowed for some crucial local ads after the much-viewed What's On feature.

I will list some more of the schedules when I get a chance.

It's also worth noting that the programmes during the strike got the same high audience that Channel always got. And the staff of around 60 worked very hard Indeed in what was normally the quietest time of year when Report at Six was supposed to be reduced to 7 mins nightly!

It must have been very hard for Channel, especially accessing archive material to air. Channel had no direct access to ITV archive programming and had to have them flown into St Helier on film for transmission right?