Re: local soaps/drama series in the 1990s, there was also 'Quayside' on Tyne Tees.
Was shown by Yorkshire too, I remember it having a lot of publicity- all the trailers had the characters saying the "didn't watch EastEnders", as it was up against it, which doomed it from the start. Then it only lasted around 3 months.
This thread bring backs memories of seeing lots of the mentioned titles in the 'regional variations' section of the newspaper TV listings and having no idea what programmes like The Ferret or Puffin's Pla(i)ce might be like.
The one that I remember watching was LWT's listings guide Wake Up London with the Vicious Boys, a comedy double-act who also appeared on one of the Saturday morning shows, either Get Fresh or Ghost Train, can't remember which.
‘Shortland Street’ had this odd amount of fascination to me as I’d see it on the regional variations section of the TV listings page, but I never saw it on TV in the Carlton area, making me wonder just what this secret show unseen by Londoners was all about. Equally back in Christmas 1995 I saw a pantomime in Aberdeen starring people from this mysterious show I hadn’t heard of called Take The High Road.
Two I remember from London were the quiz show King of the Castle, with Alistair Stewart doing his best Anne Robinson impression, and the documentary The Tube which was one of the last times I saw the Carlton endcap before the merge. There was also a vaguely London Underground-based quiz show in the late 90s.
Going on holiday in the Westcountry area you had Birthday People, which carried on well into the Carlton years.
It's one of the last significant regional shows I remember. Then there was that canal boat show with Matthew Corbett not long before all non-news regional shows were axed.
You’re thinking of Locks and Quays, which I believe was at one point hosted by a now disgraced Granada Weather presenter. From memory it got a network outing on one of the Discovery channels.
The last non-News regional series Granada did looked back at some of the best moments that regional programmes brought. It was hosted by Paul Crone and Caroline Whitmore if memory serves. It was a nice reminder of what we had, but sadly the writing was very much on the wall by that point.
I remember Shortland Street being shown at 5.10 in Central, before ITN at 5.40. Then Home and Away at 6.00 and Central News at 6.25.
Shortland Street moved to earlier times in the afternoons later in its Central life.
Shortland Street is still popular in its home Country, New Zealand; quite a good soap.
Central used to show Australian dramas A Country Practice and Blue Heelers too.
The Kelly Show was a hugely popular Friday night talk show on Ulster Television hosted by Gerry Kelly, launched in September 1989. It was a gamble by Ulster Television, as there was no certainty that a light entertainment talk show locally produced in Belfast would be a success, especially trying to attract British and American celebrities to Belfast, which even though the troubles had reduced substantially by 1989, was still a huge problem.
The Kelly Show was scheduled post News at Ten, a slot which at 10.40pm was left open to the regions to fill with whatever they want. It really was a graveyard slot, but viewers in Northern Ireland flocked to the show by 1991. So popular was the first series, that by 1991 it had been extended from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, all produced live from their then largest studio at Havelock House, which was really small (1,650 Sq Ft).
The effort to put the Kelly Show on each week was huge. The Ulster Television news set had to be dismantled on a Thursday, ensuring the large set for Kelly Show was up and ready for Friday transmission. The set builders constructed a clever set, which with wide angle camera lenses, made it look much larger on screen than it was. In fact many of the 100 studio audience were seated right next to the very hot studio lights near their balcony seating.
Once the Friday edition ended, the set was dismantled, and the news set resembled for Monday news programming.
It was only in the autumn of 1993 that the Kelly Show moved into a slightly larger and more modern studio, Studio 1 at Havelock House, even though it was only 2,500 Sq Ft, the extra space ensured a permanent audience seating platform and a decent set design for the show, without having to move each week for the news programmes.
The Kelly Show suffered at the hands of the change of news times on ITV in March 1999, when the News at Ten was axed, and a new short Nightly News was scheduled at 11.00pm.
This left UTV with a problem, where to put Kelly? For a good chunk of the time he was now placed at 9.30pm - 11.00pm, meaning UTV had to opt out of the network programming substantially on a Friday. Even when it was reduced to a one hour slot, it still meant time shifting for dropping network programmes.
This caused the ITV bosses in London problems, and they were not happy that their prime time Friday programming after 9pm was not seen in Northern Ireland. As UTV had a lot of control, there was nothing really could be forced on UTV by ITV, but Gerry Kelly said in an interview in 2009, the bosses at ITV put pressure on UTV to axe the show in 2005, to ensure networked ITV programmes could air from 9pm, and UTV caved in, using the financial pressure as a main excuse when the show ended just before Christmas 2005.
They were also the only non-Scottish region to show '(Take the) High Road' 'til the end, albeit way behind the STV run.
As I mentioned, High Road seemed to be axed and reprieved by all the ITV regions quite frequently over the years. I remember it was officially axed from the network in 1992, but then I've got a Radio Times from mid-1993 when someone writes in to thank Carlton for bringing it back, and RT say that it's now back in all but two regions, I think Yorkshire and Tyne Tees were still holding out. When Granada moved Granada Tonight to 6pm in 1997 to make way for more regional shows at 6.30, they seemingly didn't have enough to fill the week so for a few months they showed High Road in that slot, surely its highest profile slot outside Scotland.
Granada had a show in the early generic era (c2003) called Made In The North West. It came from the old This Morning studio which, by that point, was no longer a studio but a bar (Pan-American). We often got the Cilla Black Granada celeb ident before it, or Lucy Meacock.
They did a couple of other shows from the This Morning studio after they went to London, I seem to remember them saying when it left not to worry as there'd still be shows from the Albert Dock including Something For The Weekend, a Friday teatime show with Paul Crone, as if a half hour regional show was a suitable replacement for ten hours a week on the network.
I remember Shortland Street being shown at 5.10 in Central, before ITN at 5.40. Then Home and Away at 6.00 and Central News at 6.25.
Shortland Street moved to earlier times in the afternoons later in its Central life.
Shortland Street is still popular in its home Country, New Zealand; quite a good soap.
Central used to show Australian dramas A Country Practice and Blue Heelers too.
Central did seem to be the most voracious consumers of Australian soaps, I think they were the only one to show Echo Point. In the schedule shuffle when the national news moved to 6.30, Central News moved to six and Home and Away was networked at five, and Central showed Shortland Street at 5.30 for several months. Opposite Neighbours!
The Kelly Show was scheduled post News at Ten, a slot which at 10.40pm was left open to the regions to fill with whatever they want. It really was a graveyard slot, but viewers in Northern Ireland flocked to the show by 1991. So popular was the first series, that by 1991 it had been extended from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, all produced live from their then largest studio at Havelock House, which was really small (1,650 Sq Ft).
I remember reading somewhere that Kelly was starting to rival The Late Late Show on RTE for viewers in the Republic of Ireland.
Someone wrote in to TV Cream about Kelly a while back, saying that after every show the entire cast and crew would head to the Europa Hotel for the aftershow party, and that quite a lot of bands would then go straight from there to the airport to fly back to London to appear on the Saturday morning programmes, not feeling very well.
One of the nicer aspects of the 'Kelly' era is their frequent teaming-up with their Friday night opposition on BBC NI and RTÉ.
I remember once all three stations simulcast a performance by different choirs who featured on the individual shows; 'The Late Late Show' from Dublin (I think still in the Gaybo era), with, in Belfast, 'Kelly' on UTV and 'Children in Need' on BBC1 NI.
Eventually, there ended up being no edition of 'Kelly' on the same Friday night as CiN, with Gerry K (who was good pals with whoever his rival was at the time, especially the much-missed Gerry-stroke-Londongerry Anderson) usually turning up and getting involved.
I believe the first link-up between UTV and RTÉ on their studio talk-shows happened in the early/mid 1970s, with 'The Gordon Burns Hour' from Havelock House connecting with the 'Late Late' from Montrose - I once received correspondence from the great Mr Burns himself about this.
Cordial links between NI and RoI broadcasters appears to have always been a thing; a highlight being the 'Magic Box' live simulcast on BBC One NI and UTV just before the final analogue switch-off in October 2012.
My favourite example, though, was a UTV/RTÉ continuity announcer exchange one week in the autumn of 1991 - probably involving the senior members of each team as Keith Burnside went 'down South' and Lucy Potter-Cogan came 'up North'.
Last edited by Colm on 11 February 2021 3:38pm - 2 times in total
They also teamed up (RTÉ and UTV) to debut the Irish rugby anthem, Ireland’s Call, in 1995.
It has to be remembered that in the 1990s UTV was the second most watched TV channel in the Republic, tuned to #5 on most TV sets in cable homes (or #3 on MMDS) and as such Kelly would have been widely watched here. Their fall from that position over the years from 2000 onwards to their effective withdrawal from the Irish market in 2017 is a story in itself. And a lesson for any TV channel that no ratings lead is safe in the long term.
The biggest regional programme on Yorkshire in the 90s/00s was "Tonight" which aired at 6:30pm and then less successfully at 5:30pm and then even less successfully at 1pm (as Live Lunch)
Basically like a regional combination of The One Show and This Morning - Big name studio guests, cookery, filmed inserts, with the films often being either series of items that would previously have been a half hour series in itself before the invention of Tonight, or reversions of stuff that previously aired as a separate show at 7:30pm
Tyne Tees also had a version of the same show which only used the same name for short while.
The other big returning series was "The Dales Diary" which although officially a Tyne Tees show, was perfectly reasonably also aired on Yorkshire what with it featuring the Yorkshire Dales. It was before its time really as a bloke walking around the dales chatting to farmers and finding out about the local way of life, is the content of many network programmes these days.
One other notable one was "The Local", a late night show, presented from the set of The Woolpack, where groups of viewers sat round the tables would air their opinions on topical issues. Presented by Christa Ackroyd and Mike Morris, with Mike off of Mike's Carpets fame, as the landlord behind the bar.
Wasn't Our House a Carlton London show that just happened to spread its way across the rest of the Carlton stations?
Reminds me of their version of Just a Minute which started off as a regional London programme and then for the second series turned into an odd London versus the Midlands team format.
Growing up in London the regional programme I remember most fondly is The 6 O Clock Show. There's a whole episode from series 1 online: