Changes to BBC Parliament & Political Programming

To be fair, the "London opt" covered a massive area in 74 from Banbury to Dover, basically the whole London commuter belt compared to now where Luton and Stevenage are the northernmost points of the current BBC London region.

Seeing John Cole (then of the Observer) appear as a pundit prompts two points:

I don't recall any outcry or accusation of bias against John Cole when he was BBC Political Editor despite the Observer (of which he was Deputy Editor) having backed Labour in the election.

The then Political Editor in 1979, apparently David Holmes, doesn't seem to have taken part in the Election programme, which would be unthinkable these days. Possibly a symptom of BBC News and BBC Current Affairs being separate entities then, and this looks a lot like a Current Affairs production with a bit of news input from Angela Rippon?

BBC News and BBC Current Affairs were very separate entities within the BBC until the late 1980s.

John Cole became the BBC Political Editor in 1981, and in the same way Aiastair Burnet was editor of The Daily Express and The Economist, ITN did not find that a problem when he too over full time news reading at ITN in 1976.

It was interesting that the breakfast output was made lighter, with impressionists, someone doing a satirical sketch. Almost as if to make it accessible for Breakfast Time viewers, despite the fact that Breakfast Time didn't come on air for another 4 years.

I do enjoy watching the results from Northern Ireland in this 1979 coverage. Nothing has changed in 40 years in terms of politics there. The same old parties tied to religion are at the helm.

It must be odd for English viewers trying to understand the Northern Irish political parties. Ulster Unionists were always aligned with the Conservatives. SDLP (Social Democratic Labour Party) were always aligned with Labour. Alliance Party was always linked with the Liberals (later Lib Dems).

This is the problem I have always had - Northern Irish voters never get a chance to elect one of the main political parties of the UK, unlike Scotland and Wales who have their national parties along with Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems.

Election results were really the only time breakfast television was seen on UK channels. The 1955 general election was the first time the BBC provided a breakfast election results programme at 6.00am on Friday 27th May 1955.

There have always been lighter bits, particularly involving impressionists (Mike Yarwood, Rory Bremner etc).

Incidentally, this is the bit that was cut out early on - the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show. I gather a repeat was pulled because of the Election purdah period

Well yes I know this, which is why I thought making the programme more like a Breakfast Show, when Breakfast shows didn’t exist, seemed a bit odd.

Like how they do now, where the programme continues across the Breakfast slot, and they drop everything else, but they make time to throw to Carol for the weather.

Decades ago, Germany's ZDF featured live disco bands during its evening election coverage, as you can see in this promo:

Just wow, you could be watching the downfall of a government and then straight into Boney M!

There was some merit in the main network studio and presenters covering the SE news portions. If a BBC region fell off the air, they could just crash back to network and it would look relatively normal and familiar . The same of course every night for Nationwide. Remember the English regions in particular were equipped with second hand ‘hand me down’ studio kit ( still are !) BBC South would often fall off the air back then thanks to equipment failure etc

Am I the only person to have noticed the rather poor map that accompanied the constituency results didn’t include NI ?!