1969 changeover from black & white to colour

Bought the 'Special Branch Complete Series' DVD yesterday from one of those Cash Converter type places for £20 & currently working my way through it(Series 1 so far!).

Obviously the Thames TV logo used changes over time, but exactly when did Thames actually change from it's first black & white skyline logo

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/itvlondon/itvlondon-thamesmain/images/thames-ident1968sky-as.jpg

to the more familiar version on screen for presentation

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/itvlondon/itvlondon-thamesmain/images/thames-ident1971as.jpg

as all the Season 1 colour episodes on the DVD (apart from the final episode ' Timebomb' which has no opening ident, haven't got to the end yet!) still have the black & white idents on, but change opening titles at that point!

I know from doing a bit of looking online,'Corrie's ' first colour titles didn't debut straightaway, using still captions initially.(After recording 'test' episodes in colour, using the black & white titles, that were transmitted prior to 15 November 1969 in black & white!)

Did any ITV companies colour ident /presentation package debut straightaway on / around 15 November 1969 or was the black & white ones still used initially because colour TV sets were in the minority?

(For the record, I wasn't born till 1971!)

I honestly don't know the answer to your question I'm afraid but I would imagine a lot depended on exactly when each programme was made. Programmes made in colour with a view to "future-proofing" them may have the black and white ident on them because their first TX was still in black and white.

I've seen a black and white YTV programme which used what appeared to be a monochrome version of their familiar static 70s ident rather than the original form-up... was that used in the autumn of 1969 or was this a monochrome programme shown after 15/11? Similarly, I once saw a Granada programme from 1969 which had the colours of the familiar 70s logo reversed with the name in Yellow and the G arrow in white - but, again, when was this actually broadcast?

In the case of BBCtv, which I know a lot more about, this problem did not arise. The BBCtv rhombus boxes were used on the end credits until late 1971/early 1972 when they were replaced with the BBC COLOUR logo. (And, of course, the globe changed at the very moment the colour service became official.)

Although I can't find precise details, remember that some regions were not colour equipped for transmission until well after the 1969 start. A number of regional centres similarly produced programmes in 625 mono so the old idents stayed in use for a number of years after the notional colour air date.

I see, but you'd suppose they'd want to promote the fact certain shows were in colour as well!(Unless they did it verbally on live continuity? 'Now on ATV, for the first time in colour on certain transmitters, Special Branch'!)

(Think I remember seeing on one of the old LWT early colour comedy repeats on M & M or ITV3 where they 'accidently' left the frontcaps & endcaps on & it was the original 1968 still slient caption!)

It seemed daft having half a series in black & white & the rest in colour.

You would've thought for sales / repeat purposes, they would've sorted out the colour equipment earlier? (Was 'Special Branch' & similar affected shows ever repeated?)

(It's bad enough when they can't appear to make up their mind whether to use OB VT or OB Film on location!)

When ITV had a Colour strike in the early 1970s some episodes of On The Buses were in Colour and then a few in B/W, which is odd when you watch them back today.

It's the same with Upstairs Downstairs; there's a few in 625 black and white because there was industrial action which prevented them being made in colour even though the new colour equipment was being used

The switch to colour didn't happen instantly. In November 1969, London, Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire switched to colour first, and the other companies followed one by one. Southern and STV had launched colour by the end of the year, but some areas remained completely monochrome for several years afterwards until 1976 when Channel was the last to go colour.

Production schedules are complicated things, and some series shown after the colour launch would have been made quite some time in advance. Much as it might make sense to an observer in 2010, I can tell you that the process of switching television studios over to colour was anything but simple and finance, equipment delivery delays, union intransigance, and the dear old IBA all made the process a good deal more complex.

Thames and ATV had already been making many expensive studio-based programmes in colour by 1969, but we're talking 525 NTSC. Converting these tapes to 625 PAL produced an inferior picture, cost a bomb, and was in many cases simply not worth it. Equally, some series remained in monochrome in some regions simply because that area was behind the rest of the country in the series. Crossroads remained b/w in London for six months for that reason. Film series were a different matter, and much was made in colour well in advance of the launch. Indeed the BBC made its first colour programme on film around 1957. Most of the ITC drama series (The Saint, Danger Man etc) were filmed in colour from the mid 60s onwards, as was The Avengers. Even the smaller companies were shooting colour - STV's children's serial Redgauntlet was in colour. And even though by the time colour launched, TWW was just a memory, I've seen some of their colour programmes repeated on BBC2.

But television in those days was driven by programming, not marketing, so the matter of idents was often last on the list!

From end Nov 69, Thames, ATV, LWT, Granada, Yorkshire and Anglia had all created new colour front/endcaps. Southern and STV both simply colourised their existing animations, turning the dark parts blue. Other companies took whatever was the most pragmatic approach - either electronically colourising existing graphics (with blue and yellow dominating) or making something new (eg the Westward galleon).

It's probably wrong to assume that DVD releases or ITV3 repeats are entirely representative of what was seen on screen in the early 70s. Series with b/w frontcaps would in most cases have either had a colour animation spliced on the beginning instead (in the case of film programmes) or a new colour ident played out from presentation before mixing into the programme's titles.

There are of course some episodes of live magazine programmes that were produced in Black and White occasionally because of lack of colour studio facilities. Certainly this happened to Blue Peter on more than one occasion, leading to the subtle "and today's edition of Blue Peter is in Black and White..." announcement, no doubt to the dismay of tetchy kids up and down the country... Of course some regional BBC centres remained black and white well into the 70s, leading to lengthy monochrome inserts into things like Nationwide and General Election programmes. This was often parodied on later comedy programmes when live link-ups to 'Glasgow' were black and white, fuzzy and covered in noise!! I have a BBC book from 1982 which describes how the "Beechgrove Garden" tapes from Aberdeen still have to be driven to Glasgow for transmission because there was only a b/w link to QMD at the time...

It's interesting to note of course that the colour system was entirely backward compatible with existing 625 line UHF Monochrome TV Sets. Although VHF set owners would (eventually) have to upgrade their sets, the move by the broadcasters to colour did not mean that viewers had to go to the expense of getting colour too. Many opted to buy a UHF Black and White set instead. Greatly reduced license fee and initial set costs meant that b/w sets were still sold into the 90s.

Yep - I believe BBC East was the last BBC regional centre to be upgraded from B&W to Colour - in 1974? They got EMI 2005 studios cameras (soft 3-tube version of the 4-tube 2001 workhorse) - which were still in use until the late 80s/early 90s ISTR.

Interesting about the Beechgrove Garden tapes... but certainly by 1982 the inserts into Rep Scot and Nationwide from Aberdeen had long been in colour.

Didn't realise that STV had a colourised version of the lion rampant symbol. I'd always assumed the "stv" letters were introduced when the station started broadcasting in colour. Tony, roughly when did the logo change? Was it a matter of weeks or some time? (Mind you, to our modern eyes it would have been strange to change the logo while the company was still clearing up from the fire at the Theatre Royal.)

There was the added complication of a BBC industrial dispute that meant some regions switched back to b/w, despite being equipped for colour. I can recall seeing Bruce Parker using the 1 minute regional promo spot at 17:39hrs to explain why South Today was in b/w as many viewers had written in bemused.

Of course it was a simple but effective bit of power the unions wielded in those days, simply disable the colour sub carrier and burst on studio equipment. There were a lot of good things about the 70s, and the so called 'golden age of TV', but all that nonsense is best left in the past .

Tony Currie mentions the fact that Redgauntlet was made in colour. But was it screened in colour? I seem to recall it was one of the first victims of the ITV colour strike....a Tyne Tees continuity announcer referred to it scathingly as Greygauntlet.