1969 changeover from black & white to colour

When TV channels around the world began color transmissions, they frequently came up with eleborate idents and animations that showcased the new technology: Witness the famous NBC peacock in the US ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHeFv-g9kCE ), the CBC butterfly in Canada, the psychedelic animations in France ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me2BHN-vhJk from 0:32 onwards), "The Color Machine" campaign in Australia, etc. Even the fairly staid and traditional ARD network in Germany introduced a funky color ident at the time ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11XMda-7pMA ).

On the other hand, I've noticed that most British broadcasters remained oddly restrained, often simply modifying exisiting idents by adding blue and yellow, as TonyCurrie points out.

There isn't much of 1960s "Swinging Britain" in most of those idents.

Possibly one reason for that was so they could continue using b/w caption cameras, and simply pass the output through a Cox Box, that would take one or two user definable luminance levels, and turn them into one or two user definable colours. As you say, Blue and Yellow being the most popular. The BBC 1 globe and clock, and the logos for Border, Southern, Ulster and ATV are examples that spring to mind.

US broadcasters were far more (for want of a better expression) 'advanced' with their branding, and had more cash to play with.

From what I've seen, TTTV had a confused approach to colour transmissions. They had started to utilise the then-new TTTV logo early in 1970, but some colour productions were still being topped and tailed with the old TTT into 1971 (complete with "COLOUR PRODUCTION" replacing the old "PRESENTS". This can be seen on a number of old productions.

Meanwhile presentation of colour programming was being done by the gallery in studio 3, switched from the usual studio 4 which was being used for general b/w stuff. As a result, all TTTV continuity was OOV for the most part in the very early 1970s, with the one or two IV links being done from studio 3 itself (which was a news studio by rights).

Border TV started colour transmissions in September 1971. Feature films, filmed series like the Partridge Family and adverts were in colour. But local programming using electronic cameras remained in black-and-white only until the summer of 1973. That's why the first networked series of Mr and Mrs, introduced by Derek Batey, was recorded in Newcastle and billed as a Border/Tyne-Tees Colour co-production. On-screen continuity was black-and-white for a long time...then was abandoned for a while in favour of colourised captions, before the continuity studio was eventually equipped for colour.

I think BBC Scotland only had the facility to opt out in black and white for a year or two after colour started... though a number of network programmes were produced in colour from Studio A at Queen Margaret Drive.

Certainly many regional programmes were still made in black and white until around 1972, although by then I'm sure it was perfectly possible to opt in colour - it would be down to the resources allocated to a particular programme.

Across on ITV, it's interesting that the IBA allowed such variations in the standard of the colour service. In some regions, almost everything new would have been in colour - while others like Border had "two tier" services. It seems so strange to think of monochrome in-vision continuity between colour ads and a colour programme.

Jumping forward 30 years, I used to find 4:3 ads, in the middle of 16:9 programmes similarly odd

Well, in Election 70, Glasgow appears to be the only BBC studio outside of TVC in colour, the rest - including Cardiff and Belfast - are in black and white. There's still some black and white in 1974, including some studio stuff in the February one, I think Philip Hayton reports from Leeds in monochrome.

As for Blue Peter, the last black and white Blue Peter was in June 1974. I've actually seen the beginning of that episode where they apologise that they're in a studio yet to be colourised - I think Studio 5 was the last in TV Centre to get colour as it was only used for schools programmes, and no school had colour tellies, but I do know around this time they also ended up using a studio at Lime Grove which had been mothballed for five years - but the films were going to be in colour as they were played straight in from the VT department to the network. They did about half a dozen black and white shows in 1974 and must have been the last non-schools networked monochrome programmes on the BBC. Although BP was quite late to go to colour, it didn't switch until September 1970 as Biddy Baxter thought it was a waste of money and, due to the longer set-up, would eat into rehearsal time.

Of course, some shows were made in colour but were originally transmitted in black and white, such as Python, the first series of which straddled the switchover. Much like how the Beeb didn't officially go into stereo until autumn 1991, but most shows in TVC had been made in stereo for a year or two anyway. Certainly Doctor Who's later series were in stereo, and that ended in 1989.

I've got Inside BBC Television, which may be the book you're referring to, which actually says that they didn't have any video recording facilities at Aberdeen so they had to build a bloody big mast in the middle of the garden (ie, the back of BBC Aberdeen) to send it to Glasgow so they could record it.

Must admit, from what I can gather TTT simply switched off the continuity camera on the day transmission went colour, and started using colour captions at that point, until viewer demand led to them putting together a small set in studio 3 for occasional IV continuity links.

Maybe someone can confirm this, but I understand that at some point around this time they actually moved continuity lock, stock and barrel to a new location on the first floor (it had previously been on ground), where the new gallery and studio was significantly smaller than what went before. This turned out to be the last major upgrade they ever commissioned -- after this point (around 1973/4 I believe) updates to the area were only ever minor and incremental.

In some regions, both BBC and ITV, a studio was "colourised" using an OB unit until the main technical areas were equipped for colour. And, conversely, some outside broadcasts were black and white well into the "colour" era. BBC Scotland's football coverage was still monochrome into the early 70s. And even when that situation changed, there were still anomalies. Because there was only one colour OB unit available to the BBC in Scotland, the highlights of Hibs versus Hearts on New Years Day 1974 were still in black and white as the OB unit had been elsewhere providing coverage of the Hogmanay show.

I'm also sure that BBC Scotland's Dundee studio was monochrome into the late 1970s.

In terms of Border TV, the film inserts in Lookaround were still in black-and-white for a good period after the studio material was in colour. I don't think that was unique...quite a few other regions did something similar, although not as late in the day as Border.

That's the one. It's a rather interesting book if anyone sees a copy...

[quote="Steve Williams" pid="673251"]

This is a very interesting fact - I had no idea Blue Peter didn't change to colour until nearly a year after almost all of the BBC's other programmes. I was also interested to read about the Schools and Regional programmes being made in black and white - I was always under the impression that the BBC automatically switched to full colour when BBC 1 became colour in November 1969.