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.
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.
No, it was a very gradual process, with steps forward, and a few back !
You might say the roll out of HD on BBC, ITV, and 4 is following a similar route.
It is really interesting to hear this - I am surprised, especially as BBC 2 had been broadcasting in colour for 2 years, that the conversion was such a gradual process.
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.
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.
I read somewhere that a 70's Blue Peter that was transmitted in black & white from Lime Grove, the studio actually conked out live on air as it was so old & the show finished in sound only. Is this the same episode?
It is really interesting to hear this - I am surprised, especially as BBC 2 had been broadcasting in colour for 2 years, that the conversion was such a gradual process.
Not everything on BBC 2 was in colour from 1967, far from it. Colour equipment was incredibly expensive and labour intensive to operate, a far far greater technology jump from b/w, than HD is from SD today.
Not everything on BBC 2 was in colour from 1967, far from it. Colour equipment was incredibly expensive and labour intensive to operate, a far far greater technology jump from b/w, than HD is from SD today.
Sir David Attenborough (controller of BBC2 during the change to Colour) on TV-am in 1986 saying that they only had about 4 Colour cameras for the whole channel.
It is really interesting to hear this - I am surprised, especially as BBC 2 had been broadcasting in colour for 2 years, that the conversion was such a gradual process.
Don't get the idea that BBC Two was all colour from 1967. BBC Two was able to introduce colour first because it was already 625 lines (in black and white) because it had launched in 625. However that didn't mean all shows on BBC Two were colour - just that some could be.
BBC One was originally black and white 405 line VHF, and as the PAL colour system we chose for the UK was for 625 broadcasting, BBC One wasn't able to switch until it launched on UHF (along with ITV) in 625. BBC One couldn't show colour when it was 405 only, and it took quite a while to convert the existing 405 or 405/625 switchable black and white studios to colour.
Indeed, the cost of re-equipping for colour was enormous. The smaller ITV stations had sunk all their capital into building studios when they launched, and several had saved money by using cheaper monochrome cameras. The switch to colour involved replacing everything with hi-end equipment that cost substantially more than its monochrome equivalents. Apart from having to replace cameras, it was necessary to put in new racks, vision mixers, lighting (colour had much heavier lighting requirements), presentation switchers, telecine, VTRs, slide scanners, and also to rebuild or repaint sets, and upgrade costume and makeup facilities. OB units had to be replaced and new cabling installed. New sync pulse generators. New test equipment. New off air receivers. Cheap b/w monitors had to be replaced by Grade I colour monitors, which were so expensive that many stations only had one or two of these in the gallery, with all the camera/source monitors remaining black and white.
The cost was phenomenal. The return very marginal indeed.
That was why the smaller ITV companies did their conversion in stages. In many cases, a costly new colour camera for presentation was simply not financially justifiable. Equally, as already identified, it was cheaper to continue to use monchrome slide scanners, clocks and graphics and put them through a Cox box to artificially colourise them. (This also had the advantage of removing blemishes in the artwork!!)
As to Redgauntlet - it was shown in monochrome as far as I can recall. And the lion rampant STV logo continued to be used until 1971.
Most of BBC2's programmes were in colour by the official launch of colour in late 1967 and many of the rest followed in 1968.
For a few months after colour started on BBC1, there were still plenty of black and white programmes. Blue Peter's already been mentioned. Initially so were the likes of Nationwide, Ask the Family and even Z Cars. But within a year, almost all new network programmes were in colour. The glaring exception was Nationwide... though I'm pretty sure the network part of the programme went into colour about 1972, though the Radio Times still appeared to suggest it was entirely black and white for some time afterwards.
(Schools were mostly in black and white for several years but that's a different matter... indeed so was the OU after it started in 1971.)
I read somewhere that a 70's Blue Peter that was transmitted in black & white from Lime Grove, the studio actually conked out live on air as it was so old & the show finished in sound only. Is this the same episode?
Yes, this is mentioned on the TV Studio History website, where one day there simply weren't any other studios available so they used a studio at Lime Grove which hadn't been used for about five years and they just turned all the equipment back on. It says that halfway through the control room filled with smoke, but the Kaleidoscope book Inside The Archives, which includes a complete episode guide, doesn't mention this rather abrupt ending.
As I said, there were about half a dozen black and white BPs in 1974, though, with the Thursday programme in monochrome for the whole of February. There was a scene shifters' strike at the time so many studios at TV Centre couldn't be used because they had the sets for other programmes stuck in them.
Schools were mostly in black and white for several years but that's a different matter... indeed so was the OU after it started in 1971.
The excellent TV Studio History site says that Alexandra Palace Studio-A was one of the first BBC studios to be colourised, in 1968, the cameras being Marconi Mark VIIs, which were transferred to TC when news moved to N1 and N2 in 1969. The Open University moved in to AP after a couple of years of relative disuse, in 1971, but were only initially provided with b/w cameras. They went colour in 1975 with three (plus 1 spare) Link 110s, the cameras that arguably became
the
standard colour cameras the world over. Of course by then, the OU will have made many many monochrome programmes, repeated no doubt for years. The OU moved to Milton Keynes in 1981.
Schools programmes were probably given such a low priority because, as someone pointed out much earlier in the thread, many schools didn't get colour tv sets until the mid 80s. I certainly remember sitting in front of a large, wooden b/w set on a unicol stand! It had an extravagant set of doors which, when opened, revealed a light-shade contraption that folded out around the top and sides of the screen...
Much as I hate applying modern terms to past events, if you had a 625 line black and white television in 1969 then the BBC1 Colour service was almost the equivalent of an upscaled HD channel today.
Even without colour, a good black and white 625 line picture was still sharper than a 405 line pic. I think by the mid 60s all BBC network programmes were made in 625 lines even when they were produced for BBC1 which still transmitted in 405 lines.
Certainly viewers with monochrome 625 line sets who lived in UHF service areas were always advised to switch to the UHF service and abandon VHF. The 405 line service fast became the equivalent of analogue today - it increasingly existed for people with old equipment and rural viewers.
Thinking of digital switchover in Tayside tomorrow, I'm reminded of an aunt who quite happily watched their 1950s VHF set (which was in excellent working order and didn't need fixed once) until the late 70s. BBC2 didn't appeal to her and colour was then out of her reach so switching to UHF made little sense... until my granny persuaded her that she'd get a better picture on STV (which my aunt usually watched) from the local UHF relay than she got from the relatively fuzzy relay of Channel 10 carried by the local Rediffusion cable system!!
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.
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.
Be a little cautious of treating what happened during an Election as being representative of the general situation.
I read a story (here) from somebody who worked in Bristol Comms that not long after the launch of BBC2 colour, a cricket match Bristol was one of the first colour OBs, fell off air a few minutes in because the colour contrib circuit failed. BT transferred it onto the old 405 line circuit, but some bright spark realised that they could get Bristol to opt out and feed Wenvoe with nice colour pictures.
It might well be that for the election all available circuits between hubs like Bristol and Manchester and London were used, and some contributions were sent to London on the 405 circuit if the 625 was being used for something else?