Battle of Northern ITV V Southern ITV

Was Jimmy Tarbuck really their biggest star?

Cilli I see what your did there.

I take it what i asked what two sperate enquires. Since there was clearly as started different opt outs for where you live. Another show dropped by LWT The Trials Of Rosie O'Neil.

The other bit is how ITV was operated, and how best it spent it money. The real reason was to make sure the company never went T**TS up in LWT book it does say there could have been mergers. Of course some of the northern stations wanted to make sure some important show got slottted in at peak time. Even the BBC did that.

Small point, 623068, but in the days when I worked for STV, there were no "opt outs" for any of the ITV companies. Each company produced a schedule, and at every junction the network lines were re-configured to supply the required programmes to the required places. The notion of "opt outs" came from the BBC, whose distribution in those days was based on a fixed network schedule (originally in radio days the BBC Regional Programme) which was distributed to the whole of the UK. Regions could "opt out" of that fixed schedule for their own programmes and then "opt in" at the end of that programme or programmes. But there was no unitary ITV schedule, and therefore no basic programme to opt in and out of. Things have of course changed since then.

Your bang on the money, I keep on forgetting that point.

I believe there was an agreement to have a certain programmes to go out all at the same time, Like Bruces big night in or corrie, but if border wanted to move corries then it could.

Sad fact that in 2016 that everything is own by one company apart from STV.

Back in 1987, you had 15 ITV companies, and five cable companies who even then could only get to a hand full of places. 2016 you have two ITV companies and 1000's of other companies,.

Bruce's Big Night was live I think ? (albeit with pre recorded inserts) so difficult back in the 70s to time-shift
it, particularly if it was going to be by less than the total duration of the show. (Although the BBC nations would sometimes do things like that which must have a been a very hairy exercise involving two (or three ?) VTRs and no natural breaks !?)

Living where I did back then, we had a choice of London, Southern, and ATV. On one weekend LWT were showing one of their progs with a 2 to 3 minute offset to ATV/Sou. I wonder why ? This was in the dark and dismal 70s, I wonder if it was some experiment to try and load spread electricity demand for the then CEGB, who used to battle with 20 million kettles going on at the same time during commercial breaks ?

The full studio tape of episode 1 of Big Night is on YouTube, complete with LWT dated RX and TX countdown clock, at it was all pre-recorded.

I have nothing to add but this is a properly interesting discussion. Good thread idea.

Yes, the first programme was recorded two weeks prior to transmission. However I wonder if that changed throughout the series. Bruce did have that rant at the press reaction to the show, which seemed a more immediate response than two weeks.

It was pre-recorded and edited quite close up to transmission. Together with the editing of 'The Big Match' it used up a lot of LWT's modest VTR facilities at the time. That meant that quite a bit of LWT's VT programming came from various facility houses around London.