BBC Programmes from 1970 in black and white

I recently watched a Cliff Richard Special on YouTube - I am not a fan of Cliff, but I was watching the scene where he is performing "Goodness Gracious Me" with Una Stubbs - I remember seeing the clip years ago. I was surprised the special was from 1970 as the recording was black and white. I know not all BBC (or ITV) programmes were colour after 1969, but wasn't everything (with the exception of schools TV) in colour by the end of 1970 (the Channel Islands were another exception)?

Aren't there also a number of programmes from around 1970 that only exist as black and white copies, even though they were made in colour?

It may be an archive issue - many BBC programmes from the early 70's which were originally made and transmitted in colour now exist only as black & white film copies due to the wiping policy of the time.

With programmes from 1970 & 1971 this may not be obvious as the credits still have just 'BBC TV' on the end - the 'BBC Colour' strap was not introduced until well after colour production had begun.

The archiving policy is the issue in this case....many BBC (and ITV for that matter) programmes from the early 70s were either wiped and gone forever or are now only available as black-and-white copies made for overseas distribution to countries which hadn't yet gone colour. Quite a few of the Top of the Pops episodes which do exist from the early 70s are preserved in this way. The same applies to some Doctor Who episodes, a few Steptoe and Sons and other shows. You might recall a Dad's Army episode being re-colourised and, theoretically, this could happen with some of these other programmes if the colour information can be decoded. In terms of actual broadcasts, quite a number of BBC and ITV regional news programmes and others were black-and-white only well into the colour era. Locally-sourced programming on Border, for instance, was monochrome only until mid 1973, even though colour transmissions began in September 1971. That's why the first networked series with Derek Batey introducing Mr and Mrs was made in Newcastle as a Tyne-Tees/Border co-production. And BBC children's programming wasn't all in colour from day one. Screen Test, made in Manchester, was black-and-white for more than a series or two in the colour era. Blue Peter, too, wasn't in colour from November 1969 when BBC 1 started colour broadcasts.

Lwt had union trouble thus some had to be made in B&W

I've seen colour programmes, but shown in b/w, perhaps because the video tape recording has degraded over time.
Noise would affect the colour content, before and more than the b/w (aka luminance) on formats such as Quad and C Format.

Nationwide I remember reading was in black and white for a few years after the intro of colour. As were some school programmes down to repeats. I remember on the documentary Reported Scotland the interviewee saying that BBC Scotland didn't get colour news cameras initially. Anyone know when Play School went into colour?

According to Jean Marsh of Upstairs Downstairs fame, the cause of the union trouble was that the set designers, costumers, cameramen etc. received pay rises due to the additional effort involved in producing colour programming. But the sound engineers got nothing extra, for sound was just sound.

The argument was thus that it was that if a cameraman gets paid more to film in colour then the soundman should get more to 'record in colour'. Apparently...

I believe it was an all out ITV colour strike, most notable example you can see nowadays are several early 70s episodes of On The Buses in B/W. From what I understand the initial B/W episodes of Upstairs Downstairs were reshot in colour.

Don'tcha you just love the unions!

By the way, it did affect all ITV regions that had swopped to colour by then. (Not all had swopped by then!)

Wasn't there at least one region that swopped to colour one week, then were forced back to black & white due to the strike?

There's an excellent article on the 1970/1971 ITV colour strike on the "Coronation Street" Wikia:

http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/ITV_Colour_Strike

...which makes the point that it never affected viewers in the Border, Grampian, Westward and Channel regions as they were yet to begin their UHF colour broadcasts.

EDIT:
Westy2:


Not true; the last region to begin a UHF colour service in 1970 were Anglia (via the Tacolneston) on 1st October 1970 - incidentally, another two UHF transmitters in the region, Sudbury and Sandy Heath, went online during the colour strike. From what I can gather, no other regions already broadcasting in colour rolled out the signal from a new transmitter between 1st October and 13th November.

Don't think Look East in Norwich went colour until 1974. Think Open University at Alexandra Palace were B&W for a good few years after the 1969 colour launch on BBC One.

Quite a few programmes shot in colour were telerecorded onto B&W film for sale to B&W broadcasters. In some cases the colour videotape was wiped and all that is left is B&W (though some techniques to reconstruct colour versions of them from the chroma subcarrier dots in the film are being used with some telerecordings)

Border was still showing local output in black and white as late as 1973. This created a headache for the station when it came to making their first network series of Mr & Mrs, as ITV wanted the show to be made and screened in colour (as per the HTV version) and Border at the time only had B&W programme equipment. The problem was eventually solved by making the initial run of Border Mr & Mrs shows at Tyne Tees, with Border using the money made from them to buy some second-hand colour equipment and allow the subsequent series to be made at Carlisle.