BBC Programmes from 1970 in black and white

South Today Southampton was in colour by the time we had a colour set in 1971, but I do recall them reverting to b/w shortly afterwards owing to an industrial dispute, similar to the ITV one ?

Would I be correct in thinking Midlands Today didnt go colour until they moved to Pebble Mill?

Or did they go colour from their previous home?

(I guess Atv Today went colour from November 69 as they wouldve been at Bridge Street by then!

ATV certainly from Nov 69 (same for YTV and Southern who also had purpose built studios ready for the end of 69)

http://www.sub-tv.co.uk/atvcentre/ultramodern.asp

Dunno about BBC Birmingham, MT might have been colour pre Pebble Mill, I can't imagine the Beeb, letting vulgar old ATV and Lew Grade stealing a march on them ?

Presumably the BBC also had a reason to go colour earlier, as BBC Two was running colour content from 1967, and so there was justification to upgrade some facilities usefully prior to the 1969 switch over.

Stv should be from the start swell since he built he gateway just before hand.

It is very interesting to hear about the black and white recordings of BBC colour programmes that survive - I had heard about the Doctor Who and Dad's Army episodes. It was very surprising to hear that BBC Look East didn't go into colour until 1973 - the change took longer than I expected. It appears that the Cliff Richard programme I mentioned might have been a black and white recording of the original, I noticed that the quality is quite poor, ie a grainy looking picture.

I was also interested to hear how long it was before Border Television had local programmes in colour. I know some ITV companies produced one or two programmes in colour before the first colour broadcasts - I have heard Rediffusion produced a play on colour videotape just before the merger with ABC and the formation of Thames.

ABC had R&D labs at Teddington (that lasted well into the 80s under Thames)

They were conducting tests for the three competing colour systems in the mid 1960s (just as the BBC were too)
so it's not surprising that they produced real programmes in colour too, once they were consumed into Rediffusion

ATV/ITC produced shed loads of colour programmes from the early 60s, Thunderbirds in 1964.
The Prisoner and The Saint were also produced in colour, before ITV had its own colour transmission facility.
It was because of the American market.
Of course those programmes were on film, but ATV's Elstree studios did have NTSC and PAL cameras working alongside each other, to make 625/PAL and 525/NTSC copies of the same shows, before viable standards converters started to appear early to mid 70s.

Further reading about ATV and colour towards the bottom of this:-

http://www.transdiffusion.org/tv/studioone/this_is_elstree_1

On the DVD of series one of " Are You Being Served? " I seem to remember the pilot programme is in black and white because the BBC did not keep a colour copy.

This has since had the same treatment as Dad's Army and have been shown on the BBC in colour again.

A Coloured film version has now been created but does look a bit funny

B&W:


Colour:

http://www.hhg.org.uk/images/s964.jpg

Courtesy of the old Harlech House of Graphics site, even TWW made a colour series, which according to them was shown on BBC2 in 1968.

Southern's new colour production centre was completed in mid/late 1969 as you say, but I don't think they actually (officially) started to broadcast in colour until after Nov 1969 if my memory serves, I think they started in Dec 1969. I'm sure someone will be able to dig up the figure.