BBC Programmes from 1970 in black and white

That's brilliant.

ISTR Channel TV were the last to go colour in about 1976? Tempted to check my IBA transmitter guide...

Which is why I said 'End of 69'

Yes, Rowridge ITV UHF/Colour launched 13 Dec 1969, with BBC 1 following on Dec 27th, though both were probably in 'Trade Test' from Nov 69.

Channel TV was July 1976 BTW

Certainly Southern was in 'trade test' mode before the official launch date, they used to broadcast a couple of little colour promos featuring Trevor Baker and separately Brian Nissen, they would briefly describe to viewers what they could expect from the new colour service.

Please don't think wasn't trying to correct you over the 1969 date etc, you were of course quite correct, I was just trying to point out that the actual date of official colour transmissions was not Nov 1969 (which some people think it was) but slightly later.

Some of the very small BBC news contribution studios were black-and-white into the mid or even late 70s. Dundee springs to mind. It should also be noted that BBC Scotland's football highlights programme was black and white until 1972 or 1973. Indeed as late as New Years Day 1974 highlights of an Edinburgh derby match were black and white because the only BBC colour OB unit in Scotland was at some location in the Highlands for the live Hogmanay show for Network. In terms of Border, even after the main studios were colourised in the summer of '73, the continuity studio, also used for short local new bulletins, was black-and-white for quite a while afterwards.

Oh yes, don't worry, (that's why I used the smiley)

It was only actually four transmitters that launched BBC 1 and ITV in colour on Nov 15th.

Crystal Palace, Sutton Coldfield, Winter Hill, and Emley Moor.

I think the Postmaster Licence for colour on BBC 1 and ITV had that as its start date, so anything in colour (or possibly even in 625 b/w ?) on BBC 1 or ITV prior to that date had to be termed as 'Trade Test'.

Someone in here a few months ago said that Thames and/or LWT were running colour programmes on Crystal P ahead of that date, but the ad breaks were blanked out, which makes sense

There was some discussion about this in another forum some time ago.

Apparently network colour programmes were seen on Border from the outset of UHF ? That imples that Border's Pres Mixer was capable of passing colour, or perhaps the IBA by-passed Border for those network progs.

At that time the IBA's control room at Caldbeck was manned, so it's possible they took Border out of the Tx loop, (would have looked messy though ?)

It was only programmes made in the Border studios which were black-and-white till 1973. Border did have colour telecine capability from 1971, allowing feature films, shows made on film, and adverts to go out in colour from Carlisle. Local captions and the clock were black-and-white but colourised....many other regions and the BBC used a similar system. The studio cameras were 625 line monochrome ones.

Well, they were still in black and white in June 1970 because all their contributions to the election coverage were in monochrome, as was every regional news studio aside from Glasgow. The regional news programmes would have been a low priority because in those days they more or less only did the news and the Beeb never gave them much in the way of resources. You only have to read about the shambles that was BBC Newcastle right up to the mid-eighties, still using ancient resources.

A 'Cox Box' colouriser. Stick in a monocrome image with only two shades of grey, and the box would convert those two shades to any two colours of your choice.

Designed by Micheal Cox, an R&D engineer at ABC Teddington, who famously launched Cox Electronics, and produced video mixers used extensively in the 70s and 80s. Often spotted driving his 2CV around SW London.

Dunno if the Beeb used his coloursiers, probably not, they'd have produced their own home brew boxes no doubt.

Probably - though 'Cox Boxes' were definitely used by the BBC (ISTR they did a colour corrector which was sometimes used to colour correct in-vision monitors - particularly domestic tellies on drama).

I think the phrase used for the boxes that allowed you to add colour to a B&W key source was 'synthesiser' in some circles.

Our 'Cox boxes' worked with three levels, black, white and somewhere in between (I hesitate to say 'gray'). We often used one to colourise B&W end of part captions for feature films if the presentation dept hadn't produced a suitable slide. The aim was to produce three colours - if you had the time and patience, and in telecine there was usually a lot of the former! Black would be keyed to be colour 1, peak white would be keyed to be colour 2 and the black to white (and white to black) edges of the letraset would be used to key colour three. To get the 3rd colour was quite a tricky process and involved very careful tweaking of the caption camera to try and get the 3 separate signal elements. Generally the caption illumination was not very uniform (it was inside one of those EDS (?) coffins) and there was plenty of noise output from the monochrome camera. It was always seen as a bit of a struggle and anyone getting a usuable result was much admired by the others. So the end result was a coloured background and coloured lettering with a different coloured edging around it. Some of the engineers were more artistically inclined than others and the end result could be quite garish at times.

Cox mixers. Lovely bloke and still active, I think he's currently refining a sort of domestic 3D camera system which you can read about in a series of recent CQ magazine articles. We had one of 'his' T8 (could have been T16) mixers. Truly awful, seemed to be largely a copy of a GV300. It lasted around 6 months before it was tipped in the bin. I really do mean that, it was replaced by a GV200.

Good ! He is indeed a great bloke, you're right. I turned up at his place in the 80s, with a piece of faulty kit, and he fixed it there and then on his bench. He was on the organising committee of IBC until very recently ?



I think there was a Cox mixer still in use at BBC Millbank, when I visited there in 1998 ?