BBC Programmes from 1970 in black and white

It is surprising (to me anyway) how late Channel TV went into colour. I know there would have been difficulties with the signal coming from mainland Britain, but 1976 still seems like a long time after. They would have still had a black and white test card on Channel TV until then, so Test Card D would have been used well into the seventies.

It was partly the problem of getting a colour feed there yes, but also the fact that the CI population is only 100,000, and was low down the queue for getting a UHF/625/Colour transmitter. At the peak of the UHF expansion project one new transmitter was being opened every week. Mainland main sites such as Bluebell Hill in Kent, Midhurst in Sussex, and The Wrekin in Shropshire didn't come on line until 1973/4/5.

Then the engineers at BBC Millbank would have had my greatest sympathy. The one I'm thinking of was used in the original tenth floor studio at LWT. It had a habit of completely locking up (just before tx) and would only revert to normal working after a reset. The trouble was, as I recall, it could take quite a while for it to 'come back' after this and there was a complete and utter loss of confidence in it.

We liaised with Cox (Was it Cox electroncs then, or Abekas Cox (?) I can't remember after all this time) and naturally boards were exchanged and swapped out to no lasting positive effect. It was ditched when the studio was completely re-vamped and that was only after about 6 months. Maybe it was a rogue production model and others proved more reliable, I can't imagine the whole design was flawed.

The only other people I know who had one was C4 presentation, I think they had a T24.

The main issue in introducing a colour service to the Channel Islands was providing a reliable feed....as this article explains:

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/features/sabre/index.shtml

UHF main stations were being built and opened until the late 1970s...The Wrekin didn't enter service until 1975, Eitshal (Isle of Lewis) in 1976 and Brougher Mountain in Northern Ireland in October 1978.

Selkirk, by the way, was unusual in that the ITV colour service, which started in March 1972, wasn't joined by BBC 1 and BBC 2 until May the following year.

1976 did seem to be the year that difficult sites were tackled.

Eitshal had to be fed by a series of mountian top microwave link sites, including a passive reflecto, stretched across the highlands from Inverness.

Similarly The Shetlands required a link station to be constructed on Fair Island

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/bringing_colour_to_the_Shetland_isles.pdf

To put things in population perspective, here are the population coverage figures for some stations (1988 figures)

The Wrekin 132k
Eithsal 20k
Bressay 23k
B Mtn 80k
Selkirk 55k

Brougher Mountian was delayed many years, presumably as a result of the IRA murdering a BBC engineering team that were commissioning the site in 1972 ? Their green BBC Land Rover was mistaken for an Army vehicle.

I believe BBC Presentation used Cox Boxes to colourise symbols, clocks and slides produced from the NODDY camera which was monochrome.
http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/logos/bbc_noddy.jpg
This might account for some of the perceived variations in the yellow and blue tones of the BBC 1 Mirror Globe (some grabs that have turned up on the internet would have you believe the yellow was more greeny at times). BBC Two used blue and cyan for its clock and symbols:
http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/logos/bbc1_futura_clock.jpghttp://625.uk.com/tv_logos/logos/bbc2_clock.jpg

I think I've heard it said that there were marks on the dials corresponding to the colour values required for the standard idents so they were probably seldom adjusted.

However, it would appear changes were used to good effect during Transmitter Information intervals, when the "Walk and Talk" theme would be played over a purple and green image of Crystal Palace transmitter!

Ha ! I can recall a variety of colours being used on the Tx Info Pres ?

ATV used to play around (on local pres only) with their 'An ATV Colour Presentation' caption used at the end of feature films. At the end of the film. 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire ' they used yellow text, on a red background !

The caption prior to Engineering Information appeared in a variety of colours...

Sometimes, if there was a four or five minute gap to fill, Border TV would show a caption with the Border ident and the word "Interlude" under it. It changed colour from, the normal white on blue, to green, red, purple etc.

The first 6 episodes of Upstairs Downstairs were shot in B&W, but only the first episode was reshot in colour (which was done at the end of season 1 production). Two different variants of it were made; the first is a simple remake of the original, and presumes the remaining B&W episodes will still be shown. The other (the infamous 'Sarah Leaves' version) has a different ending so that the B&W episodes can be cut out without affecting continuity. This rather pennypenching move allowed LWT to sell UpDown as an 'all colour' series whilst only going to the expensive of reshooting 1 out of the 6 B&W episodes!

Sadly, the original B&W version of episode 1, which had some minor differences (including a couple of cast changes) was junked and has never been seen since it's original transmission.


'The Avengers' also went colour from 1967 even though ITV could only transmit it in B&W at the time. This was due to export sales to the US (and also why it has captions with 'in Color' rather than 'in Colour' burnt at the start of the title sequence now). It also has the (probably unique) distinction of being 'designed in colour' during 1965/1966 even though it was still shot in B&W - all the sets and costumes were designed as for a colour production to allow for a more natural feeling for the actors rather than sticking to greys and blues which are all that are needed for a B&W production.

The Avengers was, of course, shot on film and the reason it was made in colour was, indeed, so that it could be sold to the U.S. Other series like The Saint, Man in a Suitcase and The Baron were also made on colour film before colour transmissions started in the UK. Equally, the Gerry Anderson puppet series after Fireball XL5 were all made in colour, on film, years before colour TV was introduced. I believe there was even one British-made TV drama series in the 50s which was made in colour for the U.S. market.

In terms of the ITV colour strike, all programmes made during the industrial action were black-and-white only. so, when the strike ended, there were many programmes, drama series in particular, which had b&w episodes. Equally programmes recorded before the "colour strike" were transmitted in b&w, even though they were made in colour. I don't think the strike affected all programme companies from the same date. STV's "Redgauntlet" was made in colour, but transmitted in black and white. And, I remember, I was watching Tyne-Tees TV at the time, which had only gone colour relatively recently, when the continuity announcer made a scathing reference to "Greygauntlet"...within a week or two Tyne-Tees had reverted to monochrome.

The NC1 and NC2 Continuity Mixers (eg the ones operated by the announcer with one fader per source) were made by Cox

http://www.bbceng.info/Eng_Inf/EngInf_25.pdf

Was the Grass Valley M204/ICL computer 'automation system' finished and hooked up? Did it work satisfactorily?