Another interesting book is Francis Wheen's
Television
(known as
Television: A History
or
Television: A World History
in some markets), a richly illustrated companion to the 1985 Granada documentary series of the same name.
This gets a bad review in The Television Yearbook 1985, which says it is "of use only for those satisfied with Tony Hancock's career reduced to five lines".
Fair enough, but it's a
global
-- or at least a trans-Atlantic -- history of television, so it's limited in how in-depth it can cover any particular subject.
Last edited by WW Update on 3 February 2013 3:59pm - 2 times in total
TV Heaven is an excellent directory of British TV. It is excellently researched and contains a comprehensive listing of most British programming from the beginning and some extended articles.
I also have 40 years of British Television that was written by Barry Took and others. It was published in the early 1990s to accompany the TV series TV Weekly, presented by Anne Diamond. It has a year by year approach and has extracts from TV Times, so it is ITV biased.
Television Greatest Hits is another good listing book and contains the ratings. Again, this was published to go along with the BBC series in the early 1990s.
ITV: The Inside Story celebrating 50 years of ITV is hit and miss. It does not cover some topics enough in-depth and took too much time up looking at current programming (at the time).
An absolutely brilliant book - I highly recommend it. Great stills and storyboards alongside fabulous text.
Have been thinking about buying the ITN "And Finally..." book from 2005 but not got round to it yet. Does anyone have the NAT book they released in 1999? Is it anything along the lines of the 2005 book or is it just a history of news stories?
I can recommend 'And Finally...' Which I've just read after picking up a cheap second-hand copy on Amazon. It takes you through the glory years of ITN but doesn't back off from the leaner years of recent times.
I can recommend these from my groaning bookcase for anyone with more than a slight interest in archive TV, presentation and behind the scenes information -
Television: Behind The Screen by Peter Fairley (1976) (Independent Television Publications)
One Day In The Life Of Television by Sean Day-Lewis (1989) (Grafton)
The Changing Image: Television Graphics from Caption Card to Computer by Geoffrey Crook (1986) (Built by Robots press)
From Dawn Till Dusk (ITV Midlands) by John W Pettinger (2007) (Brewin Books)
Inside BBC Television (1983)
Understanding Television by John Howkins (1976)
BBC TV Presents by Nicholas Moss (1986) (BBC Data Publications)
This Is BBC Television also by Nicholas Moss (1994) (also known as The Network Television Story) (BBC Books)
The BBC: 70 Years Of Broadcasting by John Cain (1992)
Under The Hammer - The ITV Franchise Battle by Andrew Davidson (1992) (Heinemann)
25 Years on ITV (1980) (ITV Books)
ITV50 - The People's Channel by Simon Cherry (2005) (Reynolds and Hearn)
Old Television by Andrew Emmerson (Shire Publications)
Any BBC or IBA yearbook
BBC Engineering 1922-72 (1972) (I think you could rebuild TVC to it's original spec armed with this)
The Blue Peter Book Of Television
The Radio Times Yearbook 1993
A Knight On The Box - 40 Years Of Anglia Television (1999)
I can also recommend tracking down old issues of Television Magazine, 405 Alive and TV Graphics Review
How much detail does it go into in regards of the production side of the idents, as opposed to just the design/inspiration side; particularly the BBC Two ones? Watching that episode of How Do They Do That only heightened my curiousity about them and how certain ones not feature in the programme were made and what computer software was used for some of the effects. I've always been fascinated by the Carlton star idents too and naturally, the Channel Four blocks.
