Border TV

There have been a lot of questions about Border TV in the last couple of weeks, thought it might be an idea to put them all in one place, starting with this one...

When I was a kid, I remember the Sunday night line up was something like

1945 Return of the Saint
2045 Lillie
2145 ITN News
2200 Tales of the Unexpected

in around 1978 ish

Before they went on one of their numerous local strikes, every Sunday instead of commercials during these programmes , there was a network supplied slide of the programme with the programme theme played in the background - this happened every Sunday for a few weeks

Am curious as to where and why these came from, there was never an announcement over them they just appeared and disappeared...

Any answers ?

No am pretty sure it was something to do with a strike, this happened for 4 or 5 Sundays, then they went on strike for a couple of weeks. They went off air one Sunday lunchtime, and the standard Independent Television strike caption appeared for one day, then a Border generated strike caption the day after

I wondered if it was something like an overtime ban, seemed to be every Sunday before they went on strike. Don't remember there being any explanatory announcements either

I remember, in the late 70s, a Wednesday evening when, at 8 p.m. precisely, the screen went blank on Border. After a minute or so, a caption appeared along the lines of "There will be no further programmes on this channel today". On that occasion there was a dispute over staffing levels, I believe. The caption may have originated from Caldbeck, and not the Carlisle studios. I think all the original main transmitters on the ITV network had the ability to insert local captions. Black Hill certainly did for STV.

I'm sure TonyCurrie's spoken about it before. What would happen is the union would 'black' a station, which literally meant the station's output would go black, and after 30 seconds (I think?) the IBA would automatically retake control.

Yes, and after the local IBA control centres ceased to be manned (circa 1990) if the primary transmitter lost the video sync pulses, it would either automatically shut down, or radiate an apology caption, depending what time of day the signal failed ! The IBA were always watching and monitoring remotely all ITV and C4 regions, from 1980 from ROCs at Black Hill, Emley Moor, Croydon, and St Hilary (S Wales), and from about 1993 just from Emley.

In fact with the privatisations, and subsequent mergers of the IBA and BBC transmitter departments, just about all terrestrial TV transmissions are now monitored in some way from Emley. The only exceptions AIUI are the remaining analogue BBC TV transmissions, that are still monitored from the legacy BBC site at Warwick.

Mmm, remember those captions too, something along the lines of 'We are sorry to tell you there will be no further programmes on this channel today. We will bring you more information tomorrow'.