Channel Television during the 1979 ITV Strike

That's true. However, the question I ask is had such a video link existed at the time then could history have been any different?



If the networked programmes were just CTV news, local programmes, and pre-recorded stuff then what and where are the additional costs?



This gets back to the question of how much power and influence the UK trade unions actually had in the Channel Islands at the time?



Could you elaborate on this one? I know that the GPO owned the physical connections of the ITV network, but TV programmes were being networked across the country all the time so what difference would it make if they originated from CTV rather than Granada?

ttt please take a step back for a moment before continuing this argument.

Those of us who value the contributions from people who have inside understanding of the TV industry would appreciate it if passive aggressive, misinformed nitpicking over semantics didn't cause somebody to choose not to continue sharing their insights here.

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If a terrestrial video circuit had existed from Jersey to the UK then things may not have been that different anyway.

Costs for providing a feed of programme material to the UK population rather than to the Channel Islands residents would surely have an huge increase in royalty payments. Where would that cost be recouped by Channel? They weren't selling advertising to anywhere other than their own area.

The unions in the Channel Islands are irrelevant to setting up a feed to the whole UK - as the system was looked after by staff on the mainland. Nobody would want to get involved in doing something that could cause their own industrial relations problems.
The GPO would not normally route a network feed directly from Jersey (via the mythical video link) to all the IBA transmitters.
That would therefore require actions that were deliberately seen to be strike breaking actions, and would not be allowed. The unions at the GPO would not do it, as they would be well aware of the ITV strike action.

The management at the GPO would not want to cause an issue that lead to strike action affecting their own operations.
Bear in mind that the TV / radio side of the GPO was very small beer compared to the telephony and postal side of their work.
They would not want to cause industrial action that cost them on that. Bear in mind the IBA and ITV companies would still have been paying for the video and audio circuits that they rented from the GPO throughout the strike anyway, so what financial reason would the GPO management have to do this?

I didn't start work until 1985, so things were slightly different from 1979, but not completely different so I can see what could or would have happened.
40 years ago is so very very different in staff relations and union power now, and it is difficult to even start to explain what the knock ons would have been. Channel were fortunate to have management, staff and unions who understood that this small outpost of ITV would have failed financially if it had been taken off air for a long period, Therefore it was a special case. Nobody was going to undermine that by doing something such as networking, which would have breached that trust.

I can point you to the BECTU website (which after mergers is what the ACTT, NATTKE and the ABS became) and this page.
https://www.bectu.org.uk/advice-resources/get-help

You'll note this line under the heading Who is Covered -
"The rights outlined apply to members in England, Wales and Scotland (Great Britain). Members in Northern Ireland have, broadly speaking, the same rights as those in Great Britain, but there are some important differences addressed below. BECTU members should consult their BECTU rep or official for advice/support. There are differences for the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Most statutory rights apply to Crown Servants, though there are some exceptions eg. they are excluded from the statutory scheme as they have their own redundancy scheme. BECTU members with queries should seek advice from their local rep or full time official."

So in 2019 BECTU has members in the Channel Islands, but there are local differences in legislation from the mainland.
In 1979 I would have thought it would be broadly similar.
They are trade unions bringing together people who have similar trades - and it can cover different legal systems.

You make a fair point concerning the royality payments. I am aware, from working in production, that copyright holders of TV programmes and films are known to offer 'discounts' for smaller broadcasters.

Does anybody have any 'inside' knowledge about the royalities CTV paid for broadcasting pre-recorded material before and during the ITV strike? Did they have large discounts that reflected their small number of viewers that would not have applied had they decided to network a the programme nationally?

We can assume a worst case scenario that CTV won't receive any advertising revenue from the UK, apart from companies that already advertise on CTV, if it decided to network programmes to the UK. Therefore could the royalties vs advertising revenue situation actually be a more prohibitive force against CTV networking programmes to the UK than the howls of protest and threats from the unions are?



Assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that the video link was already in place before the ITV strike started and CTV networked a programme or two every year and also used it to supply some footage to ITN.

Any network feed whether from ATV or Granada or whoever would be passed to the MCR of the local station from the GPO network.
It would have then been routed to the Transmission Control and put to air via that way, back through MCR and to the local GPO switching centre on to the lines that fed the local IBA transmitters.
Obviously all the local ITV stations MCRs were not operational during the strike.

To take an incoming feed from Jersey into say Southampton, then up the GPO lines to all the local GPO switching centres and putting that directly to the IBA transmitters would not be a normal thing to do.
Therefore it would not happen without being an obvious strike breaking attempt, and would cause the issues I've already mentioned.

It has happened in the past where the GPO / BT has patched out the local studio centres, but that is usually during a period of emergency. Such as a fire at STV's studio centre when I think Grampian was put out in the Central Belt, and in the BBC I know of a major power failure at the Pebble Mill Comms Centre where they asked the Birmingham BT exchange to put BBC1 and 2 from London directly to the Sutton Coldfield transmitter and up the lines to Manchester to put the services back on air.
That is a completely different situation to the strike though.

There was no reverse circuitry from Channel to mainland UK. If Channel wanted to play out a programme to ITV they had to send the tape over to another ITV company. How do I know this? Because I played out one such tape from a VTR machine in London. How they got it onto a quad tape I’ll never know, perhaps they got RCA down the road to transfer it.

Ok.

A common sense post.

No, don’t leave as your contributions are informative. But perhaps be prepared to accept that some of us worked knee deep in ITV for many decades and with that comes knowledge and understanding that viewers don’t have. We have absolutely not fallen out over this, keep posting.

Can I just ask why you think it would have been the Channel TV management's decision to make as to network to the whole UK?
Their mandate was to supply a programme service to the IBA to cover the Channel Islands, nothing more than that.
According to my 1981 IBA handbook, Channel had a staff totalling 66 people (and probably one puffin).
That's not a lot of staff effort available to utilise!