Channel Television during the 1979 ITV Strike

A colleague of mine used to work for RCA on Jersey, shall we say the engineers at RCA were often very 'helpful' to the station

Remember at one stage RCA actually wanted to buy Channel.

I had no idea that so many ex ITV workers are on here. The amount of inside knowledge has been incredible.

Certainly they were closing for that half hour at 12pm on weekdays during at least 1979/80 according to The Times archive. It's a real oddity - I wonder if it was something to do with transmission costs, but presumably they'd have relayed a test card rather than shutting down altogether, so can't see how they'd have gained anything. During the same period, they were starting with World of Sport on Saturday, and opening as late as 3pm on Sundays.

Side issue: I've seen Westward branded schools captions online, so did Channel make any effort to cover them up or just let it (no pun intended) slide?

Sadly the technology (as in a video link to the UK) did not exist at the time, so the only option would have been for CTV to establish a playout centre in the UK. Therefore any concepts of CTV networking the UK are really a hypothetical possibility more so than an idea that ran through the minds of most managers at CTV, unless one knows otherwise. I don't think that the number of staff at CTV had much bearing on the issue though if the IBA handles matters once the feed reaches the UK.

The ITV strike is notable as the first (significant) instance where the unions and the working classes crossed paths with each other. ITV was preferred by the C2, D, and E socioeconomic groups whereas the BBC was preferred by the A, B, and C1 socioeconomic groups. It's unclear how well the unions realised this.

Was there any detailed contingency plan ever put in place by the IBA to deal with service provision during instances of large scale industrial action at programme contractors?

The information that you have provided about the network feed passing through the MCR of the local ITV studio on its way to the transmitter is probably the best and most compelling answer as to why CTV (if it actually had a video link to the UK) would be unlikely to network their programmes and provide a minimal service. If the MCR rooms are out of action then the feed cannot progress from the GPO network to the transmitters unless the IBA installs a bypass network.

This does raise ethical questions whether an ITV programme contractor should or should not have been allowed to block ANY networked programmes from its transmitters as a result of strike action or otherwise...

As for the pair of pre school 12 noon programmes, I wonder if there was some local law in the CIs that didn't allow TV for the very young during the day ? There was a culture in the 50s and 60s in some quarters that TV for the young was something potentially dangerous (Yes I know,,)

The IBA and GPO did by-pass the ITV companies during the strike, that's how the nationally fed apology captions, and Engineering Annnos got to air

The IBA must have given consideration to the period that they'd have allowed the situation to persist. One aspect was that the programme contractors franchise persisted and that during the strike they were obliged to carry-on paying their IBA rentals.

The IBA largely stood behind the company managements.

If the situation had been reached where companies, possibly smaller regionals would have failed to make payments then the situation may have changed. But, as it was the IBA had stress-tested the companies at the franchise award, and they all had sufficient resources to survive if need be by borrowing.

The whole situation of distribution and transmission relied on heavily unionised (closed shop) organizations, the Post Office (POEU), and the IBA itself. If the authority had taken the decision to bypass the programme contractors for other than operational reasons, thus to supply a strike-breaking service to its own transmitters, then an escalation of the ITV strike to the GPO and the IBA technical departments would have been inevitable.

Several other questions to be answered are, for instance: who would provide the service, how would they fund it.? CTV would have no possibility of acquiring UK rights-cleared content and funding it with airtime sales.

Also, how would the IBA deal with the existing programme contractors, who whilst in default over provision were not is default over rental payments? Could they be removed, or suspended?

If the IBA had, on its own resources provided a programme service, what provision was there in the Television Act to allow this to happen? Could the IBA actually sell airtime? I doubt that they had either the legal power or the commercial wherewithal to do this.

More likely, a ITCA strike-breaking service would be authorised by the Authority. This would have been a very political action.......

Yes operationally it was possible for the GPO to overplug the feeds to the transmitters, but the whole point is that they would not have done without a good reason to.
A fire or power failure and a familiar voice on the control line asking them to help out would be fine. An unfamiliar voice asking them to do something out of the ordinary which would obviously to break a strike would cause a problem.
Think as if it was 1979 here...

A national apology caption would be acceptable, a programme feed would not.

And of course Engineering Announcements were business as usual.

Were engineering staff working for the IBA ACTT members?

No, the ABS (Association of Broadcast Staff) The ABS were the main engineering union at the BBC

I can't believe you're still flogging this dead horse

It was an interesting idea originally, but we've given you so many reasons why it just wouldn't have happened or even been considered