Well, yes, and the material which gave ITV a bad name among much of the southern English middle class was often more popular in Northern Ireland than anywhere else, even that produced in London and, later, by TVS. Crossroads was especially popular in NI, like Coronation Street & Emmerdale today (although unlike those two modern-day juggernauts it was also more popular in south-east England than in northern England).
Couple of other things to say:
re. Southern: they had a separate 'Scene South East' broadcast on Fridays only (the final edition from December 1981, which I find rather moving, has widely been distributed and I think it's on YouTube) and, latterly, 'Scene Midweek' on Wednesdays. They might have done more if Bluebell Hill, which was needed to fill a UHF gap in Kent between Crystal Palace and Dover which hadn't applied under VHF, hadn't initially been given to Thames and LWT when it opened in 1974, and indeed they surely would have done had they stayed on because the franchise would have been largened to move closer to London whoever had won it.
re. epilogues, in the last years before overnight transmission started in 1987 Thames' epilogues (also shown on LWT, as we know) became increasingly secular, as you'd expect for a more diverse city. They probably also included more representation of non-Christian religions for the same reason - the old BFI site used to give a full list for much of the 1980s, suggesting that they might have been given the tapes when Thames were winding down. In fact a load do still seem to be listed but not together, if you see what I mean.
One of my favourite jokes is that the Devon-based 'Postscript' booksellers would have to be called 'Company' once you get past Dorchester. Likewise that a Suede album was going to be called 'Company' but was renamed 'Night Thoughts' because Brett Anderson was the sort of Home Counties boy who aspired to being from London. Likewise, the Momus song "What Will Death Be Like?" refers to "the night thoughts of Late Call" - as an Edinburgh man who came to London, combining the name of two epilogues he'd have been familiar with.
Last edited by Araminta Kane on 8 February 2021 7:37pm