ITV 1979 strike, effect on emmerdale storylines

I can't remember, it carried on for another week I think, after all, ".....there was so much in it !"

I think that's right. TVTimes continued for a few weeks after the strike began... then suspended publication once it became clear the strike was going to last a long time.

I don't know whether this was connected with the 1979 strike but I remember the TV Times for a few weeks having to publish as a national edition, which obviously meant London main listings with everyone else as regional varitations.

Ok fair enough, until you got London showing one programme & everyone else showing another('Hart To Hart' ISTR), which meant whatever was on London got a bigger write up than the programme being shown in most regions.

After a few weeks, the programme shown on most regions moved to the main listing, while the London only programme moved to the varitations section!

Do you people who look at old TV Times remember this?

Here's what happened to TVT during the strike. The magazine continued publication for three weeks (with a disclaimer on the Saturday page to the effect that the listings may be a load of keech and was then suspended. While the magazine was off the bookshelves, the staff prepared a load of extra features so that when it returned they could publish extra-large editions. When ITV resumed, because of the printing and publishing lead times, for the first couple of weeks the programme information was incomplete and so TVT appeared in just a handful of 'combined' editions - a complete one for London and then (if I remember correctly)Westward/HTV/Southern/Anglia; ATV/Granada/Yorkshire/Tyne Tees; Border/Ulster/STV/Grampian. (I'll check those later). Lots of billings for "10.30 - Local Programmes". The magazine was huge, though, with over 100 pages mostly pre-prepared (and pre-printed) features.

At the time. TVT was assembled in two parts - the outer pages were national and a separately stapled inner inset with the regional listings. For these issues the process had been reversed - the inner sections had been printed in advance during the strike, and the programmes went into the outer sections. This also happened once for the edition that carried the photographs of Princess Diana's wedding, when the same "combined" arrangement applied.

During the late 70s, TVT suffered frequent printing disputes that often meant curtailed or combined editions.

By the way - the question about ATV 's ad breaks. The main aim of any ITV company is to protect its revenue, so commercials always have priority over programmes. Even when there are no programmes.

Or as they colourfully put it on New zealand's pirate Radio Hauraki: "If the vessel capsises play the commercial break before abandoning ship."

Ooh, I've got that issue and always wondered about it becauuse it's very odd. This was, as you say, two weeks after the wedding in 1981 and includes a load of photos from the event, and on the Saturday page it says "Due to the royal photo album, this week's programme information takes on a different presentation. It is, however, as complete as usual", and you get the national programmes billed and then a big box, filling up half a page, with individual listings for all the individual shows on ATV, HTV and Westward. I never worked out why that needed to be done like that.

During the 1982 World Cup there were a couple of issues where the regional variations weren't included due to a dispute, I'm not sure what that would have been. As they had alternative schedules for the knockout stages, they also changed the presentation on those days so there were billings for all the programmes that would potentially be shown that day, without times, and then a column featuring the two alternative schedules.

I've also got a Wales issue of the Radio Times from March 1983 where, where the local radio pages were in the English editions, you'd get S4C listings, but in this issue those two pages are completely blank save for some tiny text saying "We are unable to print S4C listings this week due to an industrial dispute".

Did the Welsh version of TV Times publish S4C listings too? (not just this issue but normally)

No, because it was a combined edition for both HTVs, so it was Channel Four in the magazine, but there was a pull-out called Sbec which featured the S4C listings. The reason they were in the Radio Times as well is because the BBC made some of their programmes, but as Tony Currie pointed out in his book, they only included the Welsh language programmes. So you'd get "10.00pm-1.00am Rhaglenni Saesneg", ie Programmes in English.

I seem to remember that the RT S4C listings were as you say only the Welsh programmes, and I also recall the BBC produced S4C programming was in bold, whilst the HTV and 'indie' produced stuff was in lighter 'text' ? But this is only from memory from picking up a copy to read in WH Smiths in Cardiff one wet afternoon in the 80s !

Well, in the first few years all the BBC-produced stuff was billed as "BBC Cymru" while the other shows had no production company billed. I'm reminded here of the most exciting bit of our holiday to Scotland in the eighties for me being the stop at Tebay Services on the way as I got to see the Border edition of the TV Times.

No doubt schools programming would've been affected as well. When ITV did return, ATV had their new version of the countdown clock, which survived until the transfer of ITV Schools to channel 4 on 14th September 1987.

Yes, Robert - many standalone episodes of schools programmes did not get shown that Autumn however the serialised programmes such as How We Used to Live were rescheduled so these were shown at a rate of two episodes per week for a while so that all episones were shown.