ITV Regional Variations in the 70s and 80s

Maybe true now, but not then.

Local newspapers in Central Scotland used to receive 7 day programme summaries from STV by post about a week in advance - many made no use of them of course. (In those days weekly newspapers were free to print either two days worth of the weekend's programmes or those for the day of publication for free. Many chose not to.)

Only the big newspapers normally got updates after that - and some were too lazy or understaffed to ever make amendments.

Generally on listings I'd trust a paper of UK or Scottish national status but not a purely local one.

(Nowadays PA Listings looks after the tv listings in many but not all newspapers - and the main commercial channels charge for listings, whether daily or weekly. Generally the papers just sub what they get from PA and if they add value themselves it's in previews and features - not the listings themselves. )

This reminds me...

The late Chris Griffin-Beale, who was in charge of the press office at C4 in the 80s and early 90s, was a marvellous man who always did a lot to help members of the public with a keen interest in broadcasting as well as the press. I was chuffed to bits when he added me to C4's mailing list so I used to receive C4's weekly Press Info document with full listings and features. Chris is one of the people who gave me the confidence to think about a career in the mee-ja.

ISTR that CEEFAX listings used to come from PA Listings as well - rather than a BBC in-house source - so that all channels info came from the same source.

What was the problem with component video? I'd have thought it would produce better quality pictures?

Don't they all come from Broadcasting Data Services (now part of Red Bee) and not PA these days?

I may be wrong but I think...

Broadcasting Dataservices provide the listings.... but PA Listings actually tailor them to the needs of individual papers, subbing them and in some cases designing the whole page.

It wasn't component video per se, the IBA's reservations centered around the PAL decode/recode iteration that was necessary to integrate the VTRs into an existing composite world. In fact owing to pressure from the IBA, the original BSB and some other European broadcasters, Sony brought out a high quality PAL decoder, the BVX-100 ISTR ?

The real breakthrough of course came with the UK's first component broadcast facility in 1989, Granada's Albert Dock news room (not the Richard and Judy facility nearby).

I suppose the imminent launch of BSB would have driven the change in rules too? Although how many of their programme suppliers would have been able to supply them with non-PAL material?

The Sun is 40 this week and put a sample of the first edition in todays paper, complete with TV listings from Monday 17 November 1969, coincidently the first week BBC1 and ITV screened colour programming.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y163/brekkieboy2001/tv1969.jpg

the Scottish Edition did not have this

I guess London was still 6 months behind with Crossroads at this point. (No 'C' by the London entry, where there is by the Midlands entry!)

I wonder how many of those first colour schedules still exist in full in various archives?

I suspect Crossroads is probably gone, but Corrie exists, bearing in mind Granada was supposed to be one of the better archives.

Nice to see Corrie in the same 7.30pm slot!

Yes im fairly sure all of Corrie's episodes still exist.