Was it just me, but I remember a programme on called Scratchy and Co, It was a while ago for me, but was that just a programme or a real Saturday morning show, or am I just pi**ed?
I'd release things like Tiswas for nostalgia value,
There's very little of Tiswas that was kept, and most that was survived because Chris Tarrant made some early VHS copies.
A compilation of best bits was released on VHS in the early 90's. I've got a whole episode on tape somewhere and the bulk of the programme is very dull/bad indeed
However, the VHS in 2001 was a lot better as this was the best of SMTV and was released about a month before Ant and Dec left. It includes inserts by Ant and Dec in between the clips and even go back to the earlier SMTV before they turned good.
I boght that video, and the only "early" SM:TV they showed was in the cockups section! 2 clips, that's it.
Am I right in thinking that ATV binned alot of episodes of Tiswas before they went off the air at the end of 1981, IIRC same for the pre-1982 episodes of Crossroads, only a few of those have survived.
I remember reading somewhere that ATV destroyed a lot of their archive as some sort of tantrum over losing their franchise. I also beleive that Polygram, who owned the archive before CARLTON bought it back, didn't looka fter the material very well either.
Was it just me, but I remember a programme on called Scratchy and Co, It was a while ago for me, but was that just a programme or a real Saturday morning show, or am I just pi**ed?
even though JFC's now banned by the looks of it.
Scratchy and Co was a Saturday Morning programme with Mark Speight in a blonde plastic hairpiece, and a kid called elvis in a black plastic hairpiece with a deep voice, and was pre recorded, it was followed by a show called Massive (which they later incorporated, before it was dropped), that preceeded the chart show.
The show was basically Scratchy (Mark) and friends doing wierd links between programmes, it was all done against a CSO with various backgrounds before they gave him a mini set, which also saw Gail Porter starting to take a roll in it.
This used to time share with Mashed presented by Jez Edwards and Jarvis the Monkey in the summer (though it started around March and ran till Sept), that was live from Newcastle in a small studio with guests popping in and performing, all of this before they decided to launch SM:tv live from London for 52 weeks which then turned into 5 years, 4 months.
Mashed and Scratchy were both fairly cheap to produce and followed budget cuts (for some reason), which hit Children's quite hard (thus why around that time it was filled with many Warner Brothers programmes, like nowadays I suppose except with Nick programmes), that put an end to the big entertainment programmes like Motormouth, What's Up Doc and Wow! (which may have ended up working if it wasn't for the budget cuts), until SM:tv came along in 1998.
Loved "Tiswas",not the final series without Tarrant and co',but the years with Peter Tomlinson ATV station announcer, Trevor East sports reporter on ATVs regional news prog'.Reckon it was the low budget regional feel to it that made it popular for us in atv land.
Scratchy and Co was a Saturday Morning programme with Mark Speight in a blonde plastic hairpiece, and a kid called elvis in a black plastic hairpiece with a deep voice, and was pre recorded, it was followed by a show called Massive (which they later incorporated, before it was dropped), that preceeded the chart show.
The show was basically Scratchy (Mark) and friends doing wierd links between programmes, it was all done against a CSO with various backgrounds before they gave him a mini set, which also saw Gail Porter starting to take a roll in it.
This used to time share with Mashed presented by Jez Edwards and Jarvis the Monkey in the summer (though it started around March and ran till Sept), that was live from Newcastle in a small studio with guests popping in and performing, all of this before they decided to launch SM:tv live from London for 52 weeks which then turned into 5 years, 4 months.
Mashed and Scratchy were both fairly cheap to produce and followed budget cuts (for some reason), which hit Children's quite hard (thus why around that time it was filled with many Warner Brothers programmes, like nowadays I suppose except with Nick programmes), that put an end to the big entertainment programmes like Motormouth, What's Up Doc and Wow! (which may have ended up working if it wasn't for the budget cuts), until SM:tv came along in 1998.
Mashed didn't share time with Scratchy&Co. did it? I thought S&C finished in April then Mashed ran May-August 97'-98'.
BTW,has anyone noticed most of their sat. morning shows started low-budget?
Mashed and Scratchy were both fairly cheap to produce and followed budget cuts (for some reason), which hit Children's quite hard (thus why around that time it was filled with many Warner Brothers programmes, like nowadays I suppose except with Nick programmes), that put an end to the big entertainment programmes like Motormouth, What's Up Doc and Wow! (which may have ended up working if it wasn't for the budget cuts), until SM:tv came along in 1998.
That's what they said on the website about Saturday Morning Kid's TV, though at the time there was a good explanation from Simian Courtie (sp?) about ITV axing WOW. When ITV gained the rights to the F1 in 1996 they needed the extra funds, so Childrens and Religion were hit hard, LWT apparently never liked WOW due to the high Production values, they were more keen on Central producing Scratchy and Co as it cost very little (wasn't it only something like £20K to produce per show), so WOW got the chop and Scratchy and Co was recomissioned.
Though 1998 was rather odd IMO, as well as Scratchy & Co and Mashed, I seem to remember that Granada made a programme that was presented by a cartoon or CGI Dinosaur, I can't remember the name of the programme, but I think it ran up until the week before SM:tv started in that September.
IIRC we were told that Mashed was supposed to be coming back in 1998 or 1999, but I guess no-one at ITV anticipated the success of SM:tv.
Though saying that, at the same time CiTV got a big shake up when Nigel Pickard took over in 1997, as he gave it the new look and brought back in-vision continuity with great difficulty, being that the only studio available at Central (Gas St) was for Central News, so they decided to clear out the basement and turn that into a Studio. Also at that time there was an increase in quality of programmes, as there were far fewer WB Cartoons repeats.
That's what they said on the website about Saturday Morning Kid's TV, though at the time there was a good explanation from Simian Courtie (sp?) about ITV axing WOW. When ITV gained the rights to the F1 in 1996 they needed the extra funds, so Childrens and Religion were hit hard, LWT apparently never liked WOW due to the high Production values, they were more keen on Central producing Scratchy and Co as it cost very little (wasn't it only something like £20K to produce per show), so WOW got the chop and Scratchy and Co was recomissioned.
That would be the reason, I couldn't for the life of me think of it.
I can't believe that Scratchy and Co cost £20 000 a show, it was only little CSO links between programmes, I'd say more £2000
nwtv2003 posted:
Though 1998 was rather odd IMO, as well as Scratchy & Co and Mashed, I seem to remember that Granada made a programme that was presented by a cartoon or CGI Dinosaur, I can't remember the name of the programme, but I think it ran up until the week before SM:tv started in that September.
Tricky was a cartoon dragon, this ran at the start of the year if I remember rightly, but Mashed was definately the show that ran in the summer up until the start of SM:tv in August 1998. The reason that I know is that on the last mashed they had a live link up with Ant & Dec walking up the stairs towards the studio.
nwtv2003 posted:
IIRC we were told that Mashed was supposed to be coming back in 1998 or 1999, but I guess no-one at ITV anticipated the success of SM:tv.
Though saying that, at the same time CiTV got a big shake up when Nigel Pickard took over in 1997, as he gave it the new look and brought back in-vision continuity with great difficulty, being that the only studio available at Central (Gas St) was for Central News, so they decided to clear out the basement and turn that into a Studio. Also at that time there was an increase in quality of programmes, as there were far fewer WB Cartoons repeats.
Well Mashed did say that they would return, but SM:tv was commissioned from the start to run for 52 weeks, as it was the only show to do so. I'm not sure if they planned to do it for 52 weeks and then see what would happen and then re split the year, though as we all know they then decided to keep SM:tv recontracting it every year.
Indeed Nigel came along and basically fixed everything that was wrong with CiTV, commissioned more programmes, commissioned live programmes, introduced SM:tv, went in vision and changed the whole focus of the strand.
Unfortunately though whoever's taken over from Stephen Andrew doesn't seem to have the right idea.He tried to re inject life into CiTV in Sept 2003 with new programmes that succeeded well (even the graphics package was nice back then and consistent), and since then everythings gone from losing in vision, to the time being cut, running short series of just 6 episodes and repeating everything to death.
Really their only saving grace at the moment is MoM as that is doing moderately well in the ratings and has finally found it's feet in terms of what was expected from the foundation.
Everything else seems to be lost, whether it's down to a merger on the cards (the planned INK), or whether it's more to do with lack of effort on ITV's part, we'll have to wait to find out.
