i love the way she says "heavens" "oh dear - we've got some cross people" "all right darling" "she's a cross girl". and then the spotty teenager goes running up the stairs to claire raynor *gasp* - so michael aspel cuts away to a patronising 'disabled people are helpless' type VT .... exactly what the girl was protesting about
Disabled people still dispute this style of charity fundraising today.
Great show, and why on earth they axed it, I'll never know. The only problem is, it'd highlight the de-regionalisation of ITV, and therefore, might make certain people (all memebers of TV Forum), march on Gray's Inn Road, like a group of vigilantes...
Indeed. Telethon had two distinct advantages over main rival Children In Need - 1) Over-18s weren't excluded as beneficiaries, and 2) the money raised was spent locally. The debate about disabled groups feeling patronised has surely been around since charities began.
The problem was 1992 was in the middle of the recession. I don't think the decision to axe Telethon had anything to do with the new franchises, but it's a shame Carlton, Meridian and Westcountry were denied chance to participate. I seriously doubt that Telethon could work in today's ITV setup, even though each region still has its own presenters (though for how much longer God only knows!)
It could work today, but there is no way you could do those sort of opening titles for 2 reasons
1) Obviously the regions, three of them are called Carlton*
2) The striped ITV logo would look rather odd on the current 'itv' logo.
Though it would be rather difficult to persuade Michael Aspel from the BBC and that it would probably last 27 hours too. But for the regions opt outs and stuff, is probably left better to the regional news programmes and readers, so you could have Granada Reports Telethon or Calendar Telethon.
Though the Telethon was liked and praised by many people I seem remember that it appeared on Channel 4's Top 100 TV Hell at number 50 or 40 something, it also showed some clips from Telethon '88.
What happened when the matter of TV-am came into the subject? id they allow ITV to have their airtime, or did they get involved?
Though like many I can't remember the Telethons, sadly, but I hated Year Of Promise, 12 Hours of Eamnon Holmes and Carol Vorderman, how crap was that? It was just 12 hours of b****cks! I hope they never do that again!
It could work today, but there is no way you could do those sort of opening titles for 2 reasons
1) Obviously the regions, three of them are called Carlton*
2) The striped ITV logo would look rather odd on the current 'itv' logo.
Well they didn't have that logo in 1988 either, anyone know how the titles looked on Telethon '88?
It was just a red striped version of a chunky
ITV
logo, there is a clip of it in the YTV section of The Continuity Booth and you can view the opening titles too.
BTW tvmercia, the second clip, The Central Telethon is just the same as the first clip you have uploaded.
ITV Telethon was always interesting to watch, I think in 1992, Yorkshire used a gold version of the ITV Telethon logo, it looked quite good, Tyne Tees used the main colours, it was very interesting to see how the ITV companies would adopt the Telethon look.
In particular I remember that the London opts came from Thames even though the Telethon actually happened at the weekend (ie LWT time).
Jason C posted:
Indeed, because LWT had their hands full with running the national show - it was particularly fun when all the regions were shown in turn just to see which of them were running their opts from huge elaborate sets in halls and which had to make do with a small sparsely decorated studio.
Originally, the first telethon was ni 1980, it started as a Thames programme as a sub division of their social action programme called Help!. Later on in the 80's, it was developed into a network form by LWT.
Jason C posted:
A key factor in why it was axed was because it wasn't very popular with some of the people it was trying to help; a lot of the serious charity films shown during the event were made in a very sappy and sentimental way - to gnaw at people's consciences as much as possible - and this angered disabled rights groups who thought that they were being patronised by the way these films were portraying them.
So much so that in 1992, a thousand disabled activists protested against the event outside the London Studios and during the show itself, a couple of them ran from the audience to take issue with Aspel himself; rather than risk further bad publicity, ITV used the £9m shortfall that year to claim that people were fed up of giving money to the event and scrapped it.
Following on from that, by the 1992 Telethon, all 15 ITV companies had held disability awareness workshops for their staff and consultations with disabled groups to arrive at guidelines to what to say and what not to say.
Jason C posted:
Another aspect of the show was its blatant commercialism; hundreds of companies got their logos on screen as much as possible when giving their cheques - with some on the national show even sticking stickers with their logos on to the front of Aspel's desk - while the likes Pepsi Cola put their logo'd paper cups next to every telephonist in the phone centres shown on screen.
By the 1992 Telethon, the whole operation was so commerical driven that it was more of a turn off for me. Everything was sponsored, this was in the new age of programmes being sponsored before and after the programme.
I still remember a This Morning special with Richard and Judy introuducing Sesames Treet doing their song! Didn't he Blind Date kids special get into trouble as the show was putting kids in an awkward fashion?
Finally, as a little treat. Here is my badge that I got from Patrick Anthony from the Anglia TV Tour bus when it came to Milton Keynes.
I know in the ads in the run-up to Telethon 92, Tyne Tees were using the red/blue Telethon logo, with a font vaguely resembling Courier underneath for the region name. Did that look get carried through to the actual programme in the North East.
(and seeing as everybody else is posting their Telethon clips, here's mine - not brilliant quality, and it's in Windows Media format, but never mind)
