Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Some areas did network programmes but good number did there own thing like TSW during the summer of 1984

Remember there was a mini network at one stage for some of the morning when I was a kid, best of the regions type thing

CITV never appeared until 1988? in the mornings but was gone by 1993, as I said after that period many itv companies stop caring yet STV stuck it fingers up and had a decent offering for everyone,

Sesame street was network I believe during the holidays from 1982 - 87

Remember Central had the snappily titled "Central Morning Supplement" on during the holidays in their early days.

Gary Terzza rules !

Anyway, what about the various Michael Landon series, Little House On The Prarie, Highway To Heaven & a series he produced but didn't appear in, 'Father Murphy', about a fake priest?

Highway To Heaven, ISTR, was a regular Sunday afternoon series on Central. Dunno if Central showed them all, but I remember 1 episode being split over 2 weeks in 2 half hour slots, plus 1 episode went on the same day as Nelson Mandela being freed & at the end of the coverage, there must have been confusion on the network, as we in Central land got the caption card for 'McCloud' (which was being rerun on LWT at the time!) briefly before swopping to a 'Highway To Heaven' one. (If Tony Currie is still looking in, does he have any ideas what might have happened there?) In fact both shows must have been interupted mid flow to begin with.

(I don't think Central ever got 'McCloud' around that time, but who transmitted 'McCloud' originally back in the 70's?)

Has there ever been any network faux pas with the wrong stuff going out in the wrong ITV region?

Just thought of another one. What the hell was 'Rocket Robin Hood'? We never got it in the Midlands, but I remember seeing it listed under Granada!

The Mandela coverage may have been sent as a 'dirty' feed of LWT which would explain a brief glimpse of LWT's slide.


Each region had its own control room feeding the transmitters, so there couldn't be a "network" faux pas as such although sometimes the PO line switches happened at the wrong time and you'd suddenly get switched to the wrong programme - but the local Transmission Controller would cut away from it very quickly. However, there were odd occasions when a power cut at the local ITV studios meant the transmitter was temporarily fed with vthe programmes from another region. I recall this happening at STV one lunchtime. I got home in time to see Grampian's local headlines going out instead of the STV Lunchtime News! The feed was, incidentally, simply a decent yagi pair about a third of the way up the Black Hill mast; it received Angus with perfectly rebroadcastable quality.

ISTR that TTTV's approach, as in so many areas, was to fill the gap with an old film, often with no commercial breaks until around 11am when the kids' stuff proper would start. I'm not sure if this was because they weren't allowed to show ads, or if they just chose not to sell any.

Border, and especially Ulster, just had a lie-in. I'm pretty sure the latter didn't open until nearly mid-day even on a Saturday during the 1970s, which came as quite a shock coming from an area that always made a point of opening up around 9am, even if they spent the next few hours playing out utter rubbish on a non-existent budget....

There was often some tight switching at 21:59hrs. There'd often be a network trailer for whatever was coming up after News at Ten, which would run until 21:59:50. I recall one evening watching on TVS a trailer from Central. At the end, TVS didn't opt away fast enough, and the picture 'wiped' to an image of Mike Prince in vision in Central's IVC studio. There was a splat and ITN's VT clock apperaed (that would have been BT switching the network feed from Cen to ITN), TVS jumped back to their station clock with about 3 secs to go, then cut to NAT on time.

I can only imagine that Central accidentally fed their local output to network, rather than the clean feed from the VTR itself ?

I recall watching a networked quiz show a number of years ago which was just reaching its climax when the feed cut to colour bars from another ITV region, I think a previous live programme had overrun and the GPO switching hadn't taken that into account. There was also a memorable occasion when LWT fed an unedited version of the Elaine Stritch/Donald Sinden comedy Two's Company. The programme started fine but, about a minute in, someone fluffed a line and asked "Can we take it again?" The programme was faded out and, at least on Border, was replaced by cartoons, almost the universal standby before Creature Comforts took that role.

I don't think SS was networked, although it may have been part-networked. Tyne Tees tended to show it at 11am, whereas a few other regions scheduled it at 9.25/9.30.

You tended to see a lot of the same programmes going out in different regions, but scheduled independently, which was often the case on Sunday daytimes too. Some regions showed Link and Getting On at 9.30 before Morning Worship, others showed them at 11.00 after it. There were quite a few health and hobby-related series, such as All About Toddlers and Me and My Camera which were scehduled on Sundays, but this could be 9am, 9.30, 11.00, or 11.30 depending on the region.

Did they show that episode properly at another time?

i could e slightly outwith this thread, but I recall watching GMTV one Sunday, think 1996 or 7, when, at weekends, there was no regional news on GMTV, thus no opt-outs. But, during the show that was on, the screen went blank, and had a tone, and in the top left corner was GRA3. This stayed like that for 10 minutes.

I also recall a time during Scotsport one time in the 80s that the programme was replaced, for a few seconds, by ETP-1 and it reading IBA and 440ghz tone! Any ideas what happened?