Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

It may have been briefly in the late 80s/early 90s, and in the final year or so of its ITV run (1998-2000). Remember H&A originally only went out once a day. A morning episode was introduced in the Summer of 1989, as part of CITV (this may have been a repeat from the night before), and that was certainly networked. This moved to 12.30 in the Autumn, and this was possibly networked.

Later in the 90s regions started scheduling it all over the place, TSW I think showed the first episode as late as 3.20. As late as 1996-1998 the ITV regions still had local afternoon schedules, despite it being made up of several of the same programmes. Corrie/Emmerdale repeats, H&A, and quizzes such as Chain Letters were shown pretty much everywhere between 12.55 and 3.50, but the actual time varied company to company. Carlton I think showed Corrie/Emmerdale at 12.55, H&A at 1.25, ACP at 13.55 and the quiz around 2.50, but others had H&A or the quiz at 12.55, Corrie at 13.25 etc. Other imports such as Shortland Street, Blue Heelers, ACP etc made up the rest of the three hours in most regions. I suspect there was a fair bit of part-networking going on with H&A, Corrie and the quiz, with regions probably recording them up the line from whoever scheduled them earliest in the day.

Border and Grampian also did Birthdays, the lunchtime one was fully networked yes. The day after, Border fed out a resume voiced by one of their announcers for the part that was missed.

Yes, I remember them showing the lunchtime Home and Away at 12.25 in 1989/90 because I knew people in school who could nip home to watch it and come back in time. Of course for the last few months, not all the regions showed it at lunchtime, they were making it less prominent in the schedules to drive the audience down (like when the Beeb moved their last few months of Neighbours to 2.10 but I know Central, for one, carried on with lunchtime episodes.

There's a story that Howard Keel was one of the acts who had to perform in front of the closed curtains. Jimmy Tarbuck said to him "Tom's not well, could you sing in front of the curtaIns?" and Keel replied "Jimmy, I'll sing in the f**king aisle if that's what Tommy wants!" Apparently it raised a few chuckles on what was a very trying night,

how did the red phone work when there was more than one part networked programme?

Say ATV Birmingham were feeding a programme to Granada, YTV and Border, with the rest of the network taking a programme from Southern. A strategically placed GPO/BT fault (in Birmingham for example) could take both programes off air in certain areas, would all affected TCs be trying to sort it via the red phone or was there a second system for when the network fragmented like this?

Were BT in on red phone calls or was it just the ITV companies?

PLEASE FOUND: TOMMY Cooper thread. which happened 14 months ago.

http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/tommy-coopers-death-30643/

Yes, although the next act on were Les Dennis and Dustin Gee who did have a bit more of a problem performing on such a small bit of stage.

Officially, calls on the Red Phone were instigated by the nominated contractor - Thames or LWT. Nobody else could make the phone ring. So in the fictitious example above, Thames would have to originate a call to get everybody's attention. Of course, sometimes people just picked up the phone and hollered, but the practice was frowned upon.

BT were never involved in red calls.

Here's an article from 2009 recalling the events of that fateful night:

Tommy Cooper's last act fooled us all, says Jimmy Tarbuckj

What would then happen with schools programmes, up until June 1987? These were networked by ATV then Central, from Birmingham. What if a red phone call was needed?

I didn't realise the 'red phone' calls could only be originated by the nominated contractor. Although Steve's example above is hypothetical, part-networking between companies was of course very common. So if Granada were feeding a programme to only Border, or Central were feeding a programme only to Tyne Tees, and the programme went off or failed to appear at the other end - surely Border would phone Granada directly, or TTT would phone Central directly to query this? Thames wouldn't even know about it. Was this done on a totally separate telephone to the 'red phone'?

In those cases perhaps the affected ITV contractors would phone their local BT NSC ? Just as they would if say they were exchanging material with the local BBC studio ? It's just a case of 'local ends' management ?