Night Time

I am trying to remember the decent Night Time programmes that were on Regional ITV Night Time services during its first inception up to it all going to pot when Carlton et al took it over....

The ones I remember so far are:-

OSM (Other side of Midnight) - present by Tony Wilson
The Big Big Picture Show
Quiz Night
Donahue
60 Minutes
WWF Wrestling - Superstars
America's Top Ten (US Version)
America's Top Ten (UK utter rubbish Version)
Sportsweek
Hit Man and Her
Saturday Night At The Movies
Night Sport
The James Whale Show - Best Night Time Programme - EVER!!!!!
God's Gift
Cinema Cinema Cinema
Movies, Games and Video
Futbol Mondial
ITV Sports Classics

That's all for now, if anyone else can remember any (excluding Films and US Drama's/Comedies) then please post. This was the golden era of ITV (along with decent drama's, entertainment series, documentaries, current affairs, children's and factual series) and would love to remember what we had throughout the night of the excellent TV station before ITVplc was formed!!!!!!

PS please do not metion ITV Nightscreen or Jobfinder or any other of the same ilk.

A few i remember are:-

BPM (the predecesor to Hitman and her)
The Big E (a cross between Network 7 and The Word)
Get Stuffed (nightime culinary dishes on a budget)
Prisoner Cell Block H (aussie drama set in a female prison!)
Renegade
Married with Children.

Not sure how many of these programmes could've sustained a primetime airing but were all great night-time viewing and wouldn't be out of place on an overnight service on ITV2!

I think you are using rose tinted spectacles there and because you dislike the current ITV ownership you assume the minute Carlton/Granada took over the schedule changed rapidly

The Little Picture Show... IIRC, Mariella Frostrup's first telly show.

The Equalizer.

Predecesor? It came after H&H surely? It was the best programme regards dance music though, nothing like it has ever been on since.

What I am saying that when Carlton received its franchise and was eventually allowed to run amok - once it took over CENTRAL, then the Night Time schedules started eroding - decent programmes being replaced by cheaper programmes - this then spread to the rest of ITV.

Since just before the formation of ITVplc when, effectively there were the BIG2 Carlton and Granada all they were ever bothered about was cheap programming, more advertising thus leading to more profits and keeping shareholders happy.

This then leads on to today's ITV - lack of imagination, some okay/decent drama, paperthin news, paperthin current affairs, even more advertising and filling Night Time with effectively a gaming channel and Text!!! - how much cheaper can a station get (oop, Big Game TV is slightly lower in the barrell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

BPM was indeed the show that replaced the Hitman & Her. By comparison, I found the "magazine" format of BPM somewhat
dull, and I'd never heard of almost all of the club/dance music featured on the program. I only ever watched the first edition.
I guess the music featured on BPM would've mostly been appreciated by those with more clubbing experience than me.

Although I much preferred Hm&H, which always had a fun element to it, and was a show that never took itself too seriously,
and I'd imagine most of it's viewers never took it too seriously either. It certainly had a few cringeworthy moments when Pete
always danced like a drunken uncle at a wedding reception, and one guy who appeared occasionally, who was known only
as "Ghostbuster", and danced like a Russian Cossack on dope, and was as wild eyed as Bez from the Happy Mondays!

As I recall, the format of the Hm&H was based upon an old MTV USA show of the time called "Club MTV". IIRC, Club MTV
generally only showed people dancing to the latest dance music of the time inside a TV studio with a set designed to look
like some sort of nightclub/discotheque venue. The Hm&H did much the same thing, but added a few silly games, and
was recorded in a different nightclub/discoteque every week rather than a spare studio at Granada TV.

At it's peak around 1989-90 and to the annoyance of most of my classmates who never stayed up into the very early hours
of Sunday mornings to watch the show, I adopted Pete's daft catchphrases ... "BE'AVE!!!" and "Give it some o' that!".

The Hitman & Her was an ITV NIGHTTIME mainstay sometime during 1988 until December 1992. Ironically, I only became
old enough to go to nightclubs, and attend recordings of the show at about the time it was announced that it'd be finishing.
They made that announcement on the (occasional) scrolling info ticker, during the 200th edition. This was about 5 weeks
before the final edition was aired on 15th December 1992. My 18th birthday was on 20th November 1992. The last ever
edition was recorded at (the venue formerly known as) the Discotheque Royale in Manchester, exactly 4 nights later.

MTV USA introduced a show in the mid 90's called "The Grind", which was effectively a reworked version of "Club MTV",
but (IIRC) with more of an emphasis on rap and R&B music, rather than just dance music. The only other variation to
the original format was that it would sometime be recorded on a beach or at a poolside. I'm guessing that was an
excuse to show lots of attractive girls "shakin' their booty's" (so to speak) in small bikinis. Which was nice ... !

Repeats of UFO on Central in the mid 80's !

I'm going to take it from ITV's Point Of View here, why would they want to put out a service of programmes, that do cost money onto an audience of no more than 100,000 viewers?

When 24 Hour Television was being introduced between Autumn 1987 and Autumn 1988 most ITV station's didn't really see the point of it and the smaller stations couldn't afford it. But I believe at the time the IBA said that so much home produced stuff had to be on there, such as News. And to be honest it's a mystery to me and probably others on how the ITN/ITV Morning News is still there, you would have thought ITV would have got rid of that by now.

The audience has changed for Night Time TV since 1988 or so, that ITV is no longer the only 24 hour channel, pratically every other channel is on the air now, so people will probably have switched over, most likely to BBC1, which does the sensible option of going to News 24 when it has ran out of stuff to show.

ITV Night Time has been going down hill for years, it's like trying to flog a dead horse, very few would watch it, why put money and programmes into it? The same could be said for other areas such as Sunday Mornings and Saturday Afternoons? Who's the target audience, it certainately isn't the ABC1 16-34 category is it? Night shift workers are working, or listening to music, not watching repeats surely.

ITV are going to choose the cheapest option that brings them the most money and the viewers too, it's called business.

But what has Quizmania actually replaced? These come to mind......

Films, The Jeremy Kyle Show, The Springer Show, Trisha, The Paul O'Grady Show, Today With Des and Mel, Tonight With Trevor McDonald...

...hardly the stuff you'd stay up all night for.

If you want to be entertained at Night then flip over to Sky or put on a DVD, there you're paying for a service to Entertain you.

I went out drinking on Tuesday night, got in very late, put the TV on before I went to bed, and frankly TV at 3.30am isn't exciting, Quizmaina, Sudoku, Countdown repeats are hardly great, it made me want to go to bed.

4000th Post

The whole thing has come round full circle.

From Jobfinder all night to a full service, back down to a text service and selling airtime to Quizmania over night.

There really is no point to a 24h service, and ITV knows it -- so they find a more palatable alternative to showing Screenshop overnight -- ie Quizmania -- and leave it at that.

If they were being clever they'd timeshift primetime (ads and all) in its entirety to run from 1am-6am (replicating the 7-11 slot), thereby providing something worth watching in the wee small hours.

They might as well say goodnight and close down at that time, if they want to save money, showing Quizmania on a premier terrestrial channel is the biggest piss take of all time.