Saturday morning TV memories

South Today broadcast their Friday edition of the programme, from the IoW ferry, it was about that time, I do wonder whether it was the day before the Going Live show you mention ? There didn't seem to be any special
reason for doing it, and I thought at the time, how on earth did ST get the budget to do this ?

Maybe, of course when Swap Shop began they were able to do the OBs by sharing the facilities with sport and using them before they went off to do something nearby for Grandstand or Match of the Day.

Richard Marson, who worked on the IoW ferry episode, told me on Twitter a while back that they did a complete run-through of the show on the Friday - Pip does make mention of having been there the day before on the programme. They also mention that one of the camera crew had to stay overnight on the Needles lighthouse to be ready for that morning. One of the things that I used to love about Going Live was that the crew clearly loved working on it and were pushing the envelope to make things work. Their laughter at Trevor and Simon illustrated that.

In one of the Swap Shop books, the intro says "Lots of people ask if they can visit Swap Shop, but sadly our studio doesn't have room for all our friends". Referring to the audience as "our friends" really sums up to me why those shows felt so special, it really felt like you were a part of it.

There was a time when ITV showed a repeat of the Tyne Tees music show ‘The Roxy’ on a Saturday morning. I don’t suppose anybody has any clips of this?

Would this be the show in question?

Some holidays resorts/parks would occasionally pipe a satellite channel or two that was receivable as a UHF channel on the park TVs, typically something generic like Sky News. Not that you go on holiday to watch TV mind...

Better than all the TVs that have 99 presets when there's only channels 21-69 in tuning range anyway! So not even possible to tune in 99 different channels, or anywhere close.

Old school game consoles (the ones that only output as UHF) would need a preset.
VHS recorders (before they adopted SCART as a standard needed a present, some TVs had Channel 0 "specifically" for this (God only knows why) but they were typically outputting on channel 37 and then Channel 5 came along)
Anything else? Sure there's something else that was mainstream and ate into a UHF channel? Didn't the analogue Sky Sky boxes use UHF?

I'm sure the "99 channels" thing was just a gimmick, presumably because unless the TV supported multi-standards (PAL, SECAM and whatever the other European standard was) and you were stupid enough to lug it around on holiday with you (why anybody would carry a bulky TV like that on a plane or a boat is beyond me), it would be underused.

Anyway we're going off topic again so...

Channel 36 actually, that was the typical frequency used by VCRs, set top boxes, game consoles and the likes. Channel 5 did use 37 on many transmitters though (and 35 on some others), which would have interfered with VCRs and the likes, which is why the retuning was needed.

So you wouldn't even have been able to use the full 49 channels from 21-69 because you wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) have programmes on adjacent channels due to cross channel interference.

A lot of TVs had a preset that was especially for video recorders and the like. We had a Philips where it was channel 0, I remember seeing older push button tuner Philips with a tape symbol on one button. It was similar to how some amps had one input that was meant to be used for record players


There was a difference, presumably something to do with the sensitivity/selectivity of the tuning on that preset. If we used our video on 0 it worked every time, if we tuned it into another, for example 8 it wouldn't lock onto it that well and when we tuned away and back to 8 it would be slightly off tune. I'm sure someone will know the precise reason



TVs in some parts of the world had tuners that could use the cable band too, you'd soon fill up 100 channels with that, UHF and VHF


I had an old portable colour TV with 8 presets which lasted for years, I was quite proud that it's last home (a flat I rented) I managed to fill all 8... I gave it a good send off

I understood that was often the case.
If Match of the Day was in Ipswich (say) then the midpoints and communications would have been set up and tested on Friday, and ready to go on Saturday morning. Those were the days when a signal from Ipswich would be routed via 4 radio link hops (with vans and generators at each site) so it was worth getting value out of having them in place.
I doubt the scanner would move, as it would have been at Portman Road to set up - but I am happy to be corrected on that.
For once on here I am too young!

I think that the VCR tuning may have had more tolerance of unstable timing compared to broadcast signals, which were kept within very tight specs. VCRs with the tape mechanism couldn't match that.

I'm trying to remember when other UHF sources appeared - domestic video recorders must have been mid 1970s?
Then there were the bat and ball games - late 1970s (ours was black and white - next door managed to get a colour one!)

8 presets, what did you fill them with?