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TISWAS

does anyone actuclly Know when it was broadcasted! (December 2006)

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russnet Founding member
saturdaymorning posted:
Peter Thomas posted:


amosc100 posted:

Ministry Of Mayhem/MOM


Ah, Ministry Of Mayhem. The poor man's SM:TV.


No.You're entitled to your own opinion but it was good.It went through a few bad patches[January-March 2004,whenever they brought Spelling Smackdown back,the terrible relaunch with no titles and whenever they got rid of good things] but March-July 2004 was fantastic.And so were the christmas ones.At least.


I agree the second half of 2005 for MOM was the best. Sure, it had a weak start and thats what people remember most. I use to love Dick N Dom's Bungalow but when it was roughly the same week after week just with different kids, it was then I turned over.

SMTV was pants after Ant and Dec left. I was glad when they put the show out of it's misery. Anyway MOM being a poor man's SMTV. How about Motormouth being the poor man's Going Live!
PT
Peter Thomas
Westy2 posted:
Peter, does any of your BBC WM contacts have access to Ed Doolan's series 'The Other Side Of''?


I'm not the one who has contacts at BBC WM, however my colleague Lee Bannister (Mr B) certainly does.

Westy2 posted:
The odd ATV/Central/Tiswas person is occasionally interviewed.(Sally, Chris, Lenny & Peter Tomlinson for instance) This week's should've been Peter Harris(ATV/Central producer), but it was bumped due to a rolling weather service on WM.


Ah, I'd like to have heard that. Peter Harris was instrumental in creating Tiswas, adding the chaotic and comedy elements to it.

Westy2 posted:
I'd come on either Tiswas Online or ATV forums, but I don't think I'd have much else to contribute, plus could I use 'Westy' as a username, because I boycott sites that don't let me use that!


At time of writing, there's no-one else called Westy, so you're welcome to the TiswasOnline forums.
PT
Peter Thomas
saturdaymorning posted:
Peter Thomas posted:

Ah, Ministry Of Mayhem. The poor man's SM:TV.

No.You're entitled to your own opinion but it was good.


It played a role in giving children a distinct alternative to the BBC offering, although why anyone would want to fully tune into MoM voluntarily is a mystery to me.

While Dick and Dom were bringing back a fully creative and unpredictable atmosphere to Saturday mornings, Ministry Of Mayhem just resembled a two-hour commercial for the latest toys and pop singles.

The ghost of Tiswas was being evoked in TVC Studio 6, and all ITV could do was deliver a continuation of a limp Live and Kicking (Chris Bellinger hopped straight from producing L&K, over to ITV to create/produce MoM).

saturdaymorning posted:
It went through a few bad patches[January-March 2004,whenever they brought Spelling Smackdown back


Yeah, TV Cream's review of the first ever edition of MoM is absolutely damning of the spelling competition. Spelling has no place on TV, it's utterly dull. They brought it back!? Oh dearie me. I'd rather suffer Name That Tone.

saturdaymorning posted:
the terrible relaunch with no titles and whenever they got rid of good things] but March-July 2004 was fantastic.And so were the christmas ones.At least.


The ITV50 edition was great for people like me, because it was the first proper look at ITV's past Saturday morning shows. Everyone knows about Sw*p Sh*p, Going Live and all that, but to see some acknowledgement for Number 73, Get Fresh and MotorMouth, that was brilliant. Especially as Tiswas got the majority of praise!

However, it didn't help that Holly and the permanently orange Stephen used almost every clip to sneer at the hairstyles and fashions of the era - including ridiculing the late 80s Gaby Roslin for wearing a mini-skirt and black tights on MotorMouth - which really confused me, 'cos girls still wear that these days!

That's the problem with MoM - it was a bit school-bully-like. It really encouraged viewers to be into the latest things ("scoobies!", and the guest list seemed to be plucked from Heat magazine's headlines). And the stereotype comedy characters were pretty cringeworthy too.

I did mourn its passing. ITV were idiots to kill it off - the Saturday cookery idea (ripped off from the BBC) got even lower ratings than Saturday Slowdown.

I now see Scratch And Sniff have a half-hour kids' game show on Saturday mornings - which seems like a total rip-off of Get Your Own Back, unfortunately.
AM
amosc100
Peter Thomas posted:
623058 posted:
so who killed of most of the Saturday morning cinemas in the local area? chirs T say in ATV area most where shut within a year of them starting


Yeah, one of Chris' friends was in the cinema business, that's how he learnt about the Tiswas effect.

623058 posted:
what was it link in the rest of the UK?


The idea of proper dedicated children's entertainment on a Saturday morning was not fully realised by ATV until announcer Peter Tomlinson decided to have a viewers' competition in his links between cartoons and serials one morning in 1973. Got a sackload of mail. Did another one the next week. Got two sackloads of mail. Did another one the next week... got four sackloads of mail. You can see where this is going.

ATV management got their heads together, and realised there was money in this. Up until that point, NO ITV region had bothered with commercials on a Saturday morning because the ratings were so low. Within a while, ATV could justify chasing advertisers. And thus, Tiswas was born.

So, Saturday morning cinemas... that term sounds like it's almost a building set up just for that purpose! Cinemas have been dying out gradually anyway. Saturday matinees were a good revenue stream, but not totally essential.

You have to factor in the success of Sw*p Sh*p from October 1976 onwards. That was a national kids' Saturday morning show for the first time. So that rapidly brought about the decline.

Also, don't go thinking Tiswas was the only ITV Saturday morning show of its day. Tiswas never went fully national until late in the day (still excluding Channel though), because other regions were either:
1) trying out their own Saturday morning shows (eg: LWT and Southern)
2) networking other regions' Saturday morning shows (eg: Anglia showing Southern's Saturday Banana)
3) not even aware of Tiswas' success, so carried on with dull boring films and cartoons (eg: Granada)
4) refused to pick up Tiswas because someone in management found it disgusting and too anarchic (eg: Tyne Tees)

John Gorman says that when Tiswas entered LWT's footprint, that's when they got the most complaints!


Fair enough if its no open to th public just yet, then sure keep it secret until the show - will be a nice surprise (hopefully!!!) - nothing againt that intended I do hope that the "reunion" show is as good as the Swap Shop one was.

With regards to TISWAS, I rmemeber watching Tiswas from at least the age of 7 (which would make it September 1978 at earliest). So how many people seem to think that it wasn't on Granada before near the end does seem to amaze me!!!! Again this could be due to the fcat that in Bolton we could actually pick up Yorkshire and ATV as well as Granada (depending upon which part of Bolton you lived in)!!!!
PT
Peter Thomas
amosc100 posted:
Fair enough if its no open to th public just yet, then sure keep it secret until the show - will be a nice surprise (hopefully!!!) - nothing againt that intended I do hope that the "reunion" show is as good as the Swap Shop one was.


It will easily be better than the diabolical Sw*p Sh*p atrocity (which only became interesting once they included the non-Sw*p-Sh*p shows!)

amosc100 posted:
With regards to TISWAS, I rmemeber watching Tiswas from at least the age of 7 (which would make it September 1978 at earliest). So how many people seem to think that it wasn't on Granada before near the end does seem to amaze me!!!!


Right, I can say with absolute authority that the first edition of Tiswas on Granada was on 7th January 1978 (Guests were Bonnie Tyler and Richard O'Sullivan). That's around the middle of the fourth series. Granada continued to show the rest of the fourth series, right to the end at 27th May 1978.

The fifth series began on 9th Sep 1978, but Granada didn't bother returning to it then. In fact, no ITV region did, apart from obviously ATV, and to small extent, HTV, who decided to just simculast a portion of it (despite having shown the previous series in full).

Data for most of 1979 is unavailable to me at the moment. I can say that Granada did join for series 6 in late 1979 (when ITV resumed after its strike), and it was uninterrupted since then.
MB
Mr.B
Peter Thomas posted:
Westy2 posted:
Peter, does any of your BBC WM contacts have access to Ed Doolan's series 'The Other Side Of''?


I'm not the one who has contacts at BBC WM, however my colleague Lee Bannister (Mr B) certainly does.


Yes indeed. I heard it live... and I'm already on the case! The good thing about Ed's Sunday show is that it's always pre-recorded... so it's not difficult to access it (or occasionally the unedited versions). I got the Peter Tomlinson one during last year... If there's a Tiswas connection, you can bet Ed will work it into the interview... Smile

Westy, you know me - you should've known I'd be going after that... Laughing
Looking forward to seeing you on the Tiswas forum...

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