TV AM on ITV1

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Loads more LNN stuff linked from there including this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZnhjiEDZ0g&NR which contains the time when LWT put out RTL instead of Richard Littlejohn and Anna Maria Ashes 'love you' close to the news

Woops...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib_kZL_-rLk

I want to know why their satellite receiver was tuned to RTL in the first place, let alone the 'dirty' programme being shown. Something tells me the guys in control were watching it and pressed the wrong button, but then again I could be totally wrong.

I think that was the reason, love the announcment afterwards he generally seemed shocked

I remember seeing that go out live, very odd at the time & interesting to see it again.

The idea behind the ITV1/ITV2 labelling was that if you lived in an area served by more than one ITV contractor, you could tune both in. Remember that in the 70s and 80s, ITV schedules varied tremendously between contractors even in peak time. I think out telly was labelled BBC1, BBC2, IBA1 and IBA2 then 5,6,7 and VCR...

ISTR we had them tuned to: BBC 1 North West, BBC 2 North West, Granada, Channel 4, Central, BBC 1 Midlands, BBC Two Midlands, a very grainy something else (S4C maybe?) and on button 8, our hilarious top-loading VHS machine with piano press mechanical keys and hand type clock ! Not a scart, a remote nor an aspect ratio issue in sight... ! Ahh... *misty eyes*...

It's true that I've seen at least one TV that had ITV1 and 2 on it but ITV2 did become Channel 4. I remember about 10 years ago Channel 4 showing an advert say that Heartbeat was on ITV, don't do that anymore. Both channels have now got their separate identities ITV have got ITV1-4 and Channel 4 has got Film 4, E4 and More 4.

Our telly (which had a nice wooden veneer all over) only had four buttons. Before Channel 4 launched, the fourth one we used for the video (we were one of the first on our road to have one!), but then when C4 came along - a few years late on Ridge Hill - we had to watch it through the video, which had a mind-boggling 8 presets!

A TV at my old High School did have buttons labelled as BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3! I remember it was puzzling me as a child, at my mum's friends house every time I put on Channel 4, the display said ITV2 on screen, but as said that was the thought at the time.

Wow, those psychic tellys of the past, they really did predict the future... even if it was a digital prediction rather than an analogue one!
Well ours definitely had IBA1 and IBA2 wrote on the third and fourth buttons respectively

Funnily enough, ITV2 had been tooted as far back as 1964, when BBC Two was launched. What would have 1960/70 ITV2 eventually became Channel 4, launched in 1982.

It would be fun when Channel 5 launched in 1997, for those TV owners who only had four preset tuning positions on them. People scoffed in the 1980s when TVs became electronic and capable of holding more than four presets, as there would be no need for them.

Once video recorders took off, it became apparent that the majority of TVs had to use them through the (then) channel 5 position. Once Channel 5 launched, the video (after it had been retuned from Channel 37) either got demoted to Channel 6 or "promoted" to Channel 0, for TVs with such understanding. When Sky Digital took off, many older TVs didn't have SCART sockets, so that ended up tying up position 6 (or even position 7) on the tuner for people without SCART.

These days of course you can buy TVs that support up to 99 UHF channel slots, but they'll never all be used. The most you'll get up to is eight, if you count the old games consoles of the 1970s/early 1980s that you had to tune into your TV.

Interesting on one of the videos that shows the opening of the LNN transmission centre - Greg Dyke then Chief Exec at LWT says "I do think the transmission side of LNN will have a much bigger role to play in running the network."

He wasn't far wrong was he?