TV listing are pointless.

This thread amuses me, for when I lived abroad, the start times of programmes could vary by up to 30 minutes on a regular basis (mainly the main evening news). Things are less... fluid here.

Wiki and Transdiffusion say 1968.
Radiosoundsfamiliar.com says 1969.

It was 1968, when the new franchises came in. TV Times started with ITV in 1955 but the individual regions could contract them out to other companies if they wanted, hence Rediffusion and Granada always had TV Times but other companies like Scottish and Westward had their own (although actually The Viewer for STV and Look Westward were published by the same company and were basically the same magazine).

In the Midlands, ATV initially had TV Times but in 1964 they actually lost the rights and ATV gave them to another magazine called TV World (in one of the sixties MOTD repeats they showed on BT last week, there was a TV World hoarding at one of the grounds). Although as I remember looking at in Birmingham Library when I used to live in Birmingham, TV Times did carry on publishing in the Midlands for a few weeks, but minus any listings, in the hope the articles themselves might be enough of a draw. But they weren't and it closed down after a few weeks.

Anyway, as part of the new franchises in 1968 it was a condition that all regions had to use the TV Times, except for Channel of course who were allowed to do their own to give them a bit more cash.

It's not correct that they used to be more precise in the listings, though, TSW famously used to bill things starting at 3.27 and 10.34 but they were the only region who did so. There would be just as much rounding up and down as there is now. Indeed, I've got a Radio Times from 1983 where there's a letter complaining about Invasion of the Body Snatchers starting on BBC2 before Doctor Who had finished on BBC1, and the reply says they try to avoid that wherever possible, to the extent of asking live programmes to carry on for a few more minutes to hit a common junction. So they would have been inaccurate quite frequently.

And I don't see the need to give exact times anyway, you're not catching a train. And who's recording The One Show?

Somewhere I have my souvenir editions of the TV Times, that cover C4's launch week, and Tv-am's
They are both TSW versions, so I'll dig them out and scan an example.

I do seem to recall a lunchtime (Asian ?) programme on BBC 1 that was always billed as 12:27 ? and
I'm sure schools programme listings for BBC and ITV were always 'minute' accurate in the guides ?

Well, there was probably more reason for that before the days of PVRs, than there is now, considering the so called 'Accurate Record' etc features (When they work of course !)

The Schools programming was treated different to the rest of the schedule and I have always seen them advertised as starting at odd times. I believed these were more accurate as it was when you wandered off to the hall or TV room or whatever to watch them "live" and they had to start on time for that reason. My belief anyway. Of course these days you don't need to watch anything on TV (or even a TV for that matter) as you can bang a DVD into a laptop and watch something on the whiteboards through the projection systems. No more heading off to crowd round a 14" TV on a trolley with wheels

Granada's part-networked Night Time continuity always had very precise timings.

I'd have thought it'd be more to do with being able to set the timer and expecting it to record properly (though that of course relies on the VCR's clock being set right).

I don't think we ever watched anything live at school. It was always on video (Betamax, I think) and by law it had to have dodgy tracking

I remember watching stuff live back when I first started school in the early 90s, memories of the ITV Schools rotomotion!

I was still watching stuff live on the telly at school at least up until the early 1990s (I was at primary school 1986-1993 so I fell into the ITV Schools on Channel 4 era for pretty much its entire life ) like James above.

The timer thing was pointless at our school because it didn't have a backup battery in the video to remember the date and time (I seem to remember that to have been an expensive add-on "option" for the humble VCR but a neighbour had a video that did it so I know it was possible). Anyway because the video at our school spent most of its life unplugged, setting the timer recordings without setting the time was pointless and nobody could figure it out anyway

At the risk of turning this into the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch, you were lucky. I was at Secondary School 75 to 80. My school had a Philips N1500 I think. It was a co incidence if on playback there was sound and video at the same time !

I'm sure soon we'll have someone who was at school in the 50s and watched stuff from a 16mm projecter!