Yes no interview for me, worse luck. Youtube to the rescue. And yes, the night scenes in the original were often too dark. Right as always, Number 6.
I have taken the opportunity to get some good stills of the 1978 and 1979 Southern idents at the end of some of the Youtube videos ( some have watermarks or overlays that pop up at the end of the video ) as the DVD version is missing these. I really notice their absence; I think as a kid these stills were part of the 'Englishness' of the whole thing .. not the product one of our local TV networks. Shame they're gone in my DVD.
At the start of the episodes in the UK, we used to get the “Southern Star” ident and jingle - but this was played out live by Southern so wasn’t on the master tapes that went onto VHS or DVD, and wouldn’t have been seen down under:
I miss regional ITV - presentation seems so bland these days. I know it’s the same in Australia as regional stations merged into mini-networks and then many were bought out by the metro stations - so commercial TV is pretty much just branded 7, 9 and 10 everywhere.
I miss regional ITV too. I loved all the idents and jingles. I remember climbing to the loft and trying to pick up HTV West by moving the areal around. Now, with Sky, all the ITV regions can be accessed (although you have to add the channels manually, unlike BBC regions that are om the EPG). Sadly, apart from regional news programmes, all ITV is mostly the same.
Incidentally, we have our granddaughter with us now, and she is binging on YouTube FF episodes. The Southern ident is shown at the end of each episode as a still.
It's good to know that the children of today (or some of them, at least) are still watching the 1970s Famous Five series!
Granada was the ITV channel I grew up with in North Wales, but when I lived in Essex we seemed to get a range of ITV channels (I recall Meridian, Anglia and Carlton).
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.
"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.
Very nostalgic! I remember the Southern TV logo very well from when my family lived in Lymington in the 1960s and again in the early 1980s - they held the franchise in the South Central area of England until 1981 and were based in an office block by the River Itchen bridge in Southampton). ITV programmes then for Hampshire were divided between Southern and Thames, with London Weekend Television for Friday evenings to Sunday (hence the name of the company); when we lived in Sussex in the 1970s , where programmes came from London, it was a mixture of Thames/ LWT and sporadic input from Southern and (less often) popular programmmes from Granada (Manchester) and Anglia (Norwich).
The only well-known and frequently syndicated Anglia programme was the famous consumer goods quiz 'Sale of the Century', which was often ridiculed by smart critics for its tacky prizes and very keen quizmaster Nicholas Parsons, but it was hugely popular in the 1970s and my parents used to watch it so I saw it on and off; it was like a lower-key and less excitable version of the later and more US-influenced consumer quizzes and the only big prize was usually a car. Living in the South, we saw very little Northern television except the most successful Granada shows that LWT sometimes too up; I suppose there was a good deal of commercial haggling, using other channels' ideas, and rivalry behind the scenes but at the time you got the impression that it was more 'gentlemanly' and less intense/ vicious than it became later when more money was involved. The main cases of 'poaching/ luring away stars' to boost ratings that I remember were between the BBC and ITV, eg Morecambe and Wise and Bruce Forsyth, rather than within the ITV networks, but the local TV stations did enable a new generation of local journalistic and showbiz/ presenter talent to emerge in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Seen from this distance in time, it all seems a less intense and competitive era, with a degree of low-key charm -into which the locally-shot serials, like the Famous Five one in 1978-9, fitted very well. At Southern, down on the farm' and 'Nature watching' programmes were a major asset long before the BBC's 'Countryfile' came along - led in the 1960s-70s by presenter and behind the scenes producer/ programme creator Jack Hargreaves, presenter of 'Out of Town', who lived near us (and near future FF series locations) in the 1960s and could be seen at Lymington market on Saturdays. JH drove a pony-trap around the lanes like Aunt Fanny and other assorted Blyton village/farm folk do in the books, and did so in the show; he later lived near Enid's farm at Stourton Caundle in Dorset. (We still have a few people in the Forest who drive traps for fun at weekends, despite the fast cars and tourists, and now it's a 'green' attraction too; I saw one out last week.)
I know most of those indents and I think it's because many programmes kept the indent which showed where they were made - e.g. the Thames Television indent with London buildings and a distinctive eight-note tune (probably my favourite indent) came up before many programmes in the 1970s despite the fact that I was watching on Granada, so it takes me back to my childhood.
I remember Sale of the Century as a child but I didn't get to see Out of Town until Nigel lent me some episodes on DVD about a decade ago.
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.
"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.
timv wrote: ↑13 Apr 2023, 08:11
I remember the Southern TV logo very well from when my family lived in Lymington in the 1960s and again in the early 1980s - they held the franchise in the South Central area of England until 1981 and were based in an office block by the River Itchen bridge in Southampton). ITV programmes then for Hampshire were divided between Southern and Thames, with London Weekend Television for Friday evenings to Sunday (hence the name of the company); when we lived in Sussex in the 1970s , where programmes came from London, it was a mixture of Thames/ LWT and sporadic input from Southern and (less often) popular programmmes from Granada (Manchester) and Anglia (Norwich).
As I remember it, Thames Television provided ITV programmes for the London region Mon-Fri, and LWT Saturday and Sunday. Hampshire's ITV was provided by Southern, seven days a week. Southern provided ITV programmes for the whole of the south of England, with studios in Northam, Southampton (by Itchen Bridge, I believe) and Maidstone in Kent for the south-east of England.
Another split-franchise was ATV:
Associated Television was the original name of the British broadcaster ATV, part of the Independent Television (ITV) network. It provided a service to London at weekends from 1955 to 1968, to the Midlands on weekdays from 1956 to 1968, and to the Midlands all week from 1968 to 1982. It was one of the "Big Four" until 1968, and the "Big Five" after 1968, that between them produced the majority of ITV networked programmes. In 1982, ATV was restructured and rebranded as Central Independent Television, under which name it continued to provide the service for the Midlands.
I just had a look out of interest and of course most of them mean nothing to an Aussie like me, but there's one in the middle that gives me a huge instant nostalgia fest — at 0.54 - 0.59, the Thames logo, with the London skyline rising out of the river to that little tune. Back in the early-mid 1980s, we had a whole stack of British children's programmes (we spell it "programs") on ABC TV, most of which I loved watching, and most of them opened with that exact same Thames ident. (Usefully, my mum had lived in London for a couple of years before she got married, and she soon taught me how to pronounce "Thames" correctly! I was just learning to read at that time and would make an attempt on almost any word I saw.)
I didn't realise just how much the Thames logo had stuck in my head until about 30 years later, when I was living near London, and one day I was walking north across the Millennium Bridge, which faces St Paul's Cathedral directly. The sight of that dome was so familiar that I actually heard that 1980s Thames TV tune play in my head as I recognised what I was looking at!!
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It was a nuisance. An adventure was one thing - but an adventure without anything to eat was quite another thing. That wouldn't do at all. (The Valley of Adventure)
I’m a proper nerd when it comes to archive TV presentation - there are heaps of videos of it on YouTube and other places! One of the main differences between British commercial TV and Aussie commercial TV was the “in-vision announcer” who appeared on screen between most programmes. Nearly all the ITV regions used IVC (in vision continuity) until the 1990s. When I was little wanted to be an TV announcer (and a TV repair man, and a doctor, and a vet, and a clock repairer). For some reason, my dreams never came to fruition!
Jack400 wrote: ↑15 Apr 2023, 14:58
I can remember when children's TV in the 1970s had an announcer in the UK. Are you thinking that it only happened in Australia?
I was saying the opposite - it regularly happened in the UK but not in Australia.
There weren't any announcers who appeared on the screen between programmes on children's TV in the 1970s - or not in my region, anyway. There might possibly have been a voice saying something like 'Now, it's Rainbow', but nothing more than that. Visible announcers who goofed around a bit started in about the mid 1980s, I think. I don't know what was done on the various ITV channels, but the BBC had Phillip Schofield and Gordon the Gopher in the Broom Cupboard.
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.
"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.
I was just learning to read at that time and would make an attempt on almost any word I saw.)
