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  • So, Has the BBC Run Out of Ideas?

    Because it does kind of seem that way, doesn’t it? The schedules dominated by the same old programmes that seem to have been kicking around forever. But – is that really the case? Or, with the main BBC channels being the home for as wide an audience as possible, isn’t it just that the BBC’s programme roster has only ever been refreshed at a leisurely pace?

    Well, given I’ve got a ton of programme info to play with (now including all of 2022 and 2023), we can try to look a little deeper into that theory.

    If you remember back as far as yesterday, I published decade-by-decade breakdowns of programmes broadcast most frequently by the BBC. That revealed a little about the changes – or lack thereof – in programming policies over BBC Television’s history. Here, we’ll break things down into a slightly smaller chunks and see how much carry-over there is between each five-year period.

    We’ll use the BBC’s TV programming between 1936-39 and 1946-49 as the foundation of this, then look at five-year chunks from 1950 onwards, looking at the 30 most-broadcast programmes from each period. If a programme was also in the Top 30 for the previous period, it gets highlighted and added to a total. The higher the total for that period, the lower the amount of programme turnover for that particular spell. The lower the total, the most inventive the Beeb were (likely) being during that spell, giving increased schedule space to new programmes.

    Okay, here we go. Ready for some info tables?

    NOTE: To make things fair for the most recent time period, instead of just calculating “2020-2023” (meaning the churn level would likely be lower, as you’re only looking at a four-year rather than five-year spell), I’ve calculated numbers for 2019-2023, and compared it to a comparable list running from 2014-2018. Oh, and this only accounts for programmes broadcast on the (as was) BBC Television Service, and BBC1 and BBC2 from 1964 onwards.

    That was a long list, wasn’t it? Here’s the key info, shorn of programme detail:

    As we can see from the above, the lack of imagination in the BBC schedules really got going from 1970 onwards, and reached a high point (or low point, if you prefer) in the first half of the 1990s. Things got better around the turn of the millennium, but a lack of imagination and risk-taking started to spread as the present day approached. And so, we’re at a point where two-thirds of the BBC’s most-shown programmes were also amongst the most-shown shows from five years earlier.

    And so, in conclusion, if we’re pondering the question ‘Has the BBC Run Out of Ideas?’, going by the evidence above, the answer is pretty much “Yeah, but it’s not the first time.” Though, of course, this is pretty telling…

    In our next module, T888, we’ll be looking at Social Behaviour of Animals and the History of Wood.

    ,

  • The Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: Post-Match Statstravaganza

    The Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: Post-Match Statstravaganza

    Okay, now the Big Final Reveal is out of the way, and we’ve identified the two programmes broadcast more than any other on the main BBC channels, let’s get granular. After all, with so much lovely data to build statistical sandcastles with, we can pull that programme information into some other shapes too.

    For example, it’s one thing giving all that weight to programmes broadcast as daytime filler, but what about restricting the list to broadcasts going out to audiences sitting down for a proper evening’s televiewing? Or lists of most-shown shows from each decade, helping identify the changing face of BBC Television since 1936? Or just stuff shown on Sundays? And other things, too.

    Well, strap in, because here come some ordered lists, without any of that fusty old detail getting in the way. Starting off with a list of:

    PRIMETIME BROADCASTS ONLY

    Now, it’s arguable what constitutes ‘primetime’, but the most common categorisation I’ve seen suggests 7pm to 11pm. So, that’s what I’ve calculated and come up with the following list. And, despite being shorn of those Sunday omnibuses, the regulars at the Queen Vic still have enough in the tank to roar past all the other contenders.

    1. EastEnders
      Broadcast 6116 times
      BBC1 1985-2021, BBC2 2011-2021
    2. The One Show
      3333 times
      BBC1 2007-2021, BBC2 2011-2021
    3. Match of the Day
      2563 times
      BBC1 1966-2021, BBC2 1964-2020
    4. Panorama
      2124 times
      BBC-tv 1953-1964, BBC1 1964-2021, BBC2 2012
    5. Top of the Pops
      2097 times
      BBC1 1964-2012, BBC2 1996-2021
    6. Gardeners’ World
      1521 times
      BBC2 1968-2021
    7. Question Time
      1383 times
      BBC1 1979-2021
    8. A Question of Sport
      1380 times
      BBC1 1975-2021, BBC2 2011-2013
    9. Twenty-Four Hours / 24 Hours
      1360 times
      BBC1 1965-1972
    10. Wogan
      1107 times
      BBC1 1982-1993
    11. University Challenge
      1096 times
      BBC2 1994-2021
    12. Holby City
      1075 times
      BBC1 1999-2021, BBC2 2012-2021
    13. Top Gear
      1074 times
      BBC1 2020-2021, BBC2 1978-2020
    14. Points of View
      1035 times
      BBC-tv 1962-1964, BBC1 1964-1999
    15. Tomorrow’s World
      975 times
      BBC1 1965-2003
    16. Casualty
      935 times
      BBC1 1986-2021
    17. Watchdog
      881 times
      BBC1 1988-2019
    18. Mastermind
      881 times
      BBC1 1972-1997, BBC2 2003-2021
    19. The Money Programme
      833 times
      BBC1 1974-1974, BBC2 1966-2009
    20. Party Political Broadcast (etc)
      832 times
      BBC-tv 1950-1963, BBC1 1969-2021, BBC2 1969-2009
    21. QI
      755 times
      BBC1 2009-2011, BBC2 2003-2021
    22. Snooker
      728 times
      BBC-tv 1950-1955, BBC1 1978-1997, BBC2 1978-2020
    23. Omnibus
      720 times
      BBC1 1967-2001, BBC2 1967-2006
    24. Have I Got News for You
      700 times
      BBC1 2007-2021, BBC2 1990-2021
    25. Late Night Line-Up
      694 times
      BBC2 1964-1972
    26. The World About Us
      677 times
      BBC2 1967-1986
    27. Z Cars
      674 times
      BBC-tv 1962-1964, BBC1 1964-1978, BBC2 1993-1993
    28. Dad’s Army
      670 times
      BBC1 1968-2020, BBC2 1983-2021
    29. Tonight
      653 times
      BBC-tv 1957-1964, BBC1 1964-1979
    30. Sportsnight
      533 times
      BBC1 1968-1997, BBC2 1995-1995

    Onto lists of most broadcast things by decade…

    1930s/40s

    Starting off with a pseudo-decade collected together due to There Being No Telly Before 1936 and That Bloody War Ruining Things For Everybody. Which, as you’ll see, doesn’t make an especially illuminating list, due to most programme titles at the time being descriptive rather than snappy (“First Aid in the Home” or “In Your Garden: The Construction of a Small Lily Pond“), meaning there are some very low episode counts (often operating under vague titles like ‘Variety‘) making the cut here.

    [EDIT: Figures for Picture Page corrected, with thanks to Daniel James Webb for pointing out the lower-than-expected total there. And then corrected some of the other numbers, too.]

    1. Picture Page | 421 times, 1936-1949
    2. For the Children | 174 times, 1937-1949
    3. Starlight | 166 times, 1936-1949
    4. Cricket | 151 times, 1938-1949
    5. Music Makers | 144 times, 1936-1949
    6. Variety | 137 times, 1936-1949
    7. Cabaret | 123 times, 1936-1946
    8. Boxing | 92 times, 1936-1949
    9. In Our Garden | 71 times, 1937-1949
    10. Friends from the Zoo | 56 times, 1936-1947
    11. Wimbledon | 52 times, 1937-1949
    12. Stars in Your Eyes | 49 times, 1946-1949
    13. Racing | 49 times, 1946-1949
    14. Forecast of Fashion | 46 times, 1938-1947
    15. Kaleidoscope | 45 times, 1946-1949
    16. For the Housewife | 44 times, 1948-1949
    17. Interval, Time, Weather | 44 times, 1936-1936
    18. Designed for Women | 42 times, 1947-1949
    19. Cookery | 42 times, 1946-1948
    20. Pre-View | 33 times, 1937-1938
    21. Cartoonists’ Corner | 32 times, 1946-1948
    22. Gardening | 31 times, 1937-1948
    23. Theatre Parade | 30 times, 1937-1938
    24. The Zoo | 29 times, 1938-1949
    25. Fashion Forecast | 27 times, 1937-1946
    26. Vanity Fair | 27 times, 1939-1939
    27. Interval | 27 times, 1937-1939
    28. Composer at the Piano | 26 times, 1946-1947
    29. Speaking Personally | 25 times, 1937-1947
    30. Wrestling | 24 times, 1946-1947

    1950s

    Onto BBC Television’s first full decade, and things are starting to take shape. with some programmes that would go on to become very familiar to viewers for years to come. Also: “Schools Tuning Signal“.

    1. Cricket | 859 times, 1950-1959

    2. For the Children | 808 times, 1950-1952

    3. Mainly for Women | 765 times, 1955-1959

    4. Tonight | 624 times, 1957-1959

    5. For the Schools | 442 times, 1957-1959

    6. Racing | 371 times, 1950-1959

    7. Wimbledon | 313 times, 1950-1959

    8. For Women | 241 times, 1951-1955

    9. What’s My Line? | 227 times, 1951-1959

    10. Today’s Sport | 213 times, 1955-1959

    11. The Brains Trust | 199 times, 1956-1959

    12. Schools Tuning Signal | 193 times, 1957-1959

    13. Lunchtime Cricket Scores | 188 times, 1958-1959

    14. Gardening Club | 187 times, 1955-1959

    15. The Phil Silvers Show | 177 times, 1957-1959

    16. The Burns and Allen Show | 175 times, 1955-1959

    16. The Epilogue | 175 times, 1952-1959

    18. Sportsview | 174 times, 1954-1959

    19. Party Political Broadcast (etc) | 173 times, 1950-1959

    20. Andy Pandy | 170 times, 1950-1957

    21. In Town Tonight | 165 times, 1954-1956

    22. Meeting Point | 154 times, 1956-1959

    23. Sports Special | 149 times, 1955-1959

    24. About the Home | 144 times, 1952-1955

    25. Panorama | 142 times, 1953-1959

    26. The Grove Family | 141 times, 1954-1957

    27. Wells Fargo | 137 times, 1957-1959

    28. I Married Joan | 135 times, 1955-1959

    29. For the Very Young | 119 times, 1951-1953

    30. This Is Your Life | 116 times, 1955-1959

    1960s

    Onto the decade when London swang like a pendulum, and it’s nice to consider that lots of cool young things were finishing their tea watching Zena Skinner perfecting a bacon, onion and apple roll in that night’s Town and Around before swanning off down the Kings Road.

    1. Town and Around | 2044 times, 1960-1969

    2. Play School | 1772 times, 1964-1969

    3. Late Night Line-Up | 1530 times, 1964-1969

    4. Tonight | 1184 times, 1960-1965

    5. Cricket | 981 times, 1960-1969

    6. Jackanory | 934 times, 1965-1969

    7. Twenty-Four Hours / 24 Hours | 786 times, 1965-1969

    8. Blue Peter | 696 times, 1960-1969

    9. Grandstand | 664 times, 1960-1969

    10. Z Cars | 563 times, 1962-1969

    11. Meeting Point | 562 times, 1960-1968

    12. Farming | 486 times, 1960-1969

    13. The Newcomers | 430 times, 1964-1969

    14. Panorama | 398 times, 1960-1969

    14. Juke Box Jury | 398 times, 1960-1967

    16. Compact | 392 times, 1962-1965

    17. Songs of Praise | 384 times, 1961-1969

    18. The Magic Roundabout | 370 times, 1965-1969

    19. Points of View | 358 times, 1961-1969

    20. Gardening Club | 338 times, 1960-1967

    21. Top of the Pops | 312 times, 1964-1969

    22. Spotlight | 307 times, 1960-1965

    23. Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye | 303 times, 1966-1969

    24. Seeing and Believing | 297 times, 1960-1969

    25. Signpost | 295 times, 1961-1965

    26. Junior Points of View | 290 times, 1963-1969

    27. Sunday Story | 271 times, 1961-1968

    28. Wimbledon | 270 times, 1960-1969

    29. Pure Mathematics | 261 times, 1962-1964

    30. Doctor Who | 259 times, 1963-1969

    1970s

    Into the decade where colour TV became a fixture in the brown and beige living rooms of the UK, and it’s good old Humpty & Co that are making the cathode ray tubes their own.

    1. Play School | 4998 times, 1970-1979

    2. Jackanory | 2140 times, 1970-1979

    3. Nationwide | 2037 times, 1970-1979

    4. Pebble Mill | 1305 times, 1972-1979

    5. Cricket | 1289 times, 1970-1979

    6. Nai Zindagi – Naya Jeevan | 857 times, 1970-1979

    7. Blue Peter | 843 times, 1970-1979

    8. Grandstand | 782 times, 1970-1979

    9. Tonight | 771 times, 1975-1979

    10. You and Me | 703 times, 1974-1979

    11. The Magic Roundabout | 632 times, 1970-1979

    12. Twenty-Four Hours / 24 Hours | 605 times, 1970-1972

    13. Tom and Jerry | 572 times, 1970-1979

    14. Top of the Pops | 524 times, 1970-1979

    15. Songs of Praise | 520 times, 1970-1979

    16. Farming | 474 times, 1970-1979

    17. The Money Programme | 461 times, 1970-1979

    18. Late Night Line-Up | 453 times, 1970-1977

    19. The World About Us | 452 times, 1970-1979

    20. Panorama | 434 times, 1970-1979

    21. Tomorrow’s World | 421 times, 1970-1979

    22. Match of the Day | 402 times, 1970-1979

    23. Golf | 379 times, 1970-1979

    24. Open Door | 373 times, 1973-1979

    25. The Old Grey Whistle Test | 370 times, 1971-1979

    26. On the Move | 355 times, 1975-1978

    27. Midweek | 354 times, 1972-1975

    28. Wimbledon | 353 times, 1970-1979

    29. Z Cars | 343 times, 1970-1978

    30. The Wombles | 338 times, 1973-1979

    1980s

    The 1980s saw the home computer revolution fronted by the homegrown likes of Acorn, Amstrad and Sinclair, making it quite fitting that much of the decade saw BBC Micro Mode 7 beamed into the homes of daytime Britain.

    1. Pages from Ceefax | 5634 times, 1983-1989

    2. Play School | 3805 times, 1980-1988

    3. Breakfast Time | 1727 times, 1983-1989

    4. Neighbours | 1633 times, 1986-1989

    5. Cricket | 1422 times, 1980-1989

    6. You and Me | 1181 times, 1980-1989

    7. Snooker | 1176 times, 1980-1989

    8. Jackanory | 1123 times, 1980-1989

    9. Pebble Mill | 1097 times, 1980-1986

    10. Grandstand | 957 times, 1980-1989

    11. Blue Peter | 865 times, 1980-1989

    12. Nationwide | 845 times, 1980-1983

    13. Songs of Praise | 793 times, 1980-1989

    14. Wogan | 768 times, 1982-1989

    15. EastEnders | 764 times, 1985-1989

    16. Five to Eleven | 745 times, 1986-1989

    17. Laurel and Hardy | 530 times, 1980-1989

    18. Top of the Pops | 526 times, 1980-1989

    18. Gardeners’ World | 526 times, 1980-1989

    20. Golf | 510 times, 1980-1989

    21. Film [xx] (The Film Programme) | 443 times, 1980-1989

    22. Farming | 436 times, 1980-1988

    23. The Flintstones | 430 times, 1985-1989

    24. Points of View | 424 times, 1980-1989

    25. Tomorrow’s World | 423 times, 1980-1989

    25. Kilroy | 423 times, 1986-1989

    27. Playdays | 394 times, 1988-1989

    28. See Hear! | 389 times, 1981-1989

    28. Grange Hill | 389 times, 1980-1989

    30. Dallas | 378 times, 1980-1989

    1990s

    Here come the nineties, decade of Britpop, Alcopop and antipodean domination of the TV listings, between Home & Away, Prisoner Cell Block H and the show at the top of the pile on BBC1.

    1. Neighbours | 5183 times, 1990-1999

    2. Playdays | 2989 times, 1990-1999

    3. EastEnders | 1981 times, 1990-1999

    4. Blue Peter | 1609 times, 1990-1999

    5. Kilroy | 1606 times, 1990-1999

    6. Westminster | 1236 times, 1990-1999

    7. Cricket | 1206 times, 1990-1999

    8. Teletubbies | 1180 times, 1997-1999

    9. Working Lunch | 1104 times, 1994-1999

    10. Grandstand | 1099 times, 1990-1999

    11. Snooker | 1048 times, 1990-1999

    12. Pages from Ceefax | 859 times, 1990-1996

    13. Ready Steady Cook | 774 times, 1994-1999

    14. See Hear! | 761 times, 1990-1999

    15. Today’s the Day | 741 times, 1993-1999

    16. Pebble Mill | 728 times, 1991-1996

    17. Can’t Cook Won’t Cook | 689 times, 1995-1999

    18. Top of the Pops | 688 times, 1990-1999

    19. CountryFile | 681 times, 1990-1999

    20. You and Me | 671 times, 1990-1995

    21. The Late Show | 643 times, 1990-1995

    22. Grange Hill | 638 times, 1990-1999

    23. Songs of Praise | 584 times, 1990-1999

    23. Good Morning … with Anne and Nick | 584 times, 1992-1996

    25. The O Zone | 581 times, 1990-1999

    26. BBC Select | 567 times, 1992-1995

    27. Match of the Day | 563 times, 1990-1999

    28. Film [xx] (The Film Programme) | 560 times, 1990-1999

    29. The Weather Show | 550 times, 1996-1999

    30. The Learning Zone | 549 times, 1995-1998

    2000s

    It’s the post-millennial cyberfuture! And the start of Anne Robinson’s rise to global domination.

    This is, of course, from Tomorrow’s World reporting on the worldwide web in 1994. But still.

    1. Neighbours | 3810 times, 2000-2008

    2. EastEnders | 2580 times, 2000-2009

    3. Tweenies | 2266 times, 2000-2009

    4. The Weakest Link | 2205 times, 2000-2009

    5. Working Lunch | 2064 times, 2000-2009

    6. Teletubbies | 1797 times, 2000-2009

    7. Bargain Hunt | 1761 times, 2000-2009

    8. Doctors | 1734 times, 2000-2009

    9. Ready Steady Cook | 1631 times, 2000-2009

    10. Blue Peter | 1561 times, 2000-2009

    11. Arthur | 1453 times, 2000-2009

    12. Cash in the Attic | 1375 times, 2002-2009

    13. Match of the Day | 1363 times, 2000-2009

    14. Flog It! | 1307 times, 2002-2009

    15. Snooker | 1305 times, 2000-2009

    16. Diagnosis Murder | 1141 times, 2000-2009

    17. The Daily Politics | 1134 times, 2003-2009

    18. Homes under the Hammer | 1070 times, 2003-2009

    19. Kilroy | 977 times, 2000-2004

    20. Animal Park | 965 times, 2000-2009

    21. To Buy or Not to Buy | 934 times, 2003-2009

    22. Murder, She Wrote | 917 times, 2002-2009

    23. Scooby-Doo | 908 times, 2002-2009

    24. Escape to the Country | 886 times, 2002-2009

    25. Grandstand | 879 times, 2000-2007

    26. Balamory | 858 times, 2003-2009

    27. Fimbles | 839 times, 2002-2009

    28. Eggheads | 828 times, 2003-2009

    29. Tikkabilla | 765 times, 2003-2009

    30. ChuckleVision | 699 times, 2000-2009

    2010s

    And so, onto the last full decade on the list, and television is drowning in daytime nan-fodder.

    1. Homes under the Hammer | 3513 times, 2010-2019

    2. Bargain Hunt | 3293 times, 2010-2019

    3. Escape to the Country | 2898 times, 2010-2019

    4. Flog It! | 2686 times, 2010-2019

    5. The ONE Show | 2324 times, 2010-2019

    6. EastEnders | 2222 times, 2010-2019

    7. Pointless | 2130 times, 2010-2019

    8. Doctors | 2078 times, 2010-2019

    9. Eggheads | 2022 times, 2010-2019

    10. The Daily Politics | 1650 times, 2010-2018

    11. Antiques Road Trip | 1229 times, 2010-2019

    12. CountryFile | 1195 times, 2010-2019

    13. Match of the Day | 1053 times, 2010-2019

    14. Holby City | 1043 times, 2010-2019

    15. Coast | 1042 times, 2010-2019

    16. Cash in the Attic | 856 times, 2010-2017

    17. Antiques Roadshow | 847 times, 2010-2019

    18. Great British Menu | 832 times, 2010-2019

    19. Panorama | 825 times, 2010-2019

    20. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is | 804 times, 2010-2019

    21. Rip Off Britain | 738 times, 2010-2019

    22. Heir Hunters | 719 times, 2010-2019

    23. Question Time | 710 times, 2010-2019

    24. The Weakest Link | 706 times, 2010-2013

    25. Gardeners’ World | 693 times, 2010-2019

    26. Wanted Down Under | 678 times, 2010-2019

    27. Great British Railway Journeys | 675 times, 2010-2019

    28. The Graham Norton Show | 658 times, 2010-2019

    28. A Question of Sport | 658 times, 2010-2019

    30. Waybuloo | 641 times, 2010-2012

    What about those weekend days, when telly is a very different beast. The full list was, predictably, dominated by weekday programming. So what went out most frequently at the weekend? And, as Saturday Telly is a distinctly different beast to Sunday Telly, here are lists for each:

    SATURDAYS

    1. Grandstand | 2627 times, 1958-2007

    2. Match of the Day | 1847 times, 1964-2021

    3. Cricket | 945 times, 1938-2021

    4. Saturday Kitchen | 886 times, 2001-2021

    5. Casualty | 869 times, 1986-2021

    6. Football Focus | 831 times, 1977-2021

    7. Final Score | 755 times, 1971-2021

    8. Snooker | 734 times, 1952-2021

    9. Doctor Who | 728 times, 1963-2017

    10. Dad’s Army | 701 times, 1969-2021

    11. Flog It! | 534 times, 2002-2021

    12. Top of the Pops | 469 times, 1965-2021

    13. Golf | 444 times, 1946-2021

    14. Weekend 24 | 414 times, 1998-2006

    15. Juke Box Jury | 408 times, 1959-1979

    16. Dixon of Dock Green | 395 times, 1955-1976

    17. Today’s Sport | 388 times, 1956-1980

    18. See Hear! | 387 times, 1998-2014

    19. The Sky at Night | 386 times, 1957-2013

    19. Rugby Special | 386 times, 1966-2005

    21. Pointless Celebrities | 375 times, 2012-2021

    22. Tennis | 302 times, 1939-2021

    23. Scooby-Doo | 301 times, 1976-2012

    24. Parkinson | 300 times, 1971-2021

    25. Athletics | 296 times, 1947-2021

    26. Escape to the Country | 287 times, 2005-2021

    27. Bargain Hunt | 279 times, 2008-2021

    28. What the Papers Say | 278 times, 1990-2008

    29. Arthur | 274 times, 2000-2011

    30. TOTP2 | 270 times, 1994-2021

    SUNDAYS

    Unsurprisingly, Songs of Praise tops the list. But surprisingly, no place in the thirty for That’s Life – while it aired 442 times, 140 of those broadcasts were on other days of the week (mainly Saturdays). That just doesn’t seem right, does it?

    1. Songs of Praise | 2790 times, 1961-2021

    2. CountryFile | 2083 times, 1988-2021

    3. EastEnders | 1538 times, 1985-2017

    4. Farming | 1438 times, 1958-1988

    5. Match of the Day | 1385 times, 1980-2021

    6. Antiques Roadshow | 1059 times, 1979-2021

    7. Grandstand | 1011 times, 1966-2007

    8. Meeting Point | 716 times, 1956-1968

    8. The Money Programme | 716 times, 1973-2007

    10. Nai Zindagi – Naya Jeevan | 659 times, 1968-1982

    11. The Andrew Marr Show | 644 times, 2007-2021

    12. The World About Us | 640 times, 1967-1986

    13. Snooker | 607 times, 1957-2021

    14. Holby City | 591 times, 2006-2021

    15. See Hear! | 576 times, 1981-2000

    16. Breakfast with Frost | 575 times, 1993-2005

    17. Rugby Special | 549 times, 1975-2005

    18. Natural World | 529 times, 1983-2021

    19. Cricket | 485 times, 1953-2021

    20. Saturday Kitchen Best Bites | 482 times, 2012-2021

    21. Escape to the Country | 479 times, 2005-2021

    22. Seeing and Believing | 470 times, 1960-1976

    23. Bargain Hunt | 459 times, 2005-2021

    24. Points of View | 454 times, 1999-2021

    25. Everyman | 450 times, 1977-2000

    26. Playdays | 449 times, 1988-1997

    27. The Sky at Night | 434 times, 1969-2013

    28. Lifeline | 416 times, 1986-2021

    29. Top Gear | 415 times, 1981-2021

    30. This is the Day | 402 times, 1980-1994

    POST-WATERSHED BROADCASTS

    Next up, how about a list of hot and steamy late-night programming definitely deemed unsuitable for children. Picking out broadcasts purely between 9pm and 5am, here’s a list of most-seen X-rated telly ethemera. Phwoar!

    This image might seem to disprove what I’d just said, but don’t forget the time Jimmy Hill accidentally advised viewers to “put their cocks back”

    1. Match of the Day | 2713 times, 1965-2021

    2. Late Night Line-Up | 1989 times, 1964-1989

    3. Question Time | 1834 times, 1979-2021

    4. Snooker | 1539 times, 1977-2021

    5. Twenty-Four Hours / 24 Hours | 1390 times, 1965-1972

    6. Film [xx] (The Film Programme) | 1335 times, 1971-2018

    7. Cricket | 1216 times, 1952-2021

    8. Party Political Broadcast (etc) | 891 times, 1950-2021

    9. Panorama | 869 times, 1954-2021

    10. Have I Got News for You | 856 times, 1990-2021

    11. The Graham Norton Show | 837 times, 2001-2021

    12. The Late Show | 802 times, 1966-1995

    13. Later… with Jools Holland | 794 times, 1992-2021

    14. Tonight | 772 times, 1975-1992

    15. QI | 734 times, 2003-2021

    16. Omnibus | 721 times, 1967-2021

    17. The Sky at Night | 717 times, 1957-2013

    18. Golf | 613 times, 1953-2021

    19. This Week | 610 times, 2003-2019

    19. Holby City | 610 times, 2006-2021

    21. A Question of Sport | 559 times, 1999-2021

    22. Despatch Box | 554 times, 1998-2002

    23. The Learning Zone | 547 times, 1995-1998

    24. Friday Night with Jonathan Ross | 522 times, 2001-2010

    25. Sportsnight | 517 times, 1968-1997

    26. BBC Select | 511 times, 1992-1995

    27. Mock the Week | 501 times, 2005-2021

    28. Top of the Pops | 467 times, 1965-2021

    29. Everyman | 466 times, 1977-2001

    30. Parkinson | 459 times, 1971-2021

    Finally, how about a list of:

    Children’s BBC Programmes

    Specifically programmes meeting the criteria “weekday BBC1, start time 3:50-5:55, programmes for grown-ups not counted”. Yes, I could have spent ages picking out summer holiday morning CBBC strands and the like, but even I’m not that bloody minded.

    1. Blue Peter | 4303 times, 1964-2012

    2. Jackanory | 4104 times, 1965-2006

    3. Play School | 3831 times, 1968-1985

    4. The Magic Roundabout | 904 times, 1965-1984

    5. Grange Hill | 830 times, 1978-2008

    6. Byker Grove | 502 times, 1989-2005

    7. Scooby-Doo | 480 times, 1970-2012

    8. ChuckleVision | 385 times, 1988-2009

    9. Yogi Bear | 374 times, 1971-1997

    10. Popeye | 369 times, 1979-1999

    11. Animal Magic | 358 times, 1964-2000

    12. The Wombles | 323 times, 1973-1985

    13. Laurel and Hardy | 321 times, 1966-1990

    14. Rugrats | 315 times, 1994-2004

    15. Junior Points of View | 287 times, 1964-1970

    16. SuperTed | 259 times, 1983-1995

    17. Record Breakers | 257 times, 1983-2001

    18. Shaun the Sheep | 251 times, 2007-2012

    18. Hector’s House | 251 times, 1968-1975

    20. SMart | 250 times, 1994-2010

    21. Mona the Vampire | 247 times, 2000-2006

    22. Screen Test | 230 times, 1970-1984

    23. The Story of Tracy Beaker | 224 times, 2002-2010

    23. Crackerjack | 224 times, 1964-1984

    25. The Really Wild Show | 217 times, 1986-2004

    26. Paddington | 214 times, 1976-1991

    26. Deputy Dawg | 214 times, 1964-1980

    28. The Cramp Twins | 213 times, 2001-2008

    29. The Wild Thornberrys | 204 times, 1999-2004

    30. Bananaman | 203 times, 1983-1999

    There we go! That probably counts as a fitting epilogue to a very long-winded project. Onto the blog’s next ill-considered escapade – coming soon. Well, soon-ish. It’s going to involve getting a lot more data in place first. But, given the above, you could probably have guessed that.

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  • Play School: A Look Through the Redux Window (Take Two*)

    Play School: A Look Through the Redux Window (Take Two*)

    (*Fingers crossed, first attempt to publish resulted in a blank post and WordPress deleting the contents of my draft. So, fingers crossed. Apologies to email subscribers who received a mostly-empty email last night.)

    Who wants a bunch more information about Play School? You know you do. But first, a brief aside.

    Funny thing, research.

    When putting together the write-up on Play School – the most-broadcast BBC programme of all time, of course – I used a variety of sources for background. Old issues of the Radio Times, the British Newspaper Archive’s brilliant archive of The Stage and a number of books came into play, such as Phil Norman’s TV: A History in 100 Programmes, Richard Webber’s That Was the Decade That Was and Ruth Inglis’ The Window in the Corner: A Half Century of Children’s Television. As with a number of entries on the list, Paul R Jackson (no stranger to excellent books about television himself, of course) also provided some brilliant info and clarifications.

    And, as with much of the list, contemporary newspaper archives were very handy for finding additional nuggets of information and insight that have rarely resurfaced since original publication. For the most part, that was from a combination of the aforementioned British Newspaper Archive and the Gale Newspaper Archive (which – PROTIP – you can access for free via libraries such as the National Library of Wales). And, in a development which was certainly going to provide some great information, a 1971 Guardian interview with Doreen Stephens, the BBC’s Head of Family Programmes at the time Play School was devised, available on researcher’s pal archive.org.

    Using all of this information, I put together the much-abridged history of Play School – as with many programmes on the Top 100 (etc) list, an enjoyable experience on my part, learning a lot I didn’t previously know, and building on lots of information I already-kind-of-sort-of knew from my own childhood. It went online, lots of people read it and hopefully liked it (at least any that didn’t were gratifyingly mute about it). One such person was, as hinted at by the quote at the end of the write-up (and thanks again to Paul R Jackson for sharing the news of it with her) original Play School editor Joy Whitby.

    Joy was kind enough to get in touch via email about Play School, and as it turns out, some of the details of that Guardian piece – and my Play School write-up – weren’t quite correct.

    For one thing, Play School was entirely Michael Peacock’s idea, rather than just the notion of a pre-school series being his, and passed onto Doreen Stephens to do more work on. In actual fact, Joy was chosen for the Play School role – by a board chaired by Michael Peacock – before Doreen had started her role as Head of Family Programmes. While Doreen was hugely supportive to Joy during her tenure, and remained her friend through to retirement, it was also Michael who went on to commission another daily slot for the Play School team – which ultimately became Jackanory.  Joy ran both programmes side by side until, again thanks to Michael’s invitation, she left to join the new London Weekend Television franchise.

    That’s not to diminish Doreen Stephen’s hugely impressive time at the BBC, of course. She’d originally turned down various jobs at the BBC before finally agreeing to run Children’s Programmes – but only on the proviso the department’s name be changed to Family Programmes. After her time in that role, the powers that BBC reverted to the old department title: Children’s Programmes.

    Joy added that Athene Seyler – Play School’s first ever storyteller, was considered the perfect granny figure, taking the time to reminisce about her childhood. The choice of Zia Mohyeddin as an early Play School storyteller was part of Joy’s decision to give the programme a cosmopolitan feel from the start.

    Regarding Doreen Stephens’ tenure heading Family Programmes, when Joy Whitby first met her in her new office, having been told she was a dragon, Stephens welcomed Whitby with something direct and friendly along the lines of: “I didn’t appoint you and you didn’t choose me, but we must get along together…”. Which – as the pair’s long subsequent history of collaboration proved – they evidently did.

    Doreen Stephens would later leave her role at LWT in protest at Michael’s dismissal, together with other executives (including Joy Whitby) when he was ousted. This wasn’t due to any particular programme content, it being more likely that commercial pressures being cause of his failure within ITV, especially given the original LWT’s high-falutin’ notions.

    As for Joy Whitby’s later series Grasshopper Island, the source of funding was amusingly different. Doreen Stephens initially had nothing to do with the series. Whitby’s secretary at LWT was at a dinner sat next to a young merchant banker, her dining neighbour sharing that there were still people like himself who wanted to finance creative people – in the manner previously seen in the days of Beethoven and Mozart. She told him about the new project, and as a result the banker swiftly got in touch, and raised a consortium who funded Grasshopper Island. Most of the series was shot in Corsica where cast member Frank Muir had a holiday home, Muir being another ex-BBC/LWT executive who had stood by Michael Peacock.

    Plus, it’s a boon for people who enjoy seeing Tim Brooke-Taylor playing multiple roles. Which is any right-minded person. Around the same time Brooke-Taylor was doing a similar trick in Orson Welles’ One Man Band, too.

    Joy Whitby asked Doreen to join the project as general manager, and as a result she ended up not only taking on the task of sorting out contracts and the like, but also in cooking meals for everyone. As Joy points out, “she was a hands-on friend – without any need to pull rank. Much respected and much loved by us all.”

    Now, as splendid as screencaps of Tim Brooke-Taylor being frumpy are, how about an extra Play School lists (and if you don’t like lists, what are you doing here?), plus: some camera scripts and a gallery of Play School photos, each courtesy of Paul R Jackson?

    Firstly, here’s a list of PLAY SCHOOL PRESENTERS WITH THE GREATEST NUMBER OF APPEARANCES. Broken down into pre- and post-relaunch totals for good measure:

    How about some scans? Here’s the front page of the script from Play School’s first episode of Series Two (Recording Tue 6 Sep 1983, TX Mon 19 Sep 1983):

    …and the front page of the camera script of the final episode of Series Two (and the series as a whole). Recording Wed 3 Mar 1988, TX Fri 11 Mar 1988

    If you prefer Old School Play School, here’s one from the tenth anniversary special (Recording Sun 14 Apr 1974, TX Mon 22 Apr 1974)

    Here’s the front page of the 1000th Play School script (Recording Mon 5 Feb 1968, TX Mon 19 Feb 1968):

    And the 300th episode (Recording Thu 9 Oct 1975, TX Mon 20 Oct 1975):

    And – go on, then – the 5000th episode (Recording Mon 25 Jul 1983, TX Mon 12 Sep 1983):

    Next the photos! And I can’t think of a better introduction than this group shot from the programme’s 15th anniversary in 1979:

    Here’s Australian Play School presenter Don Spencer with the programme’s longest-serving pet, Katoo.

    A Lesser Sulphur Crested Cockatoo hailing from Indonesia, or ‘cacatua sulphurea’ if you’re being fancy, Katoo first landed on the Play School set on Wednesday 7 September 1966, aged just one, sticking around until the series ended. Perhaps that lengthy tenure is what led to the feathery diva occasionally refusing to talk on cue, while dancing beautifully with resident pet expert Wendy Duggan… when off camera. Following the end of Play School, Katoo lived with Duggan, surviving until the ripe old age 46 before finally passing away in 2009.

    Wendy Duggan and Katoo in 1979.

    As mentioned in the piece on Play School, the programme would go on to be a fixture on children’s television around the world. And, befitting the show’s inclusive nature, a number of hosts from the international versions were invited to the BBC for presenting stints on the British original.

    Diane Dorgan, Australia’s first female presenter, appeared in her local version of the series between 1966 and 1969, before moving to the UK to present the BBC version between October 1969 and March 1974. The antipodes also provided the series with Don Spencer (Australian version 1968-1992), who presented the BBC version between September 1972 and February 1984, returning as a guest presenter in February 1985 and June 1986, plus in February 1988. An even longer journey was undertaken by New Zealand’s Janine Barry (Jan 1975-Dec 1977), who joined Fred Harris for one edition on 14 August 1981.

    A more modest number of air miles were accrued by Play School’s continental contingent, with Miguel Vila (Spain’s La Casa Del Reloj 1971-1973, below) popping over to the UK to join Toni Arthur for a week in August 1973. Further north, Norway’s Lekestue sent Jon Skolmen (1971-1973, also below) for a week presenting the ‘School alongside Carol Chell in November 1971, and producer-writer-presenter Vibeke Saether (1971-1981) appearing alongside Don Spencer on 20 December 1976.

    Diane Dorgan, 1966
    Miguel Vila
    Norway’s Jon Skolmen and Vibeke Saether, 1971

    As a bonus, here’s a lovely shot of the New Zealand Play School team, from the Ross Johnston collection:

    And how about one of globetrotting Man-About-‘School Don Spencer with Play School Australia’s not-right-at-all-to-British-eyes Humpty from 1983?

    As if to prove that Australians are perfectly fine with their wrong-looking Humpty, here he is at the 2016 Logie Awards with several other Play School Australia alumni:

    Not that Humpty always gets the limelight, of course. Here’s a photo taken to mark the 45th anniversary of the Australian version, where then-current and former presenters came together to reunite with the team of toys. Perhaps Humpty was feeling a little camera-shy that day.

    Finally, to nicely tie everything in with the programme that actually topped the list, here are a pairing of presenters from 1966 – Kerry Francis (top, 20 episodes) and… Ramsay Street’s very own Anne Haddy (bottom left, 44 episodes).

    Helen Daniels wasn’t the only Erinsborough regular to appear on the series, either. Here’s Tom “Lou Carpenter” Oliver in 1969. (Tom’s on the left.)

    As ever, many thanks to Paul for all the photos and information during the rundown. As mentioned previously, if you want to school yourself to an even great degree in the history of Play School, his Celebration of Play School books one and two are essential texts.

    Here he is at ABC Studios along with presenters Alex Papps (2006-) and Rachael Coopes (2011-), from his visit down under in January 2012. Cheers, Paul!

    See you again next time with another BBC Broadcasting History InfoBurst!

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  • The Two Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: The Grand Final

    The Two Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: The Grand Final

    If this blog has a catchphrase, it must be “that took a lot longer than I’d expected”. And this one did. Not so much as down to getting together a programme history of the show in question, but more to do with checking the broadcast histories of the Top Two programmes. And O! The excitement.

    On checking through everything, one programme had a large number of broadcasts missing from the database due to being buried under “Children’s BBC starting with…” billings, with the programme title itself in the RT ‘description’. And so, as we’re talking about a programme broadcast more than 10,000 times, it took a lot of checking to see what hadn’t been picked up. So much so, there was a very real chance this next programme might actually have topped the list.

    How close did it come to the top? Well, on my initial recheck, if it had been shown just 26 more times, it would be top of the all-time chart. And then, on checking the other programme left to uncover, it looks like several broadcasts couldn’t be counted (due to actually being an unrelated film of the same name). The gap crept ever closer. After all this time, could it come down to a single figure difference? Or even actually end in a draw?

    Then I discovered repeats of The Programme At Number One spent three months going out billed as “NEWS followed by… [Programme Title]”, which increased the gap by a load. Hey ho.

    But enough of me explaining why Genome ate my homework, let’s take a look at the programme in second place on the list. Apologies to anyone getting this via email – it’s a long one. It’s time to look through the oblong window at:

    2. Play School

    (Shown 10,575 times, 1964-1988)

    [Many thanks to Paul R Jackson for his help compiling this article, providing a bunch of facts, photos and – marvellously – the quote at the end of the article. Paul is the author of Here’s A House – A Celebration of Play School volumes one and two, so if you’re after a more detailed history of the series, you know where to go. Both are available from the publisher’s website direct: https://www.tvbrain.info/shop]

    When launching a television channel, it’s generally a good idea to pick something really good and important to kick things off. Channel Four had the first episode of Countdown, which everyone remembers. Channel Five had the first episode of Family Affairs, which I needed to look up. ITV, of course, had ‘Inaugural Ceremony at Guildhall‘, which can’t have been that good as it didn’t go on to get a full series.

    As the BBC’s first new channel since the launch of the Television Service in 1936, 1964’s plans for BBC-2’s launch night were as fancy as you might expect. Following a brief introduction to the channel, there was the promise of new comedy show The Alberts (featuring, as the RT listing had it, “Ivor Cutler of Y’hup, O.M.P, Professor Bruce Lacey, John Snagge, Sheree Winton, Benito Mussolini, Major John Glenn, Adolf Hitler, David Jacobs, Birma the Elephant (by courtesy of Billy Smart’s Circus) and other celebrities“), followed by a production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. Brilliant. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

    Ah.

    As fate would transpire, due to a huge fire at Battersea Power Station a mere half-hour before the channel went live, those plans were thrown into candle-lit disarray, and an expectant audience was instead treated to an (initially mute) news bulletin beamed from the nearby but unaffected news studio at Alexandra Palace, as read by Gerald Priestland. That was followed by an evening of captions and apologies. Most British channel launch ever, 10/10, no notes.

    And so, as I’m sure you’re already well aware, the first actual programme broadcast on BBC-2 was something commissioned for an audience of under-fives. And, much like Channel Four’s Countdown, it would go on to a very long life on our screens.

    Yep, it’s Play School. For a good few generations of young televiewers, a programme that would provide an early introduction into a long fascination with TV. And, personally speaking, the catalyst to one of my earliest distinct memories. On – I think – turning four, in response being told that I’d been born at 11am on my day of birth, I sought confirmation that “I was in time to see that day’s Play School?” Talk about appointment to view television.

    The proposal of having a pre-school series in the new channel’s schedules came from BBC2 Head of Programmes Michael Peacock, and by the time of Play School’s launch, the BBC had a new Head of Family Programmes in place to help get those wheels into motion.

    Doreen Stephens had been a hugely instrumental figure within 1960s television. Despite only starting her TV career at the age of 40, she’d go on to become Head of Women’s Programmes at the BBC, then (as just mentioned) Head of Family Programmes, before moving to LWT to head up their Children’s, Religious and Adult Education Programming department. Despite initial reluctance in moving away from Women’s Programmes and onto Family Programmes in 1963, she soon revolutionised the department, bringing in fresh faces and minds to help move away from the imperial-era likes of Watch With Mother and introduce programmes like Jackanory, The Magic Roundabout and Play School.

    Stephens’ aim was to move away from cotton-wool content like Bill and Ben, instead introducing shows for a generation who’d soon be thrust into the more technical world of the 1970s. Her approach was a success. At a time when the expanding ITV network was bossing the BBC in the ratings, her children’s programmes consistently attracted more viewers than the commercial channel’s own offerings. Indeed, it was that level of success that saw David Frost lure her over to LWT after landing the licence for London’s weekend broadcasting.

    A board chaired by Michael Peacock selected Joy Whitby as producer of the new programme. Whitby was duly given a more-than-modest budget of £120 per week (£2,030 in today’s money) to put together five programmes per week, all to be broadcast live. So, in today’s money, that’s a whopping £406 per episode. An unbilled pilot episode of the programme was shown as part of BBC-2’s trade test transmissions on 31 March 1964, presented by Eric Thompson and Judy Kenny. Coincidentally, the script and programme still exist in the BBC’s archives. Y’know, in case anyone working at the BBC Archives is reading this.

    All was set for the launch of the full series. The initial working title of Home School had been discarded before this stage, in favour of the friendlier sounding Play School. As programme advisor Nancy Quayle would later explain in the fifteenth anniversary programme Twenty Five Minutes Peace, “play is the child’s first school”.

    One suspects that when Virginia Stride had her audition for the role, she didn’t expect to become front page news the day after her debut.

    Whitby had initially joined the BBC to work in their School Broadcasting Department, but working on Play School would be the first of several projects that would land her name in British television history. After liaising with a variety of experts in the fields of childcare, learning and literature to come up with a suitable blueprint, it would go on to win various accolades, including a Guild of Television Producers and Directors Award, and a place in the hearts of children for decades to come. Whitby later left the programme to devise Jackanory (as covered previously) before joining Doreen Stephens at LWT in 1967, but as leaving presents go, the format for Play School is hard to beat.

    To outline what parents (and their children) could expect from the new series, Joy Whitby took to the Radio Times.

    Joy Whitby introduces her new BBC-2 series beginning today which provides ‘nursery school’ for the under-fives

    ARE you an exhausted parent of a child under the age of five? If so, Play School may be just what you are looking for. Without actually leaving home, for half an hour every day (from Monday to Friday, beginning today, Tuesday), your child can benefit from the advice of leading authorities on nursery education and enjoy the undivided attention of a changing panel of presenters-young and resourceful men and women, most of them with children of their own. Play School will not be a televised nursery school-room. It will use all the advantages of television to do the job of a nursery school in its own exciting way. Every day our story chair will be occupied by a storyteller of out- standing talent-in this first week Athene Seyler, followed by Charles Leno, Eileen Colwell, and David Kossoff. Through our magic windows we shall invite children to explore the real world which they long to discover-the world of buses and elephants, flowers and snails, rain and shadows. There will be a Pets’ Corner, a Play School garden, songs, and surprises, and opportunities for joining in both new and traditional games. We hope to offer not just another half-hour’s viewing a day. We want the children who attend Play School to take away from it ideas and stimulation to last long after their television sets have been switched off.

    Joy Whitby, Radio Times, 18 April 1964
    Presenters of that first ever episode: Gordon Rollings and Virginia Stride

    With the demands of five live episodes per week, running almost every weekday of the year, the decision to use a repertory company of hosts was an obvious one, but each needed to be suited to the role, and the process of getting the right presenters for the programme was delightfully fitting. When Brian Cant, at the time a jobbing dramatic actor, applied for a role in the new series, his audition involved Joy Whitby kicking a box out from under a table and asking Cant to “get in there and row out to sea”. One ad-libbed fishing voyage later, a three month contract on the series was his. Eighteen years later, he would still be a regular Play School player.

    In the same way a football squad needs to have a variety of skills and disciplines, Play School’s presenters had a good mix of backgrounds, with Joy Whitby selecting thirteen equally valuable squad members from the off: Virginia Stride and Gordon Rollings (as seen in the first ever episode), Carole Ward, cardboard box interviewee Brian Cant, Judy Kenny, Marian Diamond, Julie Stevens, Terry Frisby (then billed as Terence Holland), the international trio of Rick “Fingerbobs” Jones (Canada), Marla Landi (Italy) and splendidly-named Dibbs Mather (Australia), plus husband and wife Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law. Strength in depth, right at the start of the season.

    Each episode had a pairing of squad-rotated presenters, each advised to speak to the camera as if addressing an individual child, an inclusive approach that made viewers feel at home. While the presenting line-up would be freshly rotated, a sense of uniformity was applied each day’s episodes. So, each Monday’s episode would focus on ‘The Useful Box’, Tuesdays would be Dressing Up Day, every Wednesday would focus on pets, each Thursday encouraged viewers to use their imagination, while Fridays would be Science Day.

    Another integral part of the new series was each episode’s storytelling segment. Rather than have one of the presenters taking to the storytelling chair each day, a variety of guest storytellers would appear, introducing the young audience to a story, often of their own making. Speaking in 2006 BBC Four documentary The Story of Jackanory, Joy Whitby told of the thinking behind this approach.

    “It seemed important to get in and attract people of great quality who might not want to spend all their time doing children’s programmes but who would certainly commit themselves to some performances, and in a way that’s what happened with the storytelling element.”

    Joy Whitby, The Story of Jackanory (BBC Four, TX 14/02/2006)

    And so, starting with actress Athene Seyler in that very first episode, the storyteller segment would soon go on to feature names such as Flora Robson, Roy Castle, Richard Baker, Quentin Blake and a pre-Dad’s Army Arnold Ridley, with many Play School storytellers later going on to perform similar roles in Jackanory.

    Interesting to note that Ridley first appeared on BBC-tv in 1936. And also that one of the many stage plays he wrote – Meet Mr Lucifer – was a scathing satire on the addictive nature of television

    Within the first few months of Play School, a decision was made to expand the remit of storytellers beyond the UK, inviting storytellers from other nations to relate children’s tales from other lands. The practice started in July 1964, with British-Pakistani actor and director Zia Mohyeddin taking to the chair to read a selection of traditional Indian fables.

    Daily Mirror, 19 April 1965

    The formula was a success with those able to receive BBC-2, so much so that a special edition of the programme aired on its first anniversary in April 1965, with several viewers (and a baby lamb called Sooty) invited to a special tea party at the Riverside TV Studios. However, by that point the reach of the second channel still only extended as far as London, the South-East, East Anglia and the Midlands (with the episode shown on Midlands’ launch day – 23 November 1964 – featuring a bespoke welcome from presenters Marla Landi & Brian Cant).

    Even then, Play School could only be viewed in homes containing 625-line compatible sets. Viewers elsewhere in the UK were finally able to knock on the Play School door in July 1965, with the first same-day repeat of the programme on BBC-1, initially for a trial period running the length of the summer holidays. Such was the confidence in the trial, the afternoon broadcasts of Watch With Mother were paused to make room for it. A whole new set of children would be getting to see the famous Play School windows.

    “Windows ’64.” [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    With Play School finally making an appearance in regional copies of the Radio Times that hadn’t been carrying BBC-2 listings, Joy Whitby put together a fresh introduction to the programme, this time being able to include evidence of what they programme had brought to those lucky enough to enjoy it.

    For the next six weeks* the afternoon edition of ‘Watch with Mother’ on BBC-1 will be replaced by a repeat of ‘Play School’, the morning programme which is running on BBC-2

    Can you remember what it was like to be four years old? Everything you saw was new. But your hands were still uncertain servants. Your feet were not allowed to take you exploring far beyond your own front door. Your mind bubbled with ideas but you did not have enough words to express them. This child you once were is Play School’s target audience.

    Turn on your set and you will see – a house. The door opens and lets you into a room which very soon you will feel you know: Humpty Dumpty, Jemima, and Teddy live in the toy cupboard by the blackboard. The shelves are full of books. The picture board might show one of your own paintings one day. There is a corner for pets; a table for scientific experiments; seven pegs carry an ever-changing selection of dressing-up clothes; and a large hamper overflows with useful oddments for making things.

    So far Play School offers the standard equipment of any good nursery school. But it also has at its disposal all the imaginative resources of television-lights that can transform a blank wall into an apple orchard, lenses that turn men into giants, film that can show anything from a spider spinning its web to a rocket ship on its way to the moon.
    Above all, Play School offers a stream of exciting people-not only experts in the field of nursery education but visitors from the world of adult entertainment. Ted Moult describes his farm. George Melly provides an ABC of jazz. Many accept for the first time the challenge of shaping their material without condescension to the needs of this specialised audience. A team of twelve young men and women present the programmes, pairing up a week at a time with changing partners-a system which keeps the chemistry fresh for viewers and performers.

    This testimonial from a couple of teachers whose daughter has watched Play School from the start is typical of the many letters we receive from parents: ‘Her imagination has been stimulated, her language enriched and the creative ideas which are a feature of the programme have started her on many an hour of effective learning through play.’
    We hope that this week-with Athene Seyler, Beryl Roques and Brian Cant – what has been true every day for thousands of children on BBC-2 can now be true during the summer holidays for the wider audience on BBC-1.

    Joy Whitby, Radio Times, 24 July 1965
    (*Newspaper reports at the time put the trial run as lasting eight weeks, not six. In the end, the trial ran for a total of eight weeks. Pointing this out doesn’t really add anything of value, but I’ve typed it in now.)

    Truly, while Open University would go on to become ‘The University of the Air’, Play School was fulfilling a similar remit for pre-schoolers. Avoiding the maternalistic tone of Watch With Mother, this was much closer to speaking to under-fives at their own level – for all that Bill & Ben, The Woodentops or Muffin the Mule had enthralled audiences, there had been a disconnect between the screen and the audience. With Play School, the children were invited to take part, either by sending in pictures in the hope they’d appear on the Play School set, or by playing along with the activities on screen.

    Crucially, Play School was honest enough to avoid the assumption the entire audience were on board with the presentation style. As series producer Cynthia Felgate pointed out, “Talking down is really based on the assumption you’re being liked by the child. But if you imagine a tough little boy of four looking in, you soon take the silly smile off your face.”

    The high regard that the series was now held in became clear in September 1965. The BBC had made a landmark agreement with the UK’s three main political parties to televise the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Party conferences in full on BBC-2. This was way beyond the scope of any Party Political Broadcast – each day’s coverage was scheduled to run from 9.30am until the close of the day’s play around 5pm. The agreement came with only one caveat from the Beeb: live TV coverage had to be paused at 11am each morning to make way for Play School. Ted Heath nil, Big Ted one.

    Play School was back on BBC-1 throughout the summer holidays of 1966, but this time it would be simulcast on both -1 and -2 at 11am each weekday. That’s an impressive feat considering simultaneous broadcasting was an occasion normally reserved for cup finals and royal events, and even then only because BBC-1 and ITV both wanted a piece of the same pie. On top of that, BBC-2 had recently been made available to the majority of the UK, largely meaning only those still using 405-line sets were missing out. Play School was certainly becoming what is known as A Big Deal.

    As adoption of BBC-2 increased, Play School was confined to the channel for the next few years, until in November 1968, when Play School started being repeated on a long-term basis on BBC-1 – in the peak post-school time of 4.20pm to boot, albeit only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Tough luck if your home was lumbered with an antique television on the other weekdays, but at least you could spend your Monday and Wednesday afternoons watching vocationally improving fare like Training In Skills or Teaching Maths Today in that same slot. You know, for the really smart under-fives.

    By this point, Play School had started going out in full colour on BBC2 (at least on most days, when they were able to use one of the BBC’s colour-capable studios), which helped bring a welcome dash of colour into the worlds of the young audience, and making all that imagination-fuel that bit more vivid.

    Many of the cast of presenters would go onto other roles as a result of their time on Play School. Britain’s National Cool Uncle Johnny Ball would move onto a career of winsomely accessible maths, logic and science programmes like Think of a Number, Think Again and the troublingly-titled Johnny Ball Reveals All. The comic chops displayed by Fred Harris led to a brief career change in Marshall and Renwick’s radio comedy The Burkiss Way and LWT’s Burkiss-in-all-but-name sketch comedy End of Part One, before becoming the BBC’s friendly face of computer literacy throughout the 1980s. Meanwhile Brian Cant – long before his memorable stint on This Morning With Richard Not Judy‘s The Organ Gang – moved onto Play School’s first spin-off series, Play Away (broadcast 308 times, 1971-1984).

    Play Away was a much, for want of a better word, ‘looser’ affair than Play School, with a heavier emphasis on songs, slapstick and puns than its parent series. As befitting Play Away’s more relaxed aesthetic – a bit like seeing your teacher in the supermarket wearing civvy clothing – it mostly went out on Saturday afternoons, but would get occasional repeats on weekday Children’s BBC, and built up quite a noteworthy cast during its time on air. Regular Play School players were the faces most familiar to the audience, namely Brian Cant (who featured throughout the entire 1971-84 run), Derek Griffiths (1971-73, 1975), Chloe Ashroft (1971-79), Julie Stevens (1971-79), Lionel Morton (1971-77), Carol Chell (1971-80) and Floella (now, of course, Baroness) Benjamin (1977, 1979-84).

    There was also room for a fresh intake of Play Away-only players, including (as surely everyone knows by now) a pre-fame Jeremy Irons, but also early gigs for Julie Covington, Anita Dobson, Tony Robinson and Alex Norton. And, despite initially being studio-bound, later series of ‘Away would feature (and heavily involve) an actual studio audience. Plus, the entire run of the series featured Jonathan Cohen heading up the Play Away Band. Quite the ensemble, all in.

    Of course, you don’t get anywhere by standing still, and Play School wasn’t afraid to move with the times. For example, the famous title sequence (“Here is a house…”) underwent more regenerations than The Doctor during it’s time on air (well, more or less), the animation often being updated to keep things fresh (if reliably hauntological for much of the run).

    And possibly in line with current architectural trends, though I don’t recall a penchant for houses spewing out paint in the mid-1980s.

    Of course, Play School wouldn’t have been Play School without the involvement of the Play School toys. Inanimate, they may be. Mute, unashamedly so. Integral? Definitely. So, let’s take a moment to mark the input of Humpty (who first appeared in that very first episode on 21 April 1964), Jemima, Big Ted (originally named ‘Teddy’), Little Ted, Dapple the Rocking Horse, Poppy, Bingo the sock dog and Cuckoo. Oh, and not to forget Hamble, terrifying tots since that first ever episode. Co-stars who were at least a little more active were the Play School pets, expertly looked after by Wendy Duggan from 1965 onwards.

    Humpty was the best, of course. [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    February 1983 saw the introduction of a short-lived companion programme, in the form of Play School Play Ideas. Having originally been a series of spin-off books first published in 1971 (and written by the appropriately-named Ruth Craft), each ten-minute episode ran before regular episodes of the series, but was targeted more at parents who wanted to be ‘one jump ahead’ on some of the ideas from the series. Looking for a choice of recipes for finger paint or play dough? Or a heads-up on the bits and pieces needed to play some of the games at home? Or even some personal feedback from a teacher on the value of the series to nursery attendees? Then this eight-episode series was very much for you.

    A larger change came later in 1983, when series editor Cynthia Felgate marked the programme’s move from BBC-2 mornings to BBC-1 mornings (making way for Programmes for Schools and Colleges, which travelled in the opposite direction) by a more literal house move for Play School. A brand new set (sorry, ‘house’), a new theme tune (and accompanying dialogue), plus a switch from two to one main presenter each day, with various guests popping in each week. The new jazzier stylings of the series certainly helped keep things fresh, but time was running out for Play School.

    And not just because of EVIL PERILS imposed by the reckless programme (Daily Mirror, Friday 29 Apr 1983)

    29 March 1985 saw the last Play School going out as part of the afternoon Children’s BBC schedule, meaning the programme was now a solely morning treat once more, though that was offset by Sunday morning broadcasts of highlights from the previous week. Play School continued in this vein for a few more years (still showing sufficient importance to punch a twenty-minute hole in daily Party Conference coverage each autumn), but there was now an acceptance that slightly older children coming home from school no longer had much interest in the series.

    Pretty cool new set, mind. [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    When the end came for Play School, it was at the hand of someone who’d been there at the beginning. Anna Home had been a part of the production team right from the very beginning, before moving on to produce Jackanory, plus drama serials such as Carrie’s War, The Canal Children and The Changes. By 1988, Home had become Head of Children’s Programmes, and felt that at the 1990s loomed, Play School was still slightly stuck in the past. Another Play School stalwart delivered the final blow. Cynthia Felgate’s production company Felgate Productions picked up the contract to make the new totem for under-fives: initially called Playbus (later Playdays), which would go on to have quite an impressive run of it’s own. And so, between March and October 1988, a variety of Play School episodes were repeated while energies were concentrated on its successor.

    And so, that was the end of Play School. Between 1964 and 1988, it had featured a total of 104 presenters (94 in the original run, 10 in the post-83 reboot), 54 guests, and six clocks. It saw episodes recorded in the Riverside Studios, Television Centre, Lime Grove Studios, Manchester’s Dickenson Road and Oxford Road studios, plus Pebble Mill. It even earned a quartet of repeat broadcasts (all from Christmas 1985) on short-lived digital channel BBC Choice over Christmas 1999 and 2000. Such was the regard the series would still be held in, the Riverside Studios would play host to a Play School reunion in May 2014, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the series. Previous to that, the 2010 Bafta Children’s Awards saw a special award presented to Brian Cant.

    Paul R Jackson with presenters Carol Chell, Derek Griffiths and Brian Cant, Riverside Studios, May 2014 [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]
    Brian Cant and his Plus One for the evening [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    Except: it wasn’t quite the end. Such as the success of the series in the UK, overseas broadcasters had been very keen to bottle some of that magic. The Australian version of the programme first aired in 1966, and is still airing on ABC Kids to this day, making it the longest-running children’s show in Australia (and second-longest in the world, after our very own Blue Peter). New Zealand’s adaptation of the series ran from 1972 to 1990, using the original 1964 UK branding for the series throughout.

    In colour!

    Non-English speaking countries also got in on the act, with Switzerland’s Das Spielhaus running from 1968 to 1994, Austria’s Das Kleine Haus (from 1969-1975) and Spain’s La Casa del Reloj all getting in on the act. While some of the remakes were wearing pretty loose-fitting clothing (the Swiss version had talking puppets throughout, which is all wrong), some adhered a lot more closely to the original. Such as the Norwegian version Lekestue, which stuck very closely to the original Play School formula.

    With such a rich legacy, it’s comforting to know that Joy Whitby’s original low-budget formula would go on to nurture young minds not just in the UK, but around the world. In fact, it’s probably fitting to give the final word to Joy herself.

    “Great to see Play School at number two in your list and to know that Jackanory has also made the top ten. What a wonderful testament to the original team who set the template in 1964. It’s gratifying that the programme continues to hold a place in viewers’ hearts with fond memories of all those talented people, both in front and behind the camera.” (Joy Whitby, January 2024)

    So, that’s it. The TV programme shown almost-most frequently within the BBC’s entire history. But what’s at number one? Let’s find out right now, shall we? It’s time to join those…

    1. Neighbours

    (Shown 10,626 times, 1986-2008)

    Oh, the irony. Despite using the title ‘The Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time’, the programme at number one was a show originally made by and shown on… Australia’s Seven Network. Not even a BBC co-production. So, it’s really the case that Play School is the most-broadcast BBC programme of all-time. It was just pipped to the post by Neighbours. Which, er, isn’t a BBC programme.

    That said, the top programme on the list isn’t entirely divorced from British television. Reg Watson, the original architect of Ramsay Street, had created an impressive roster of continuing drama in Australia, such as Prisoner (suffixed ‘Cell Block H‘ in the UK), The Young Doctors and Sons and Daughters, single-handedly filling approximately 36% of ITV’s airtime between 1986 and 1994. But long previous to all that, 1955 saw a tyro Watson leave Australian shores for the UK, and a role at the nascent ATV Midlands. After an initial spell behind the camera directing fare like Noele Gordon ad-magazine Fancy That, then producing the likes of chat show Lunchbox and Godfrey Winn Speaking Personally, Watson championed a proposal for a new weekdaily soap opera devised by Hazel Adair and Peter Lingset.

    It was set in the Midlands region – always handy when ATV needed to prove it wasn’t wholly fixated on its London weekend franchise – and was called The Midland Road. Unfortunately, this was in 1958, when a combination of limited broadcasting hours and moneyed franchise holders determined to get their content on screen meant there was limited space in the schedules. It would take until November 1964 before The Midland Road finally reached TV screens, initially in the ATV Midlands region. That is, once it had changed its name to Crossroads.

    It’ll never catch on.

    Watson produced Crossroads for just under a decade before returning to Australia for a role as Head of Drama for storied soapmongers Reg Grundy Productions. The person responsible for that move? Bob Monkhouse. Yes, really. Well, kinda.

    During Watson’s time working for ATV, a certain Mr Reg Grundy was enjoying his Mayfair honeymoon with his bride, Joy Chambers-Grundy. During that spell, the newlyweds met with expatriate and future TV-am tyrant Bruce Gyngell, then working for ATV. Gungell introduced the couple to current ATV big draw Bob, who invited the Grundies over to his St. John’s Wood home for dinner. Ever the gracious host, Monkhouse followed this up with an invitation to ATV’s studio to attend a recording of his hit series The Golden Shot, but not before treating the couple to dinner at the Albany Hotel. To make them feel at home, he also invited along a couple of Australian expats working at the channel – Golden Shot director Mike Lloyd, and… Reg Watson.

    The Regs immediately hit it off, and with Grundy planning the formulation of a drama department within his media empire, Watson gave his new friend a crash course in putting together a successful serial. Subsequent trips to the UK saw Grundy seek out Watson for added guidance and advice. The guidance was even more pressing once Grundy’s first proposed drama serial – Class of ’74 – was being devised, mainly by staff more used to working on game shows. Grundy would collate together scenes from the series and get them over to Birmingham for Watson’s input. While Watson’s long-distance advice was valuable, the communications network of the mid-70s was hardly instant.

    It’s like a Zoom call, but you have to draw what you think the other person looks like and it costs £7.56 per minute

    Ultimately, Grundy flew back to the UK to try and coax Watson back to his motherland, if only for as long as it took to help with a flailing Class of ’74. His mission helped by the fact Lew Grade hadn’t got around to renewing Watson’s contract, Grundy offered Watson a much more generous lifestyle than the notoriously penny-pinching ATV, and an initially sceptical Watson agreed to switch 1970s Birmingham for Sydney’s Bayview.

    I mean, there are more difficult dilemmas.

    By the 1980s, Reg Grundy Productions (or as it now was, ‘The Grundy Organization’) was responsible for around 25 hours per week of content on Australian TV – a remarkable amount for an indie production company. In addition to soaps, Grundy quiz shows – both homegrown and adapted from overseas originals – were peppered throughout the TV listings, with Sale of the Century, Ford Superquiz, The New Price is Right, Family Feud, $100,000 Moneymakers and Wheel of Fortune attracting loyal audiences.

    That’s a real car, the hosts are actually huge.

    The Organization (yes, with a ‘z’) also made the move into foreign markets, setting up offices in New York, LA, Hong Kong and London, producing programming for local networks. Beyond TV, the GO had moved into areas such as travel, restaurants, a record label and radio. Basically, with noses in all manner of businesses, the many-headed Grundy business hydra seemed to be unstoppable.

    For the drama-based portion of this success, credit goes to Reg Watson’s uncanny ability to devise winning drama formulas. Albert Moran’s book Images & Industry: Television Drama Production in Australia (Australian Screen, 1985) put Watson’s wizardry into context, with some quotes from an unnamed producer within Grundys:

    Take Prisoner, for instance. Grundys were approached by Channel 10: “We’re interested in a show, we’d like something vaguely prestigious, Australian oriented. We want it to run one hour per week for sixteen weeks and then we’ll stop.”

    So [Ian] Holmes or Reg Grundy gets on the telephone and rings Reg Watson and says, “I’ve made a deal – quick, think of something.” So Reg with his instinct for the audience goes to work, sweats a lot and tears his hair out, goes even greyer and comes up with three or four ideas that he thinks will work. And he puts them to the channel. The Channel picks one and says: “Yes, we’ll go with this.” They ring up. The whole organisation goes into a panic. “They’ve picked X, what are we going to do?”

    It’s at that point that Reg sits down at his typewriter and tries to think up a plot to fill in the concept… he wrote a plot for the first episode that was full of short zappy scenes, zappy to stop you thinking about any of them, seventy zaps in forty-five minutes. And then hacks like me are left to make it credible.

    Images & Industry: Television Drama Production in Australia, 1985

    Watson’s transcontinental transfer to Grundys had certainly been a timely one. With Class of ’74 already on air by the time he arrived, the problems with the series were clear (despite early rushes being flown to Birmingham for input from a Watson working through his three months notice). Despite attracting a lot of initial attention, ’74 (later renamed Class of ’75) would see a swift ratings decline and be axed within 18 months. Conversely, The Young Doctors, the first drama serial to be devised under Watson’s tenure, would run for seven years and 1,397 episodes. That was followed by 1977’s The Restless Years (four years, 780 episodes) and 1979’s Prisoner (seven years, 692 episodes). It soon became clear that the ribbon in Watson’s typewriter had been personally inked by God.

    In Reg Grundy’s autobiography, the TV mogul refers to the hiring of Reg Watson as “the most important appointment I ever made”. One example of typical Watson foresight came when Watson floated an idea about a new serial to Grundy: “I’ve got this idea for a drama about three families. The whole concept is about communication between the generations.” From small acorns, eh? And indeed, despite the common conception many held about Neighbours (yes, we’ve got there at last), it was a boundary breaking premise in many ways. Borne of Watson’s time working on Crossroads – and his admiration for Granada’s Coronation Street – this was a programme that would become, at least to British eyes, the quintessential Australian drama series.

    And not actually all like this. (The Kenny Everett Television Show, s5e1, 30 November 1987)

    And while the programme itself would soon evolve, that principle of focusing on Ramsay Street’s three families would remain key. One such family was led by self-employed plumber Max Ramsay, whose grandad gave the street its name; next door is widower Jim Robinson, raising four kids with the help of mother-in-law Helen. And, aside from the feuding Ramsays and Robinsons, the third focal point of Ramsay Street was the home of twentysomething bachelor Des Clarke, who’s just rented a room to Daphne Lawrence, who, it turns out (cover your children’s eyes) is a stripper. The Sullivans it ain’t.

    As Watson himself would go on to point out, “it changed the way we thought in serial drama. In one of the opening episodes, the grandmother was painting and the grandson was sitting for her. He casually said to her, “Grandma, when you and Grandpa were dating, did you have sex?” Normally, we would have her throw the paintbrush down and say, “Look, I don’t want to discuss this”, but we went the other way and she discussed it with him very sensibly.”

    Having been bought by the Seven Network, the new series started promisingly. At least, it did in Melbourne, the setting for the series and focus of Australia’s TV industry. It fared less well in Sydney, where slipping ratings saw it moved from a 5.30pm slot to an earlier home at 3.30pm – hardly ideal for the multi-generational audience the programme was hoping to attract.

    [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    Then, something surprising happened, especially for a show devised by Reg Watson: the series was cancelled by Seven, after just 170 episodes. Then, as far as the Australian TV industry was concerned, something even more surprising happened – this supposed flop of a serial drama was picked up by rival network Ten.

    Canberra Times, Sun 15 Sept 1985

    The move was far from straightforward. Despite supposedly no longer wanting anything to do with the series, Seven threatened to sue Grundys over selling a series the network claimed to own the rights to. On top of all that, an accidental fire had destroyed the permanent sets used for the series. Any legal issues were eventually settled, and the series was given a more youth-focused revamp before arriving on Ten, at a much friendlier time of 7pm.

    The revamp saw new characters, new sets and a cast comprised mainly of unknowns, such as Jason Donovan, Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue. Whoever they are. Plus, it kept key actors from the original incarnation of the series, such as the actors who’d go on to play Vice President Jim Prescott in 24, scheming Yorkshire industrialist Charles Widmore in Lost, Secretary of Commerce Mitch Bryce on The West Wing and the Australian ambassador in Flight of the Conchords. Or, if you prefer, Alan Dale.

    And, chronologically speaking, this is where the BBC comes in.

    Previously, if there had been anything being shown on daytime BBC1, it would be Programmes for Schools and Colleges, the News, programming for pre-school children, Welsh language content (at least until S4C came along) or Pebble Mill. Occasionally, there’d be live sport, or a political party conference, but aside from that, it would generally be the test card (or Pages from Ceefax by the early 1980s) taking up those afternoon broadcasting hours. That was even the case after broadcasting hours were relaxed to allow for a daytime TV service, meaning ITV franchises were free to put out uninterrupted programming from early morning to late night from October 1972. But, without the increased ad revenue of their rivals, the BBC largely kept away from uninterrupted daytime TV for more than a decade.

    It didn’t work out too badly for the commercial channel. A guaranteed 100% audience share for most of each afternoon probably didn’t hurt.

    By the mid-1980s, BBC1 at least had Breakfast Time to attract an early audience, and gradually, more programmes began to grout the gaps between the end of breakfast TV and the early afternoon Play School repeat, especially now the Schools programming had moved over to BBC2.

    For instance, plucking out a random midweek line-up from late 1984 reveals Lyn Marshall’s Everyday Yoga and The Yugoslav Way from 9am, a splash of Ceefax at 9.40am, the day’s first Play School at 10:30, BBC Asian Unit regular Gharbar at 10:50, more Ceefax, the afternoon News and Pebble Mill, pre-school lunchtime distractions Gran and Stop-Go!, followed by the early afternoon coupling of Blizzard’s Wonderful Wooden Toys and Star Movie: Joan Fontaine in Sky Giant to take viewers up to Children’s BBC at 3:50pm. It was certainly a lot of stuff, but not a very clear through-line. Especially when ITV were offering a more consistent line-up, including scripted content for grown-ups like The Sullivans, A Country Practice, Take the High Road and Sons and Daughters. In short: the BBC needed to improve its daytime output. And some of those programmes ITV have got their hands on sound interesting. Hmm.

    And so, from 27 October 1986, BBC1’s first true daytime line-up made its debut. This was offered a lot more uniformity than the previous ragtag collection of content, with the daytime dominated by original – if inexpensive – programming.

    Part of that first daytime menu.

    The full-fat daytime line-up wasn’t yet in place, meaning there was still a couple of curios in the 9am hour (Who’s A Pretty Girl Then?, looking at the 1983 Miss Pears competition, followed by magazine programme for disabled people One in Four) before the main daytime schedule kicked off at 10am, with Pamela Armstrong introducing the new daytime service via All in the Day, offering previews of what you might expect to see each morning. After the regularly scheduled children’s programming at 10:25, there was the first episode of long-running thought for the day strand Five to Eleven, with Dora Bryan the inaugural thought-thrower, followed by a special episode of Gardener’s World.

    Bob Wellings, Pattie Coldwell and Eamonn Holmes introduced the first episode of Open Air at 11:30 – hard to imagine a daily hour-long programme that talked purely about television nowadays, isn’t it? That was followed by Star Memories, where a top celeb (in this instance Su Pollard) shares their favourite television memories with Nick Ross, new-look bulletin the One O’Clock News and… the first episode of “a new series with all the day-to-day drama of life in a Melbourne suburb”.

    While the BBC’s budget didn’t stretch to a homegrown soap along the lines of Take the High Road, it could certainly afford to pick up one imported from Australia. After all, it seemed to be working out pretty well for those lot on ITV, and given this one had been dumped by its original network down under, it was unlikely to have cost a fortune. EastEnders was doing a roaring trade for the channel, proving that viewers would keep coming back for episodes of a soap on BBC1, and the antipodean import provided a superbly sunny counterpoint to the cold concrete of Albert Square.

    Talking of cheap, the new daytime schedule could save a few more shillings by repeating the previous day’s episode of Neighbours at 10am each morning. At least it would give people another chance to catch the new acquisition, and it was hardly as if the programme had arrived with any sense of fanfare. On the day of Neighbours’ BBC debut, that day’s Daily Mirror weekly Soap Opera column failed to even mention the series*, while the first column inches spent on the series by the tabloid – a week after the debut episode aired – saw it dismissed as a programme that “could halt emigration to Australia”. In short, certainly not something that would stick around for years, and – say – see a feature-length supercut of early episodes being broadcast on the tenth anniversary of the programme’s channel debut. Heck, no.

    (*Was going to post a screencap of that Mirror Soap page, but as the main headline in it is a pretty horrible homophobic one about Colin from EastEnders, I’m not going to. Here’s a picture of Colin and Barry from EastEnders instead.)

    Much like how unhelpful schedulers helped Neighbours get canned by Seven, some of the programme’s racier content (by 1986 standards, which is basically just people using the word ‘sex’) appearing adjacent to King Rollo attracted a certain amount of criticism, but luckily the See-Saw strand soon moved over to Daytime on Two. Indeed, the very content that some were unhappy with proved to be catnip to a growing audience of teenage viewers, especially once the youth-friendly post-revamp episodes started airing. The problem was, they were only able to enjoy the programme when sick or on school holidays. What could be done?

    As fate would have it, while Daytime on One had settled into a nice little routine, the early-evening 5:35pm valley between the end of Children’s BBC and the start of the Six O’Clock News was peppered with a variety of ill-fitting formats. Throughout 1986 and 1987, it had played host to repeats of The Flintstones, mid-table syndicated sitcom Charles in Charge, teen quiz First Class (which I’ll wager many kids only watched for Konami’s HyperSports and Atari’s Paperboy), winsome Bill Oddie fact-fest Fax!, put-you-off-your-sausages documentary Hospital Watch, [Disgraced Entertainer] Cartoon Time, Kickstart-in-canoes Paddles Up, The Horse of the Year Show, Rippon-fronted pseudo pub-quiz Masterteam, Muppet Babies and Roland Rat – The Series.

    Basically, you didn’t know what to expect while you were coaxing some ketchup onto your mash, and basically nothing seemed to stick around long enough to build an audience. But what DOES that teenage post-CBBC audience want? Step forward typical British teenager Alison Grade.

    Alison and her friends had a favourite programme, but it was inconveniently scheduled right in the middle of the school day. This meant that a little creativity was needed if they were able to catch it. Instead of going out to play at lunchtime, they’d find a classroom containing a television, occupy it and tune in. That is, until their scheme was rumbled and a ticking off was issued. Alison returned home that afternoon and told her parents about the incident, and bemoaned the fact their favourite programme was being put out at such an inconvenient hour.

    Which, in fairness, is a good idea if your dad happens to be Controller of BBC1 at the time (me saying ‘typical British teenager’ was all a ruse). Speaking in 2021, Michael (now Lord) Grade remarked on how he went into the office the next day and announced “We’re moving Neighbours to 5.35pm, so the kids can watch it when they come home from school”. To pick Neighbours for that original daytime line-up, Grade’s team had scoured through potential imports from around the world before Grade settled on the Erinsborough-based show. The decision to move it to teatimes had arrived in an instant.

    The 5:35pm weekday slot was to be taken by the Australian import from Monday 4 January 1988, where it could attract a whole new audience – not that the daytime audience were being left behind. Each episode continued to air for the first time at 1:30pm, as before, all that was effectively changing was the repeats were moving from 9am to the teatime slot.

    This presented a fresh problem. With around 300 episodes of the series already being shown, how would new viewers get up to speed on all things Ramsay Street?

    Cue Madge Mitchell. Well, Anne Charleston.

    To help wrap up the two years of plotlines the new audience had missed out on, Ramsay Street’s very own Madge made the trip to Television Centre to fill everyone in on what they’d missed. Meet the Neighbours only afforded Madge five minutes in the schedules to get everyone caught up, but had a pretty important place in it. 8:10pm on a Saturday night between Paul Daniels and Bergerac.

    From there, Neighbours quickly became a firm favourite for millions. Many millions. By the end of 1988, it was regularly posting ratings around the 18 million mark, effortlessly spending most weeks dominating BARB’s BBC1 top ten.

    BARB Ratings w/e 11/12/88 (Source: The Stage, 22/12/88)

    Meanwhile, programme stars Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan stood astride the world of pop.

    Source: 20% Off, Internet Archive

    To cap all of that, Neighbours would receive one of the highest accolades ever afforded a soap opera: the cast were invited to take part in the 1988 Royal Variety Performance. Does their skit start with someone saying “G’day”? You bloody bet it does.

    Here they all are. [photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    In a similar manner to how Play School remained superglued to the schedules during Party Conference season, Neighbours had become so ingrained in the BBC schedules that that the afternoon broadcast even interrupted Bank Holiday Grandstand. Take that, Texaco One-Day International from Lord’s!

    (They could have just delayed showing 1949 black-and-white film Madeleine on BBC2 and put Neighbours on there, but they didn’t. Because it’s Neighbours.)

    For the record, only a few occasions were deemed big enough to knock Neighbours out of its lunchtime showing and force everyone to come back at 5:35pm (or later if you’re in Northern Ireland, of course) – or even tune in early when it’s the evening repeat that’s gone AWOL:

    Fri 10 April 1992: Rolling afternoon coverage of the 1992 General Election, meaning viewers had to wait until teatime to see the episode where “Harold and Marge want to have their cake and eat it.”

    Fri 25 December 1992: The first of only two occasions where Neighbours was deemed big enough for BBC1’s Christmas Day schedule, but only for the lunchtime showing – the evening slot was taken up by Bruce Forsyth’s Christmas Generation Game.

    Mon 6 June 1994: Lunchtime broadcast shoved aside for D-Day Remembered, a live international event of commemoration. Hosted by President Mitterrand (presumably the event, rather than the programme).

    Mon 25 December 1995: Christmas Day again, and the last appearance of the programme on December 25th. Just in a 12:25 slot, with the early evening taken up by the premiere of Hook.

    Thurs 1 January 1998: Bit of a surprise here. It’s New Year’s Day, and again, Neighbours in only on at lunchtime due to the 5pm hour being dominated by From Grange Hill to Albert Square… and Beyond, a programme marking Grange Hill‘s 21st anniversary. Could Neighbours’ grip on the schedules be slipping? Up to that point, the first day of the year (when it fell on a weekday) was no obstacle to a double visit to Ramsay Street.

    Thurs 29 June 2000: Only room for an early afternoon showing here, with Wimbledon 2000 and a Euro 2000 semi-final taking up the bulk of the afternoon and evening.

    Thurs 20 June 2002: Royal Ascot tramples over the afternoon visit to Erinsborough.

    Wed 16 and Fri 18 June 2004: Euro 2004 matches take priority in the evenings, meaning just the daytime showing is broadcast. By this point, The Weakest Link was airing on BBC2, and was rapidly becoming the Beeb’s latest can’t-cancel offering.

    From this point on, the act of Not Showing Neighbours became a lot more commonplace on the BBC. World Cup on? Well, people can just watch the episode that’s on later for a few weeks. Bank Holiday? We’re not waiting an extra half-hour to show 102 Dalmatians at teatime.

    By this point, Neighbours was becoming much less of a draw for the British public. Ten years on from the viewing figures regularly topping 18 million, most episodes were being watched by less than half as many. And, tellingly, other BBC1 programmes were clambering above it in the viewing charts. Without going into a load of detail, here’s a chart showing how often Neighbours appeared in the BARB Top 30 programmes on BBC1 each week, from July 1998 (the earliest week where figures are online) to June 2005 (the last week Neighbours would appear in that Top 30).

    There’s no denying that the programme became much less present in these figures from 2002 onwards, after which it practically disappears from view. While that’s partly down to a change in the way figures were listed (viewer numbers were only counted for individual broadcasts from Jan 2002 onwards, rather than aggregate figures for all broadcasts of an episode), that did little to dampen figures for BBC1 stablemate EastEnders, and more important, those viewing figures were already falling. Even with afternoon and evening figures combined, the daily totals were falling, down to around a combined 5 million per day by 2007, and a number that would only sneak into the bottom rung of the chart were aggregate totals still allowed.

    And that makes what else happened in 2007 a bit of a shock for the BBC. FremantleMedia, the company then under the conglomerate RTL umbrella responsible for distributing the programme, was set to renegotiate the Beeb’s contract for the series. With ratings slipping, surely they’d ask for a freeze in the sum involved, at most? Instead, they (reportedly) tripled the asking price: a grand sum of £300m for the next eight years of Neighbours. BBC1 controller Peter Fincham went public about the asking price, and declared that Neighbours would be leaving the BBC the following spring. Who would step up to take on the series? The then RTL-owned Channel Five, where it would ultimately stay for the remainder of its time as a broadcast TV programme in the UK.

    [Photo courtesy Paul R Jackson]

    And so, that was the end of Neighbours on the BBC. It was the channel where the nation – or at least fifteen million-ish inhabitants of it – fell in love with the series. Those who were glued to the series at the time will have their own collection of favourite moments, but here’s my Personal Top 15 Neighbours Moments of All Time. Why not post some of your own in the comments?

    15: Seeing someone off Prisoner Cell Block H appear in Neighbours. Of course, it all depends on where your own ITV region was up to in the series. (“It’s Chook!” when Susan Kennedy ( Jackie Woodburne) made her debut)
    14: Gayle and Gillian Blakeney (aka the Alessi Twins) appearing in a Pop Will Eat Itself video.
    13: Lou Carpenter’s (Tom Oliver) feud with Harold Bishop (Ian Smith)
    12: Josh (Jeremy Angerson) tries to win the heart of Beth Brennan (Natalie Imbruglia) by buying her… a copy of military flight simulator F29 Retaliator as she’s ‘into computers’
    11: Julie Martin (Julie Mullins) getting killed off. Harsh, but a nation’s common rooms rejoiced.
    10: The many regenerations of Lucy Robinson (Kylie Flinker, Sasha Close, Melissa Bell)
    9: The times companies paid for product placement in the series knowing their product would eventually reach 15 million viewers on BBC1. Made sense when it was Ocean Software (see 12), not so much when it was Craftmatic Adjustable Beds.
    8: The various wizard wheezes of Rick Alessi (Dan Falzan)
    7: Seeing someone off Neighbours in Prisoner Cell Block H, normally Harold Bishop (Ian Smith)
    6: Finally getting to see Mr Udagawa (Lawrence Mah)
    5: The haphazardly-exorcised-on-the-BBC incest storyline
    4: Bogan-turned-treasure Joe Mangel (Mark Little) plants marijuana in Mrs Chubb’s (Irene Inescort) garden for a laugh
    3: Mrs Mangel’s (Vivean Gray) portrait
    2: Chris Lowe (playing himself) roaring into Ramsay Street
    1: Bouncer’s dream

    WE GOT THERE. Wahey! I’ll be back soon with some post-match analysis – wondering what the chart would look like if I only included primetime broadcasts? And lots more exciting mini-lists? – but for now I need a rest. Cheerio!

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  • The 100 Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes Of All Time: Pre-Reveal Recap

    The 100 Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes Of All Time: Pre-Reveal Recap

    Firstly, Merry Christmas!

    We’re nearly there, and things are very tight between the top two. How tight? Well, so damn close I’ve actually felt compelled to carry out a full recount of their respective broadcast totals, as there are just seven broadcasts between them. One programme was shown 10,575 times, the other 10,582 times. So, I’ll be revealing all very soon. So to speak.

    Until then, here’s a rundown of that hundred in near-full. Some of the totals are revised, as I’d uncovered some additional broadcasts of a few other programmes while verifying the totals of shows near the top of the list. So: the following is – as far as I’m concerned for the time being – the ultimate broadcast totals for everything we’ve covered so far.

    Strap in!

    100: Saturday Kitchen (Shown 891 times, 2001-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2006-2021), BBC2 (2001-2021)

    99: Final Score (Shown 896 times, 1971-2021)
    Sport, BBC1 (1971-2021), BBC2 (2003-2021)

    98: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Shown 917 times, 2008-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2008-2017), BBC2 (2008-2021)

    97: Z Cars (Shown 920 times, 1962-1998)
    Drama, BBC Television Service (1962-1964), BBC1 (1964-1982), BBC2 (1976-1998)

    =95: Five to Eleven (Shown 934 times, 1986-1990)
    Other, BBC1 (1986-1990)

    =95: Sportsnight (Shown 934 times, 1968-1997)
    Sport, BBC1 (1968-1997), BBC2 (1995-1997)

    94: Fimbles (Shown 937 times, 2002-2010)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (2002-2005), BBC2 (2002-2010)

    93: Rugby Special (Shown 976 times, 1966-2005)
    Sport, BBC2 (1966-2005)

    92: For the Children (Shown 982 times, 1937-1952)
    Children’s Programme, BBC Television Service (1937-1952)

    =90: Postman Pat (Shown 1006 times, 1981-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1981-2005), BBC2 (1983-2012)

    =90: Strictly – It Takes Two (Shown 1006 times, 2004-2021)
    Other, BBC1 (2019-2019), BBC2 (2004-2021)

    =87: Nai Zindagi – Naya Jeevan (Shown 1010 times, 1968-1982)
    Other, BBC1 (1968-1982), BBC2 (1975-1977)

    =87: QI (Shown 1010 times, 2003-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (2009-2011), BBC2 (2003-2021)

    =87: The Simpsons (Shown 1010 times, 1996-2004)
    Comedy, BBC1 (1996-1997), BBC2 (1996-2004)

    86: ChuckleVision (Shown 1056 times, 1987-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1987-2012), BBC2 (1990-2010)

    85: Murder, She Wrote (Shown 1065 times, 2002-2011)
    Drama, BBC1 (2002-2010), BBC2 (2002-2011)

    84: Dad’s Army (Shown 1066 times, 1968-2021)
    Comedy, BBC1 (1968-2020), BBC2 (1982-2021)

    83: The Magic Roundabout (Shown 1070 times, 1965-1985)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1965-1985), BBC2 (1972-1984)

    82: Laurel and Hardy (Shown 1084 times, 1948-2005)
    Comedy, BBC Television Service (1948-1963), BBC1 (1964-1992), BBC2 (1964-2005)

    81: In the Night Garden (Shown 1106 times, 2007-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC2 (2007-2012)

    80: The Phil Silvers Show (Shown 1107 times, 1957-2004)
    Comedy, BBC Television Service (1957-1962), BBC1 (1966-1984), BBC2 (1984-2004)

    79: Doctor Who (Shown 1138 times, 1963-2021)
    Drama, BBC Television Service (1963-1964), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1981-2021)

    78: Watchdog (Shown 1141 times, 1985-2019)
    Factual, BBC1 (1985-2019), BBC2 (1989-2015)

    77: Wogan (Shown 1142 times, 1982-2010)
    Talk Show, BBC1 (1982-1993), BBC2 (2010-2010)

    76: University Challenge (Shown 1167 times, 1994-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC2 (1994-2021)

    75: Great British Menu (Shown 1184 times, 2006-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2006-2012), BBC2 (2006-2021)

    74: Tom and Jerry (Shown 1194 times, 1967-2003)
    Comedy, BBC1 (1967-2003), BBC2 (1980-1999)

    73: The Sky at Night (Shown 1201 times, 1957-2013)
    Factual, BBC Television Service (1957-1964), BBC1 (1964-2013), BBC2 (1978-2013)

    72: Call My Bluff (Shown 1218 times, 1965-2005)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (1996-2005), BBC2 (1965-2004)

    71: Mastermind (Shown 1265 times, 1972-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (1972-1997), BBC2 (1990-2021)

    70: Grange Hill (Shown 1269 times, 1978-2008)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1978-2008), BBC2 (1979-2008)

    69: Athletics (Shown 1295 times, 1946-2021)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1946-1963), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1966-2021)

    68: To Buy or Not to Buy (Shown 1313 times, 2003-2012)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2003-2011), BBC2 (2010-2012)

    67: Casualty (Shown 1336 times, 1986-2021)
    Drama, BBC1 (1986-2021)

    66: Top Gear (Shown 1394 times, 1978-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (1981-2021), BBC2 (1978-2021)

    65: Pingu (Shown 1404 times, 1990-2013)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1990-2005), BBC2 (1992-2013)

    =63: Antiques Road Trip (Shown 1449 times, 2010-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2011-2021), BBC2 (2010-2021)

    =63: Natural World (Shown 1449 times, 1983-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (1983-2013), BBC2 (1983-2021)

    62: Diagnosis Murder (Shown 1472 times, 1993-2011)
    Drama, BBC1 (1993-2010), BBC2 (2000-2011)

    61: Farming (Shown 1488 times, 1957-1988)
    Factual, BBC Television Service (1957-1964), BBC1 (1964-1988)

    60: Tomorrow’s World (Shown 1510 times, 1965-2003)
    Factual, BBC1 (1965-2003), BBC2 (1986-1988)

    59: The Money Programme (Shown 1515 times, 1966-2011)
    Factual, BBC1 (1974-2011), BBC2 (1966-2010)

    58: Scooby-Doo (Shown 1522 times, 1970-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1970-2012), BBC2 (1972-2012)

    57: Westminster (Shown 1567 times, 1970-2001)
    Factual, BBC1 (1996-1999), BBC2 (1970-2001)

    56: Have I Got News for You (Shown 1577 times, 1990-2021)
    Comedy, BBC1 (2000-2021), BBC2 (1990-2021)

    55: Animal Park (Shown 1638 times, 2000-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (2000-2021), BBC2 (2001-2021)

    54: Coast (Shown 1644 times, 2005-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (2005-2012), BBC2 (2005-2021)

    53: Twenty-Four Hours / 24 Hours (Shown 1684 times, 1965-1972)
    Factual, BBC1 (1965-1972)

    52: Holby City (Shown 1700 times, 1999-2021)
    Soap, BBC1 (1999-2021), BBC2 (2012-2021)

    51: Breakfast Time (Shown 1727 times, 1983-1989)
    Other, BBC1 (1983-1989)

    50: Racing (Shown 1741 times, 1946-2012)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1946-1964), BBC1 (1964-2012), BBC2 (1964-2012)

    49: Points of View (Shown 1753 times, 1961-2021)
    Other, BBC Television Service (1961-1964), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (2005-2021)

    48: Antiques Roadshow (Shown 1762 times, 1979-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (1979-2021), BBC2 (1981-2021)

    47: Arthur (Shown 1777 times, 1997-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1997-2009), BBC2 (2001-2012)

    46: Film [xx] (The Film Programme) (Shown 1873 times, 1971-2018)
    Other, BBC1 (1971-2018), BBC2 (1984-2015)

    45: Question Time (Shown 1910 times, 1979-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (1979-2021), BBC2 (2013-2021)

    44: A Question of Sport (Shown 1932 times, 1970-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (1970-2021), BBC2 (1991-2013)

    43: Late Night Line-Up (Shown 1992 times, 1964-1989)
    Talk Show, BBC2 (1964-1989)

    42: See Hear! (Shown 2013 times, 1981-2021)
    Other, BBC1 (1981-2012), BBC2 (1986-2021)

    41: Town and Around (Shown 2044 times, 1960-1969)
    Factual, BBC Television Service (1960-1964), BBC1 (1964-1969)

    40: Horizon (Shown 2138 times, 1964-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (1973-2012), BBC2 (1964-2021)

    39: Cash in the Attic (Shown 2231 times, 2002-2017)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2002-2012), BBC2 (2006-2017)

    38: Wimbledon (Shown 2304 times, 1937-2021)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1937-1963), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1964-2021)

    37: Tweenies (Shown 2446 times, 1999-2012)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1999-2004), BBC2 (1999-2012)

    36: Golf (Shown 2488 times, 1938-2021)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1938-1963), BBC1 (1964-2019), BBC2 (1965-2021)

    35: You and Me (Shown 2555 times, 1974-1995)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1974-1994), BBC2 (1977-1995)

    34: Tonight (Shown 2582 times, 1957-1992)
    Factual, BBC Television Service (1957-1964), BBC1 (1964-1982), BBC2 (1992-1992)

    33: Ready Steady Cook (Shown 2633 times, 1994-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (1996-2021), BBC2 (1994-2021)

    32: Pointless (Shown 2656 times, 2009-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (2011-2021), BBC2 (2009-2021)

    31: Top of the Pops (Shown 2723 times, 1964-2021)
    Other, BBC Television Service (1964-1964), BBC1 (1964-2020), BBC2 (1991-2021)

    30: Gardeners’ World (Shown 2732 times, 1968-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (1973-2009), BBC2 (1968-2021)

    29: The Daily Politics (Shown 2793 times, 2003-2018)
    Factual, BBC1 (2016-2016), BBC2 (2003-2018)

    28: CountryFile (Shown 2795 times, 1988-2021)
    Factual, BBC1 (1988-2021), BBC2 (1988-2021)

    27: Party Political Broadcast (etc) (Shown 2804 times, 1950-2021)
    Other, BBC Television Service (1950-1964), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1964-2019)

    26: The Weakest Link (Shown 2918 times, 2000-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (2000-2021), BBC2 (2000-2013)

    25: Nationwide (Shown 2930 times, 1969-1983)
    Factual, BBC1 (1969-1983), BBC2 (1980-1980)

    24: Teletubbies (Shown 2977 times, 1997-2009)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1997-2004), BBC2 (1997-2009)

    23: Kilroy (Shown 3006 times, 1986-2004)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (1986-2004), BBC2 (1999-2001)

    22: Eggheads (Shown 3049 times, 2003-2021)
    Quiz/Panel Show, BBC1 (2003-2004), BBC2 (2004-2021)

    21: Pebble Mill (Shown 3137 times, 1972-2004)
    Talk Show, BBC1 (1972-2004), BBC2 (1976-1986)

    20: Working Lunch (Shown 3296 times, 1994-2010)
    Factual, BBC2 (1994-2010)

    19: Panorama (Shown 3346 times, 1953-2021)
    Factual, BBC Television Service (1953-1964), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (2005-2021)

    18: The ONE Show (Shown 3400 times, 2006-2021)
    Talk Show, BBC1 (2006-2021), BBC2 (2011-2021)

    17: Songs of Praise (Shown 3428 times, 1961-2021)
    Other, BBC Television Service (1961-1964), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1983-2021)

    16: Playdays (Shown 3925 times, 1988-2002)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1988-2001), BBC2 (1989-2002)

    15: Match of the Day (Shown 4052 times, 1964-2021)
    Sport, BBC1 (1966-2021), BBC2 (1964-2020)

    14: Doctors (Shown 4081 times, 2000-2021)
    Soap, BBC1 (2000-2021), BBC2 (2015-2020)

    13: Escape to the Country (Shown 4365 times, 2002-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2004-2021), BBC2 (2002-2021)

    12: Snooker (Shown 4487 times, 1937-2021)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1937-1958), BBC1 (1978-2021), BBC2 (1977-2021)

    11: Grandstand (Shown 4500 times, 1958-2007)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1958-1964), BBC1 (1964-2007), BBC2 (1968-2007)

    10: Flog It! (Shown 4531 times, 2002-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2008-2020), BBC2 (2002-2021)

    9: Jackanory (Shown 4701 times, 1965-2009)
    Children’s Programme, BBC1 (1965-2008), BBC2 (1971-2009)

    8: Homes under the Hammer (Shown 5164 times, 2003-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2003-2021), BBC2 (2004-2021)

    7: Bargain Hunt (Shown 5836 times, 2000-2021)
    Lifestyle, BBC1 (2000-2021), BBC2 (2000-2021)

    6: Blue Peter (Shown 5967 times, 1958-2021)
    Children’s Programme, BBC Television Service (1958-1964), BBC1 (1964-2012), BBC2 (1974-2021)

    5: Cricket (Shown 6250 times, 1938-2021)
    Sport, BBC Television Service (1938-1963), BBC1 (1964-2021), BBC2 (1964-2021)

    4: Pages from Ceefax (Shown 6494 times, 1983-2000)
    Other, BBC1 (1983-1993), BBC2 (1984-2000)

    3: EastEnders (Shown 7902 times, 1985-2021)
    Soap, BBC1 (1985-2021), BBC2 (1995-2021)

    2: TBC (Shown 10,575 times, TBC-TBC)

    1: TBC (Shown 10,582 times, TBC-TBC)

    “That wasn’t much of an update!”

    Bit rude. Just spent a long time putting each programme into a genre classification you can disagree with AND adding channel broadcast summaries. Tsk. BACK SOON.

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  • “He Might be Slightly Dodgy, But a Gooner He Ain’t” – The 3rd Most-Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    “He Might be Slightly Dodgy, But a Gooner He Ain’t” – The 3rd Most-Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    Bronze medal time! But first, here’s something that you may well float your retro TV boat if you’re enjoying this rundown.

    Unstoppable word machine Ben Baker’s latest book – The Dreams We Had As Children – is out now, and it’s a bit of a cracker for anyone who grew up (or old) with a fondness for Children’s ITV. With the light channel’s nostalgia engine yanked out of a clapped out Cortina compared to the Beeb’s well-oiled retro roadsters, it’s not a broadcaster that makes much of its archive, so it’s left up to others to pick up the slack. And that’s just what Ben has done here, looking at forty key programmes from CITV’s forty years on air, from Danger Mouse to Dave Spud, and pretty much every point of interest in between. Plus, lots of other fun gubbins relating to those key CITV years.

    If, like me, you’re cursed with a mental grasp of the past that requires constant research to confirm that, no, Gilbert’s Fridge actually was a thing that somehow got made and broadcast (something the Children’s BBC would never have dared do), this book doubles at an essential comfort blanket for the brain. And that’s as well as being a thoroughly entertaining read in its own right. Hurrah! If that sounds like something you’d like, go treat yourself. Go on, it’s Christmas.

    Okay, on with the list, and a visit to those…

    3: EastEnders

    (Shown 7902 times, 1985-2021)

    Once upon a time, there was a new soap op… sorry, ‘continuing drama series’. Well, ITV’s Coronation Street was huge and Crossroads also had an loyal audience, so it was decided that formula could easily be copied elsewhere. Corrie was about life in the north of England, Crossroads covered the Midlands, so how about setting it in the south of England? Where some of the main characters run market stalls, that should get them all interacting with each other, rather than just sat inside all day. And, as luck would have it, there’s enough spare space at Elstree to build a great big outdoor set for it.

    And so, it launched to no small amount of fanfare. And, despite many in the national press getting a bit sniffy about it, it was a hit with the public. Indeed, before long it was top of the TV ratings, and one of the biggest hits of the decade. Before much longer, the scripts were getting tightened up, the more popular characters were being given more airtime, and finally the critics started to applaud the series. It seems like it could do no wrong.

    Within two years it was gone from our screens, never to be seen again.

    That programme was, of course, ATV’s Market in Honey Lane.

    Market in Honey Lane came about after script editor Louis Marks was intrigued by his wife Sonia’s tales of goings on while shopping at London’s Berwick Street market, and set about putting together an idea for a drama series. The idea was pitched to ITV franchise ATV, who picked up the series in 1963 with an aim to use it for the surely-soon-to-launch ITV-2. After the second commercial channel failed to materialise, the idea sat on the shelf for a spell. A few years later production was finally set into motion.

    The premise was even grittier than its grimy Manchester stablemate, with the £15,000 set including a betting shop, a strip club and an erotic book shop. That approach backfired somewhat before the first episode had even aired, when thieves broke into the set and stole stock from the “book shop” including titles such as “Fanny Hill”, “Variations in Sexual Behaviour” and “How to Make Love in Five Languages”. There’s a sentence that’ll help the site’s SEO, I’m sure.

    ATV’s marketing department sent out the lofty claim that “you can learn more about life by standing in Honey Lane and breathing deeply for five minutes than by travelling around the world”, and waited for everyone to tune in.

    Following the debut episode on Monday 3 April 1967, critics weren’t impressed. Writing in the Daily Mirror, TV critic Kenneth Eastaugh decried the opening episode as “even more banal than Crossroads”, dismissing the production as “turned out by folk who have never seen a production more ambitious than a church bazaar”. Readers weren’t much kinder – the Sunday Mirror’s “Be a TV Critic” letters page seeing it described as “The worst programme I’ve ever watched” (Mrs B A Spurr, Langford) and “A real flop, this one” (W Bucknall, Gravesend).

    It wasn’t long before the programme improved – just six weeks after the poorly-reviewed debut, the Daily Mirror’s Michael Hellicar declared that Honey Lane was the highlight of each Monday night’s schedules, noting that “no longer are there a dozen or more characters all trying to be the star of the show”, but instead focused on “strong personalities to override the mountain of trivia which pours forth”. A lot of this was down to the introduction of Australian scriptwriter Raymond Bowers, recently lauded for his work on The Power Game, and new character Bluey Trustcott, played by fellow Aussie Kenneth J Warren.

    By March 1968, the initial run of the series came to an end, but Lew Grade promised it would be back after a short rest, the single hour-long episode per week set to become two half-hour episodes each week, providing more room for plotlines and fleshing out the characters. The new-style production again suffered a pre-broadcast incident that perhaps should’ve served as a warning. While the original run had been hit by a mucky book theft, the comeback series saw a much more serious incident in September 1968. A scripted explosion at the Boreham Wood set proved to have a bit more bang than expected, the blast ripping through the studio set and sending thirty members of the cast and crew running for cover.

    On returning to the screens in September 1968, the rechristened Honey Lane found itself without a suitable home. While some ITV regions scheduled the new series in the peak teatime slot of 6.30pm, Londoners hoping to catch the series would need to tune in at the less-than-peak time of 4.10pm, with new London franchise holders Thames preferring to show films or episodes of The Flying Nun in that half-six slot. For whatever reason, Thames just didn’t seem to feel it deserved an evening audience – while most ITV regions broadcast episodes of Honey Lane on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day 1968, Thames left it wrapped up under the tree. Possibly buried several feet under it.

    In early 1969, other ITV franchises had shifted Honey Lane to earlier slots around 4.30pm, putting it up against Play School and Jackanory on BBC-1. By now, Thames had shunted the programme into a post 11pm slot, and it didn’t take too long before other ITV regions followed suit. By March 1969, the programme had disappeared from screens entirely. Even if viewers were initially receptive to the idea of a London-set soap, it looked like it was an idea that didn’t have legs.

    Of course, Honey Lane had initially been a success – heck, it was the fifteenth most-watched programme of the entire decade. So, if someone could pull off that trick without messing it up, maaaaybe it could work?

    Source: “I am sure I speak for many others…” – Unpublished Letters to the BBC, Colin Shindler, Penguin Books, 2017)

    Whip-pan to the early 1980s, and BBC1’s weeknight schedule was in a bit of a rut. ITV were regularly pulling in viewers for Coronation Street, Crossroads and (since it moved to primetime in 1977) Emmerdale Farm, while BBC-1 found itself throwing a bunch of things at the 7pm wall hoping enough people might tune in for Ask the Family, Medical Express, Taxi or The Rockford Files to keep coming back.

    Sure, some programmes in those weeknight early evening slots were reliable eyeball-grabbers such as Top of the Pops, A Question of Sport and Doctor Who, but they were only ever going to go out once per week. You’re not about to get the pop kids flocking to Middle of the Pops: This Week’s Numbers 41-75 each Tuesday. Simple solution: just do some of those soaps that ITV are doing! Problem: the programme you’ve come up with is Triangle (in joint 1484th place on the most-broadcast list with 78 showings, alongside Young Musician of the Year, Merlin and The Royal International Horse Show, if you’re wondering). Oh, if only the Beeb could find another long-running drama like The Newcomers or Z-Cars.

    Step forward former Newcomers director Julia Smith and Z-Cars script editor Tony Holland.

    The closest thing BBC1 had to rival ITV’s big guns was hospital drama Angels, which started in 1975, and had been running twice-weekly since September 1979. It wasn’t a bona-fide soap – it initially ran in limited series of fifty-minute episodes before moving to longer runs of 2 x 25 minute episodes each week. And – unlike Honey Lane – it didn’t immediately get dumped into hard-to-find schedule nooks.

    Angels came to an end in 1983, but maybe script editor Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith had something else up their sleeves. Something original. Something that hadn’t been tried before.

    Hey, how about something set in London, where several major characters ran market stalls, and which could use a standing set in spare space currently available in Elstree? Would that be a hit? Or would the mid-80s see another much-promoted serial drama series kicked to the kerb before its time?

    The seeds had been sown in March 1983. Julia Smith and Tony Holland, by then working on Nerys Hughes medical cyclist drama The District Nurse, were invited to London to meet with David Reid, the BBC’s Head of Series and Serials. Beeb bigwigs had decided it was time to have another bash at a proper bi-weekly serial. It was more than a little overdue, the genre being missing from the BBC since The Doctors came to a close in 1971. And, their stock being high at the time, it was hoped that Smith and Holland were just the people to devise it.

    It was a canny choice. Both Smith and Holland had been involved in TV drama since the genre was broadcast live by default, so they were well positioned to helm a serial that needed a conveyor belt of content. They were seen as reliable, their programmes delivered on time and within budget, and they’d just been involved with a series that came close to what the BBC now wanted. If everything went well, maybe their new series could even be as big a deal as Angels.

    Of course, with any new programme set to run every single week of every single year, any ideas had to have legs as sturdy as Roberto Carlos and kick twice as hard. Even in its twice-weekly serial format, Angels hadn’t put out more than 33 episodes per calendar year. Their new serial would need to pump out more than a hundred. Plus, it would need a cast and crew capable of coping with such a workload.

    With episodes of The District Nurse still needing to be completed, Tony Holland went back to Wales to continue writing for that series, while Julia Smith set about exploring how the new project could actually work. The hottest new property on the box at the time was Channel Four’s Brookside, which was shot entirely on location in a bespoke locale. But that was fine for a young upstart channel like Four – would a mainly studio-based approach, like Coronation Street at the time, be the safer option? Or… something in between?

    A tour of the BBC regions ensued, to scope out sufficient space for both studio and outside broadcast space. Not only would both of these be needed in spades, but sufficient studio time would also be needed, along with rehearsal rooms, crew facilities, and suitable nearby accommodation for any travelling staff and artists. And could such decisions really be made when it hadn’t yet been decided what the damn thing was going to be about?

    Then, fate intervened.

    The Stage/Television Today, 23 June 1983.

    Over on ITV, the ATV franchise had just finished regenerating into Central, which was preparing to move into a new £21m studio complex near Nottingham. That meant the old ATV studios in Elstree in Hertfordshire were to be left doing nothing. Step forward BBC Director of Resources Michael Checkland, who sought to snap up the site for a third of the price Central were paying for their new facility. And quite a bargain it was – only 14 miles from That London, offering four large studios, loads of office space and plenty of room for facilities.

    The first BBC production assigned to the new studio space: the new twice-weekly drama serial planned for BBC1. There would be no need to share space with other productions – the new programme could have sets kept permanently in place. One slight issue: there was a reason Central were so keen to leave it behind. Smith and Holland’s book on the birth of ‘Stenders refers to the scene as “like a crumbling fairground at the end of a deserted pier”.

    Still, it wasn’t all bad. Several ideas for the new serial had been whittled down to just two. Such was the secrecy behind them, producer (Smith) was forbidden from sharing details of the two pilot scripts with her script editor (Holland), despite them both sharing a Cardiff flat while working on The District Nurse. As a result, she’d had to read through them in secret in bed, then hide them before breakfast each morning.

    One of the ideas focused on a shopping arcade. Given the expensive technical considerations involved, that idea was rejected (though I personally like to think the ghost of Market on Honey Lane visited Julia Smith in a dream and told her not to risk it). The other idea… didn’t seem quite right either. A second writer was commissioned to prepare a different version of the script. And still, she was forbidden by bosses from sharing any details with her script editor and long-time collaborator.

    They should have set it at the Normid Superstore in Bolton, and incorporated it with a prototype of Sky One’s Dream Team.

    Something had to give. And eventually, it did. After Tony Holland confronted Julia Smith about the curious radio silence over their huge new serial drama project, Smith insisted that she be allowed to share details with her script editor. The nod finally arriving from Them Upstairs, Smith finally shared the pilot script with Holland. His reaction: “Well, I’m not doing THAT.” Her reaction: “Good. Neither am I.”

    The second idea, as it turned out, had been about a caravan park. It was an idea that hadn’t been done before, certainly. It had interesting elements, yes. But where would it go? 104 episodes each year of characters chatting outside the toilet block? Even in winter? That wasn’t going to work. Oh dear.

    Then, the fickle finger of Lady Fate flicked the department head responsible for picking those two scripts out of a window (i.e. David Reid moved to a role outside the Series and Serials Department), and in came Jonathan Powell, producer of such fine fare as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley’s People and The Barchester Chronicles. The new serial would be his first major production. But, he was very much a BBC2 type, his dramas regularly hoovering up awards and broadsheet column inches. What would he be looking for from a primetime BBC1 series?

    As luck would have it, he was looking for pretty much the same thing that Smith and Holland had decided upon. Something based on contemporary working class London. But first, motions had to be gone through to ditch the caravan park idea. An exploratory visit to a caravan park ensured, and all those suspicions of unsuitability were underlined. No meeting places. Barely anyone under retirement age outside of school holiday weeks. And, in each homestead, rooms too tiny to carry out any convincing filming. All cons, no pro. One memo to Jonathan Powell later, the caravan park idea was toast.

    So, on to the new idea. Smith and Holland dived into research about the East End of London, went on field trips and carried out conversations with locals of all ages. While much of the East End had started to undergo gentrification – pubs becoming cocktail bars, Citroen 2CVs parked outside stripped pine doors – their research eventually uncovered enough of the area they were looking for. Proper pubs, street markets, fly posters and residents who’d known each other for generations. But something they’d not expected was also happening – the traditional (or rather stereotypical) East End faces were joined by West Indian, Greek and Turkish Cypriot, Chinese and Indian faces. Yet the sense of community they’d known from their formative years was undimmed. No matter where someone had come from, if they lived in the East End, they were unshakeably ‘one of us’.

    A pitch was quickly put together. Very quickly. The duo had returned to TV Centre at 6.15pm on 1 February 1984 only to discover – belatedly, due to the pair being on location and the limitations of 1980s communication technology – that Jonathan Powell was expecting a completed pitch to share with the Controller of BBC1 Alan Hart at 7pm that very evening. Eep.

    Forty-five minutes of frenzied typing later, an outline was in place, or at the very least, on a sheet of A4.

    The new serial would be in the instantly recognisable East End of London. It would feature a mix of multi-racial, larger-than-life characters. It would explore 1980s life in a disadvantaged corner of a privileged city, but where adversity can’t shake the residents solidarity. The location: a run-down Victorian Square. Some of the homes are privately-owned, some are council-owned, and many of them contain several generations of family under the same roof. There’s a pub, a launderette and a caff and a rigid sense of community spirit that won’t be rattled by whatever life throws at the residents.

    While us people of Space Year 2023 know differently, Smith and Holland were downbeat about the reaction to their pitch. They’d been given almost a year to put this particular piece of homework together, and due to a series of missed messages, the impression was now being given they’d just scribbled something down on the school bus. Powell’s initial reaction on seeing the pitch hadn’t seemed especially positive, after all. Maybe they should have given the caravan park or shopping arcade ideas a little bit more credence. Or just tried to buy the rights to Honey Lane.

    The following morning, Tony Holland re-typed the series pitch with some changes suggested by Jonathan Powell, to be delivered to his office at noon. But it seemed too little too late. Smith and Holland travelled to Shepherd’s Bush to deliver the revised pitch. It didn’t take long for Powell to get back to them with a decision. Usually, a decision on such a high-profile programme would take weeks, if not months to arrive from the sixth floor bigwigs of TVC. The decision on the new serial had taken just thirty minutes. Gulp.

    “OK, team. You’re on!”

    Well, better start getting the rest of the programme together then.

    Famously, it was quite a while before the name of the programme was finalised. Much like how Monty Python’s Flying Circus could’ve ended up as Owl Stretching Time, ‘stEnders could just as easily ended up as E8, Square Dance, Round the Square or London Pride. But which to pick? All the possibilities were voted on, and a winner was chosen: East 8. Hang on, what?

    The Stage/Television Today, Thursday 18 October 1984

    A start date was in place for the series, too: January 1985, all part of a completely revamped BBC1 evening line-up. This didn’t go down well with the showrunners – to attract an audience, a new series really needed to debut as cold autumnal evenings started to keep people indoors, not in the middle of winter when people had settled on an evening TV routine. But at least that bought them some extra time. Not least to wrestle with the bureaucracy that was a large part of 1980s broadcasting, with planners, heads of departments and unions all wanting a say in how the new production was being run. Plus, the BBC purse-holders had decreed East 8 shouldn’t cost any more per episode than hospital-set Angels.

    Thanks to the work of magnificently-named production associate Christopher d’Oyly John, solutions were found to operate within the BBC’s budget. Solutions were found for other stakeholder concerns, and a plan was put in place to successfully generate a full 2 x 29m30s of BBC-standard drama content every single week.

    The next problem to solve was – where to use for the key outdoor set? In theory, the cheapest option was to find a suitable location in the East End of London. The buildings are already there, after all. Plus, what could be more authentic? However, that approach came with a number of issues. London isn’t exactly known for being blessed with oodles of accessible parking space for TV trucks, catering facilities and technical equipment. The travel time needed to get everyone to and from Elstree for location filming would gobble up chunks of valuable production time, and on top of everything else, the team just hadn’t been able to find any suitable real-life location for the series. The most likely contender – Fassett Square in Hackney – happened to have a huge hospital right down one side of it, and for a series trying to avoid comparison with Angels, it’d be a bit weird having characters standing in the shadow of a hospital they never mentioned.

    On the other hand, the Elstree studios itself had a lot of empty space. Including a great big vacant lot right behind the studio buildings. Last used for the first series of Central’s Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, the lot appropriately resembled an abandoned building site. But it also looked a hell of a lot like a solution. An bespoke external set could be built, the studio facilities were just a short walk away, and everything could now be controlled by the production team. Even the presence of a tower block in the distance just added more context to the surroundings.

    The patch of Elstree wasteland that would become Albert Square, circa early 1984 (source: EastEnders – The Inside Story)

    Of course, there’s little point in constructing to most marvellous outside set for your programme if you’ve forgotten to add any characters or stories to it (well, unless it’s a particularly high-falutin’ BBC2 series about architecture), and so Julia Smith and Tony Holland swapped the unfolding logistical chaos of southern England for the northern Canaries, decamping to Lanzarote to try and come up with some characters and stories. Not the sunniest of places in March 1984, but far enough away from other distractions to finally focus on scripting, as evidenced by the bulk of their luggage being a typewriter and reams of paper. Their itinerary included the creation of 23 characters for the series, at least twenty storylines and a rough outline for the first few years of events in the Square.

    Using Tony Holland’s family history as a template, two large multi-generational families would become the initial focus of the series: the Beales and the Fowlers. Inspiration for others was taken from their reconnaissance missions to the East End – an elderly widow with a personality as colourful as her make-up, always seen with her little be-ribboned dog in tow, an avuncular middle-aged Jewish doctor who residents turned to in times of need, a young single mother from an Irish Catholic background struggling to care for her newborn. Each new character was given layer upon layer of background, personality and a name.

    Perhaps the most interesting of the new characters were Jack and Pearl Watts, landlord and -lady of the square’s pub, along with their teenage adopted daughter Tracey. Their marriage is little more than a performance put on for the regulars, the flat above the pub is the venue for the real story of their marriage – unease, duplicity and dishonesty. Jack’s a local lad made good, at least compared to his contemporaries, and runs a tight ship at the pub. He commands respect. However, Pearl’s one of the select few willing to give as good as she gets when it comes to Jack. As for Tracey, her home life is far from happy, the only real positive attention from her adopted parents coming when one of them is showering her with attention to score points over the other.

    The cast of characters complete, not just a collection of personality types, but a rich interconnected community, whose lives in some cases first intertwined decades before being dreamt up. There were tweaks to be made at a later stage – Jack, Pearl and Tracey would became Den, Angie and Sharon, for example – but each potted biography led Smith and Holland towards storylines for each family, both short- and long-term.

    Being able to plan several months, even years ahead even gave the co-creators space to cannily schedule key twists for parts of the year when viewing figures are likely to be higher. The plan, in short, was all coming together. By the end of their trip to the Canary Islands, Smith and Holland had loosely mapped out the first three years of key events within the Square, their initial hurried draft now fleshed out to 30,000 words of detail.

    Pondering the incoming series several months later in October 1984, a piece in The Stage queried which of the two approaches for a modern serial drama could choose from. The first method is to try and reflect a range of diversity of opinion on social, political or personal issues, with the ultimate effect of getting such views into more homes than any current affairs programme could dream of. The second – avoid issues, offer some warm, comforting entertainment, offering a break from the social affairs and acting an electronic Horlicks to the audience. In short: Brookside, or Crossroads. It wasn’t hard to guess which side of the coin would be facing up when the new series finally flickered into life.

    How soon to make that clear to the audience? Well, no point hanging about, or engineering an exposition-heavy argument at the pub to kickstart the first episode. Go with a bang. Or a boot.

    “East 8 starts with a bang, as a size ten boot kicks down a door that’s locked from the inside. The tiny, dirty and foul-smelling council-flat behind the battered door belongs to Reg Cox (known locally as “the-old-boy”, and a cantankerous bastard at the best of times) who hasn’t been seen around the square for days… Once the door’s down, three men rush into the gloomy main-room: Dan, the publican, Arthur and Ali, the Turkish Cypriot – still in his pyjamas or dressing gown. They find the old boy sitting in his favourite armchair beside the gas-fire (which isn’t on) – and he’s very nearly dead.”

    Storyline for Episode One, Scene One – EastEnders: The Inside Story, Julia Smith and Tony Holland

    As preparations continued, May 1984 brought an unlikely invitation from the ‘rival’ camp – Coronation Street’s Bill Podmore invited Julia Smith over to Manchester to visit the cobbled set of Granada’s long-running serial. Plus, hey, while you’re here, come and see the set of the new twice-weekly drama that we’re developing. It’s set in a market! Hang on, what? Yep, wary of East 8’s tanks on the lawns of Wetherfield, Granada were planning their very own new continuing drama. So, it was a race to air. And East 8 had yet to cast any actors.

    New Market. New Danger.

    That started to change in July, the first of three months in which the entire series would be cast. Some of the cast were sought out by Smith and Holland – first choice being Bill Treacher (following his small role as bus driver in An American Werewolf in London) (oh, and they’d worked with him on Z Cars. Mainly that, yes). Similarly, Shirley Cheriton had worked with the showrunners on Angels, and was chosen to play upwardly mobile Debbie, while writer Bill Lyons had worked with Sandy Ratcliff previously, and suggested her for the role of hardfaced minicab firm co-owner Sue Osman.

    Other roles were largely cast from a multitude of auditions following bags of letters, photos and recommendations from agents. And, slowly but surely, real-life faces were finally attached to the characters punched out over that fortnight in the Canary Islands. The next pressing concern was the name of the series. The working title had been ‘East 8’, but that was never really going to stick (not least as it was actually set in the fictional postal district of E20). Eventually, those casting sessions brought about the answer – after both writing countless letters to casting agents pointing out that “only genuine East-enders need apply” for the roles, it finally hit Julia Smith that the title had been staring them in the face all along. One capitalisation-of-the-second-E a little later, thanks to the suggestion of BBC2 controller Graeme McDonald, the programme title was sorted.

    September 1984 brought more bumps in the road. Scripts had been written with the aim of the series launching soon, but the programme’s lead director issued an ultimatum on the uncompromising nature of them, demanding that the characters be lightened up, to be at least a little more likeable. Smith and Holland stuck to their guns – no rewrites. Subsequently, EastEnders found itself with just two remaining directors. Another issue came from the phone of newly-installed Controller of BBC1, Michael Grade. The plan had been for the new series to make up part of BBC1’s weekday evening schedule, running for two weeknights each week while the rebooted version of Saturday night chat show Wogan ran for three. The problem was: Wogan wasn’t going to be ready for the proposed start date, so the launch of both programmes would need to be moved back a month. With EastEnders’ scripts being a very much real-time affair, with in-show Valentine’s Day happening on real-life Valentine’s Day and such… they’d have to be rewritten after all.

    Yeah, that’s right. Look sorry, Wogan.

    A key day for the series fell on 10 October 1984, which saw the cast introduced for the first time to the press, and therefore the public. At this stage, the closest many of the cast had come to each other had been when they’d happened to have been in passing where they’d been auditioned on the same day, meaning this was their first real meeting. Some of the casting decision had still to be made, some key actors were otherwise engaged with roles elsewhere, but at least the whole thing now seemed that little bit more real. This was really going to happen.

    Though not for everyone.

    The part of Angie Watts originally went to Jean Fennell, then mostly known for stage roles, but initially deemed a good fit for the role. However, as rehearsals went on, it was felt that she’d been miscast. Everything they needed to get from Angie just wasn’t coming through in Fennell’s performance. According to Leslie Grantham’s autobiography, the disparity between the character of Angie and Fennell’s take on it was even wider, with the actress determined to play Angie as more of a Bet Lynch figure, but in any case the now ex-Angie was given six months’ full pay, and a car home.

    (For the record, the only change Grantham refers to demanding when it came to Den was that he support West Ham rather than Arsenal, resulting in a variety of Highbury-related decor swiftly being replaced in the Old Vic.)

    So, with just four days until the first studio recording, one of the programme’s main characters was uncast. As fate would have it, someone who’d previously been considered for the role by Julia Smith came back into play. Initially, Smith had dismissed the idea of offering the role to her former drama school pupil Anita Dobson, feeling she was a little too young for the role. But, on being contacted by Smith, a brief audition proved that those initial concerns were unfounded – she was perfect for the role.

    Finally, the time came for the programme to air, and it’s fair to say the BBC had a lot riding on it. Smith and Holland had been given a huge amount of autonomy over the series, with the first episodes being recorded for air without any pilot being shot, and no opportunity was given for management to view the recorded episode footage until the sole edit had been completed. One aspect of the programme that management could control regarded the Radio Times front page promoting the first episode. The wording for the famous RT front cover had initially read “The EastEnders are here… and they’re luverly!”. It took the intervention of department head Jonathan Powell to have those final three, ill-fitting words removed. Otherwise an expectant nation may well have tuned in anticipating an Only Fools and Horses spin-off.

    A flurry of EastEnders trailers slid between other programmes in the weeks leading up to episode one, and Michael Grade had given in to Julia Smith’s request that Sunday afternoon BBC1 play host to a weekly omnibus of episodes, so that any fans who’d been otherwise engaged on Tuesday or Thursday evenings would be able to catch-up. British Telecom even offered up an ‘EastEnders line’ number, which provided a three-minute synopsis of the previous episode, written by Tony Holland and read by a cast member.

    Coventry Evening Telegraph, Wednesday 20 February 1985

    Finally, the time had come. On Tuesday 19 February 1985 at 7pm, 17 million people tuned into to watch Den Watts kick in Reg Cox’s front door. The rest is television history.

    Oh, as for Granada’s spoiler soap Albion Market – the market-based Friday/Sunday soap failed to find an audience, not helped by London franchise LWT declining to air the programme in a primetime slot. It was cancelled within a year.

    Granada should probably have set it in a caravan park.

    That’s right, I just did mark 36 years of a programme’s history by writing a billion words that cease a few seconds after the first episode airs. I could easily have written a lot more, but I’m keen to get this online before the BBC’s second centennary. So, until next time.

    Only two more shows to go!

    , , , ,

  • “Available to Anyo.e” – The 4th Most Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    “Available to Anyo.e” – The 4th Most Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    Here we go. After yesterday’s video version, here’s the good old Web 1.0 write-up for…

    4: Pages from Ceefax

    (Shown 6491 times, 1983-2000)

    Source: The Teletext Archive.

    Well, here’s a controversial one. Partly because you could claim it’s not really a programme, partly because you could claim it should be classed as ‘news’, and partly because pages from Ceefax aired in-vision for a few years before ever being billed. So, in turn, (a) it was billed as such, so I’m counting it as such, (b) for the most part, it was more of a television magazine a la Town and Around, and (c) I know, but it didn’t start getting billed in the Radio Times until 1983. And not as ‘Pages from Ceefax’ until a year after that.

    (Side Point: at this point in the list, I do feel a bit torn. I always wanted to include Pages From Ceefax in the rundown, but I’ve seen a few people suggest Newsnight will be in the Top Ten. And perhaps it should be – it leans more towards the likes of Tonight or 24 Hours than a standalone BBC news programme. Personally, on nailing down the 100 programmes being covered in the list, I leant more on the side of “Newsnight is the BBC’s equivalent of Channel Four News” and duly excluded it from the rundown. Perhaps I should have included it. Maybe I should even have given up this place in the list to Newsnight. But: I’m not going to, as Ceefax is (along with associated services Oracle or 4-Tel) a unique part of British TV history, so it’s worth affording it some space. Frankly, you’re just lucky I didn’t engineer a way to include BBC Select somewhere. More of that later.)

    And left to my own devices, I probably would. Have.

    Part of this might just be (okay, definitely is) down to the way Ceefax absolutely fascinated me as a small child. My main two obsessions in those formative years were reading and television. It being the dawn of the 1980s, and my location being a small Welsh village, the tiny local newsagent could only provide so many copies of Nutty, The Beano or, obviously, the Radio- and TV Times. There was no internet (yes, technically there was, but our local buses didn’t go anywhere near Stanford University), but come 12 March 1980 there was something new to read. Not necessarily about telly. But actually on the telly.

    I don’t think I realised that at the time, mind you. It probably would have been at some point in 1981, at which time my parents had won themselves a black-and-white portable TV – one of the really old ones with a dial used to tune into channels instead of buttons – meaning we were now a two-telly family. Yes, you’re right to look impressed. I got to bring it to my bedroom to watch the episode of The Sweeney with Morecambe and Wise in it and everything. And, with it back in its natural home of the kitchen, where I suspect it was partially being used for a musical background to everyday kitchen tasks, on first seeing the captivating sentence “a selection of items of news and information from Ceefax”, I was utterly mesmerised.

    Telly was still only on for a limited number of hours each day, and kids’ telly for even fewer hours, but there was something new: ‘secret’ telly, hidden outside the TV listings. And not just the BBC Engineering Information (which I was inexplicably terrified of) – my interest was piqued to the point where after we’d finished our tea, I’d ask to go to the kitchen and watch Ceefax In Vision on my own. It was all reading, so my parents were on board, but I don’t think I was especially keen to see the latest FTSE index, it was more that I was utterly fascinated by the general concept of it.

    Apart from the scary sun-face that came up before the weather. I was only six years old at the time, of course.

    WHY IS IT SMILING? Its eyes have been plucked out! It’s radiating naught but darkness!

    Anyway, moving onto matters that aren’t about repressed childhood trauma, what’s the deal with Ceefax? What was poured into that 40 by 24 grid of characters that characterised the one-way pseudo-web of the 1980s?

    The first rumblings in the national press for the service seem to have been in the Daily Telegraph in October 1972 (“Push-button news for TV invented by BBC”, with reporter Sean Day-Lewis bigging up the potential for instant news summaries, sports results and stock market prices. At this stage, the mooted end product was to be a small box with “a number of push buttons”, behind which would be up to thirty pages ready to be displayed on the television screen. Given it hadn’t yet been three years since colour television first arrived on BBC1, it really showed how the BBC Research Department were keen on earning those salaries. Trials were set to begin in the summer of 1973, with an aim of going into production “within two or three years”, with a mooted cost of between £65 and £85 (that’s £735 to £962 adjusted for inflation) for the set-top box needed to decode those hidden bits.

    Oh, for an age where remote controls were so new, they actually had to be labelled ‘Remote Control’.

    With prices like that expected at launch, the BBC’s research team were realistic about their initial target audience. “Ceefax would mean that the farmer can come home from the pub and get a weather forecast on his set at the press of a button (…) the investor could choose the page of stock market prices and see whether he can go to bed with a peaceful mind”.

    1973 saw an initial test service sneaked onto the airwaves, with the trial running for seven days per week from September 1974. A year later, the service was deemed settled enough to warrant an effective ‘launch programme’, with Tuesday July 15th 1975 seeing the transmission of Angela Rippon-fronted This is Ceefax, airing on BBC-1 at 10:45pm.

    Previous to that point, the number of sets in British homes was unlikely to be far into three figures (and even then, mainly in homes belonging to BBC engineers). At the time of the programme, Ceefax had it’s own specially built – if modest – newsroom on the seventh floor of TV Centre. Editor/journalist Colin McIntyre led a small team (comprising four subeditors and four research assistants) in a delightfully 1970s BBC broom cupboard, where a series of machines (likely worth the aggregate annual licence fee tally of Derbyshire) would clatter out yards of teleprint from news agencies, which would then be bashed into a VDU featuring a distinctly unhelpful mid-70s GUI.

    Compare and contrast to the BBC Newsroom in the background on BBC News bulletins today

    The research assistants on the team also enjoyed the task of seeing what else Ceefax could be used for, aside from the obvious likes of News, Weather and Financial Gubbins. So, at this early stage, beach news, shopping guides (advising on fluctuations in fruit prices and the like), train timetables or – yes! – the latest Canal News all made an appearance.

    How many people living on barges could get Ceefax? Source: the Teletext Archive

    It’s worth noting that This is Ceefax wasn’t the first time the service had been featured on BBC-1. Sunday 8 June 1975 saw an episode of I See What You Mean, a ten-episode series serving hearing-impaired people, with the final episode of the run featuring the subtitling possibilities of Ceefax. This broadcast also led to a brief write-up of the ‘fax in that week’s Sunday Times, which references the presence of a working Ceefax setup in the lobby of BBC-TV Centre, which visitors were encouraged to explore.

    And of course, that would be as close as most could get to enjoying the full on-screen magazine. As such, nice as it was to show off the BBC’s latest invention, in those early years there was little point in putting Ceefax on-screen as a marketing ploy. Only the most precious of few people could stand a chance of affording access to it, after all.

    If you need an example to back that up, how about this: one of the few shops you could visit to buy a teletext-equipped set? Harrods. A bargain at just £1,049, a mere £5,890 when adjusted for inflation. For the record, for that adjusted outlay nowadays, you could buy a 98-inch 4K Samsung set from Currys, rather than a modest 22-inch set from 1977. But: does that 98-inch set have teletext? No, it does not.

    It says a lot when the relatable copy within the advert refers to “your pet investment’s oil strike”. Meanwhile, got to love “Telephone Mr Forwood to make an appointment for a full demonstration”. Ad from the Sunday Times, 24 Apr 1977.

    Despite the modest number of homes with Ceefax receivers, the BBC weren’t wholly beholden from mentioning where the service came into play. As the service grew, readers of the Radio Times were informed of how Ceefax could provide auxiliary information for then.

    The listing for Saturday 11 March 1978 saw the first reference to horse racing results being available on the service in the listing for Grandstand. The same evening saw the billing for Match of the Day casually mentioning it was a good place to dip into full classified football results, along with pools news.

    The following Thursday (16 March 1978) saw the billing for Top of the Pops mention that the Top 20 could be dialled up on page 156, while the white-hot heat of technological improvement even reached the garden on Wednesday 22 March 1978, as page 145’s Gardening News was dropped into the listing for the debut of splendidly-titled Mr Smith Propagates Plants. The following evening’s billing for the Evening News (read by early adopter Angela Rippon) even pointed out that weather maps could be found on P111. Saturday 22 April 1978 saw the first Ceefax pages dedicated to that evening’s Eurovision Song Contest (on P156, if you’re a time traveller), while the same month also saw the introduction of a page dedicated to detailing materials needed for each day’s Play School make. The march of technological progress even took in July 1978’s World Chess Championship, with Ceefax playing host to summaries of play throughout the tournament.

    Source: mb21.co.uk

    By 1980 however, it was decided that the price of teletext receivers was finally within the financial grasp of many more Britons, not least considering many people preferred to rent TV sets, avoiding a major one-off outlay. And so, half-hour chunks of Ceefax started to be transmitted during some of the programme-free intervals that punctuated each day’s broadcasting. They weren’t being billed in the Radio Times or newspaper TV listings, and was referred to by continuity and on-screen as ‘Ceefax In Vision’, but those pages from Ceefax were finally going out to the nation.

    From January 1982 (video link)

    The following year, the service was promoted even further. October 1981 was declared National Teletext Month, a promotion that saw flyers and posters promoting the service, with cabinet minister Kenneth Baker imploring the British public to take a closer look. A glance through the newspaper archives suggests it barely made a dent in the national newspapers, but it did at least warrant a few mentions in regional publications such as The Scotsman, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, and a rare appearance for teletext in the London Illustrated News:

    Of course, the good old Radio Times also stepped up to the plate, with Teletext Month even getting a corner strapline on one of the more infamous RT covers of the decade.

    Sadly, that strapline wasn’t referenced in the Not the Nine O’Clock News parody cover.

    Sadly, National Teletext Month failed to rock the nation. While 1982 and 1983 saw further attempts at the themed month, press coverage seems to have been limited to adverts for companies trying to sell text-equipped sets, rather than any actual column inches. If only they’d given an entire weekend of BBC2’s airtime to Ceefax In Vision. That would have sorted it.

    March 1983 saw pages from Ceefax finally being billed in the Radio Times and national press programme listings. BBC1 woke up each morning at 6am with half an hour of news, sport and travel information from the service going out under the guise of Ceefax AM, while the Breakfast Time studio readied itself for broadcasting to the nation at 6.30am. Basically, this was a low-cost rival to TV-am’s Daybreak opener, only with ITN newsreaders substituted with a smattering of BBC Micro Mode 7 magic. So, a cheap version of what TV-am were doing. But still, those pages from Ceefax were finally in the listings.

    Source: Kaleidoscope

    Ceefax AM even had cause to break important news to the nation before anyone else. The 1983 Election coverage saw the early morning Ceefax service bridging the gap between a 4am screening of Leslie Philips flick Crooks Anonymous and an earlier-than-normal Breakfast Time, with the teletext stalwart bringing viewers the latest election results at 5.15am that day. Sadly, that’s yet to feature in any BBC Parliament bank holiday rebroadcast of old election coverage. For shame.

    Saturday 7 January 1984 was a landmark date in TV history: for the first time, at 9am on BBC2, to fill some time before Open University rolled up the shutters for the morning, there was the first Radio Times and newspaper billing for the now-rechristened Pages From Ceefax. Rejoice! Knocking on for ten years since the first trials of the service, it was now in the big time, rubbing shoulders with the likes of, erm, Daytime on Two, From Petroleum to Polyethylene and Frank Muir’s popular game of musical knowledge My Music.

    This was where Pages from Ceefax’s imperial phase truly began, finding itself spread across the schedules like jam on a crumpet for the next few years. It even occasionally served as an eight-minute 3.45pm buffer on several occasions between live weekday afternoon sport and the pre-Children’s BBC regional news bulletin, when surely it would have made more sense to throw on a Tom and Jerry. Such was Ceefax’s role as Official Interval-Filler to the Corporation, not even a mouse with dynamite could shift it.

    While Full Fat Ceefax had grown so far as to offer actual software downloads on teletext-equipped sets by this point, the broadcast version was still largely restricted to news, sport, weather and outliers like recipes, TV listings, motoring news and film reviews. In the pre-web age, that was certainly enough to pique the interest of casual viewers, and if nothing else ensured I kept badgering my parents to buy a TV set with built-in teletext every time our existing Grundig started to get a bit wobbly.

    The Times, 21 Sept 1983. To be fair, you were hardly getting Repton 2 for your £200 add-on.

    1984 saw another new avenue for Ceefax. With the Summer Olympics taking place in Los Angeles, and as such live Olympic coverage running into the larger of the wee small hours, the BBC transmitters were kept warm between the end of live action from LA and the start of Olympic Breakfast Time by putting out Ceefax Olympics AM, offering even more overnight news from the USA for the hardcore Olympiad ultras.

    Source: Neil Miles

    Throughout 1985 and 1986, Ceefax continued to grout the gaps between programming on BBCs One and Two, but changes were afoot. Late 1986 saw the introduction of proper daytime programming on BBC1, meaning that after 24 October 1986, the service would subsequently only appear in Ceefax AM clothing on the Beeb’s flagship channel. Plus, by this point, Channel 4’s equivalent offering – 4-Tel/Oracle On View – was pumping out a much more varied selection of pages, from news to the marvellous Blue Suede Views section (including record reviews packed with character, genre pop charts) to live flight information from British Airways. On top of that, the 4-Tel portion of each broadcast included (limited) animation on interstitial slides. Pages from Ceefax were starting to look a bit stuffy by comparison.

    Source: The Teletext Archaeologist

    It really took until 1988 before the BBC could start the fightback, with the tentative roll-out of Level Two teletext for the broadcast version of Ceefax. More colours! Animation! An attempt at a serif font that was a bit harder to read! This would go on to be used more heavily in the 1990s – and was exclusive to the broadcast version of the service, as Level 2 teletext decoders never took off in the UK – before the service sensibly reeled in the graphical showboating and retained the more traditional Level 1 Ceefax look in 1996.

    Because while that’s quite fancy…
    …that isn’t. (Source: VHS Video Vault)

    By the time the 1990s rolled around, there was less room for Pages from Ceefax in the printed schedules. Other than 6am outings on BBC1 each weekday before BBC Breakfast News (by now trading as Pages from Ceefax rather than Ceefax AM), plus filling the 9am gap on BBC2 between Westminster and schools programmes. By 1991, only the pre-Breakfast News broadcasts were being billed, and within a few years of that, Pages from Ceefax were back to being an almost entirely unbilled surprise for viewers with irregular sleep patterns. 

    Look, here’s a big table showing a full breakdown of when Pages from Ceefax was listed in the Radio Times.

    That solitary showing from 2000 is a curious little fellow, a twenty-minute burst of Mode 7 on an August Bank Holiday morning at 7am, before BBC2 viewers were able to enjoy a cracking double bill of A Day at the Races and The Great Dictator.

    Of course, this wasn’t the end of Ceefax, or even Pages From it. They were simply no longer being billed in the Radio Times (or in newspaper TV listings) at this stage. And that makes sense, given by the mid-90s it was hard to buy a television that didn’t already have built-in teletext. Pages from was still airing throughout those years – for example, despite never being billed in the listings during 1995, there are several uploads of it on YouTube – but overnight hours at the time were mainly filled with another, less-remembered BBC pet project, BBC Select.

    The option of paying for a descrambler to ‘unlock’ broadcasts that absolutely nobody was about to start pirating surprisingly wasn’t that popular (now comprising stuff like training videos for lawyers or recordings of company AGMs, rather than the initially proposed selection of TV classics), and BBC Select faded from view in 1995, replaced with the BBC Learning Zone. Happily, that’s where Pages from Ceefax would step back up to the plate, being employed to bridge the gap between the end of regular BBC Two programming and the start of Learning Zone content.

    A greater challenge to Ceefax’s prominence on the nocturnal broadcast spectrum came in November 1997, when the launch of BBC News 24 meant BBC One’s overnight hours were now filled with flag-filled idents and actual newsreaders taking the place of Ceefax news pages. Ceefax still had a place on BBC Two, albeit almost entirely unbilled.

    As it would transpire, the last ever example of a billed broadcast of Pages from Ceefax would be an outing on BBC Two Northern Ireland on Thursday 19 February 2009. That’s a regional broadcast, so it’s not being included in our total, but at least it warranted a page on the BBC website.

    iPlayer link not currently available, but here’s hoping for some BBC Four repeats in 2024

    The last ever Pages from Ceefax went out on 22 October 2012, on BBC Two at the appropriately unfriendly time of 4:45am. The end of an era, but it did warrant a proper send off by the continuity announcer, plus a farewell caption card at the end. Plus (and thanks to Chart Update’s James Masterton for this nugget), the final piece of accompanying music (don’t diminish it with the word ‘muzak’) was the fine choice of BART by US outfit Tom Fogerty + Ruby, which will likely be very familiar to anyone who’d grown up with the BBC’s grab-bag of Test Card/Schools/Pages from Ceefax audio over the previous 25 years.

    Definitely one to file under ‘things you would never get on ITV’

    The following evening, the ‘proper’ Ceefax service finally came to an end. With Northern Ireland switching off its analogue transmitters and completing the transition to a fully-digital UK, there was no longer any analogue signal left for those Ceefax bits to hide in. However, some things are too beautiful to ever truly die, and the spirit of Ceefax lives on through projects such as Nathan Dane’s RSS-based Ceefax reboot, Raspberry Pi teletext tribute Teefax (which got a shout out on The One Show), and an entire online community based around the art of teletext art. There have even been annual teletext art festivals taking place at locations ranging from Berlin to Cambridge.

    I’m loathe to use the word ‘iconic’, but the distinctive look and feel of the teletext layout – no matter which country a particular service originates from (and there are, of course, many) – instantly feels welcoming, a throwback to an age where information wasn’t available on tap via the electronic oblong in everyone’s pocket, where those of a certain generation could dial up news, sport, weather and the latest canal news whenever they wanted. This was our very own eight-colour future, and Pages from Ceefax was, for many, the Tardis door to it.

    Okay, now that’s out there, here’s a bit more bonus content from Paul R Jackson, with some added information on those Blue Peter reunions. Over to you, Paul!

    An update re: the Blue Peter Returns Anniversary info sent in. For the 30th anniversary (17/10/88), I don’t have Sarah G down on film. For the 40th anniversary, Lesley was missing too.

    For the 50th anniversary, there was a tea party held at Buckingham Palace, on 15/10/08, with HM The Queen.

    Nine former presenters were present: Valerie Singleton, John Noakes, Peter Purves, Lesley Judd, Simon Groom, Diane-Louise Jordan, Katy Hill, Konnie Huq and Matt Baker , plus two current presenters: Helen Skelton & Joel Defries. For this event, presenters had to have served at least five years. The then-current editor had missed Peter Duncan off list as he did his over two stints.

    A 50th anniversary party was held at the Science Museum on 16/10/08 – 27 presenters out of a possible 34 attended the 50th Anniversary photo shoot (seven were missing from the shoot – the late Trace, Sundin & Keating, while four weren’t available – Curry, Fielding, D’Annunzio & Bacon).

    Paul has also kindly provided some photos from those presenter shoots.

    Here’s the 50th anniversary, with 27 former and present presenters, er, present
    And here’s one from the 60th, with just Simon G, Chris W, Tina & Gethin missing from the surviving line-up
    And here’s a shot of Paul himself, present at the studio in Salford in October 2014 (published with permission – thanks Paul!).

    Okay, there are just three programmes left, and the savvy amongst you may well have already worked out what they are. But in which order will they come? And what will I find to write about them? Luckily for me, there’s a lot more background info about the next item on the list – expect more soon!

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  • The 4th Most-Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time: Video Special!

    The 4th Most-Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time: Video Special!

    Ho, yes. We’re closing in on the top of the list, so I’ve made a video on the programme in fourth place. Everyone likes it when people say “hey, watch this video I’ve made”, don’t they?

    For those who don’t (waves to 97% of the population), I’ll put the text version online tomorrow. Which has proper links, pictures and attribution in place, and is generally better. But hey, once I thought of doing this one as a video first I couldn’t resist it. It’s pretty obvious why.

    4: Pages from Ceefax

    (Shown 6491 times, 1983-2000)

    That took aaaages to do, which is why I’m grimly amused that about twelve people will watch it. See you tomorrow for the text version!

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  • “Bart, Elvis and The Baby” – The 5th Most Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    “Bart, Elvis and The Baby” – The 5th Most Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time

    Into the top five. And where some programmes in the list are hard to find out much information, he’s one where there’s way too much to feasabily include. Still, here’s a good old bash at it – get comfy for over 6,300 words about…

    5: Cricket

    (Shown 6250 times, 1938-2021)

    PROLOGUE: A lot to get through here, but if you’d like even more detail on the history of cricket on BBC TV, take a look at the book “…and welcome to the highlights: 61 years of BBC TV cricket” (by Chris Broad and Daniel Waddell, 1999) which goes into even more detail, and which has been a huge help on writing this update.

    Geoff Boycott, doing what he's most famous for.

    By WG Grace’s soupy beard, we’ve reached the last sporting entry on the rundown, and it’s a biggie. Something that has aired on BBC Television in every non-war year between 1938 and 1999. Something that’s was pretty damn ubiquitous throughout TV’s formative years in general. Indeed, for a spell in the late 1950s, it had become so omnipresent the evening BBC News bulletin was usually billed as News and Cricket Scores during the summer months.

    Admittedly, when it comes to that overall ‘episode’ count, it doesn’t hurt that given the long-winded nature of the sport, TV coverage of cricket often required dipping in and out of action to make room for other programmes. But hey, it’s billings we’re counting here, and billings are something cricket generates in spades. Or unusually wide cricket bats.

    Radio Times listings for 14 July 1965

    Anyway, and this won’t be much of a surprise given the popularity of Test Match Special on The Light Programme and Radios Two through Five, cricket first became a broadcasting fixture on the radio1. At a very early stage in the medium’s life, in fact; the first broadcast instances coming in 1923, starting with Men’s Talk: Cricket, by “Mr F.B. Wilson” (most likely Frederic “Freddy” Bonhôte Wilson, a keen batsman and cricket captain for Cambridge University, later sports journalist of high regard) airing on 2LO London at 9.55pm on Thursday 17 May. A mere ten minute natter about the sport it may have been, but the tap had been turned on.

    [*UPDATE: Thanks to Guy Barry for writing in with the following (thanks Guy!):

    TMS has been on several different networks but not normally, as far as I’m aware, Radio 2. (A check on Programme Index reveals two half-hour broadcasts in 1981, and that’s it.) It would take too long to go through all the various changes in detail but its main homes have been the Light Programme, Network Three, Radio 3 medium wave, the old Radio 5, Radio 3 FM, Radio 4 long wave and Radio 5 Sports Extra (with occasional outings on Radio 5 Live).

    Incidentally the last-ever broadcast of TMS on analogue radio was in July this year – separate content on Radio 4 LW is being discontinued next March, in advance of the transmitters being switched off completely. From next year TMS will be a digital-only broadcast on Radio 5 Sports Extra. END OF UPDATE]

    2ZY Manchester aired Talk on Cricket, by John Molyneux on 26 May that year, with 25 whole minutes to play with, while the following spring saw a whole (if generally untitled) series looking at the sport in more depth (“No. 4: J.W. Cameron, M.A. on fielding” etc). As far as concentrated cricket programming went, the first regular strands were born in Scotland, with Cricket Corner (hosted by Mr C. H. Webster) starting in June 1925 on 2BD Aberdeen and airing each Friday evening, and Cricket Talk airing on 5SC Glasgow from August of the same year.

    Save for the curiously-titled programmes like Around the Clubs – Local Cricket Prospects going out on 5SX Swansea, or Mr John Fleming: Some Cricket Prospects on 2BE Belfast, both in April 1926, it does appear much talk was of the game in general, rather than any specific updates on the sport, and certainly no live match coverage. Curious-sounding outliers like The Annual Ball of the Swansea Football and Cricket Club, Relayed from the Patti Pavilion were more common, in fact.

    The changed on 7 May 1927, with 2LO broadcasting the very-much-as-it-says-on-the-tin The Start of Cricket, offering the first day’s play from the Oval between Surrey and Hampshire. The Radio Times of the day billed it thusly:

    “This evening all of them who could not enjoy the match from under the shadow of the historic gas-works will be able to hear it described by one of the most famous of living cricketers, who is also one of the most expert critics of the game.”

    The expert mouth delivering those descriptions belonged to Middlesex and England batsman Pelham “Plum” Warner, one of just two people to be awarded Wisden Cricketer of the Year on two occasions (1904 and 1921, if you were wondering).

    Plum Warner, 1873-1963. All together now: “Not a bad innings.”

    Once the live coverage of batting had opening, it didn’t take long for the first international cricket match to feature on 2LO – a whole week in fact, with Essex versus New Zealand going out on 14 May 1927. To mark the coverage, Stacy Aumonier penned an article for the Radio Times, and following a story about explaining the rules of cricket to an American (“It is a joy for ever to me to know that he went back to the United States thoroughly convinced that cricket was a far more exciting game than baseball!”), he muses on what took so long.

    However, the point is that cricket may be and often is the most thrilling game in the world, and the recollection of that afternoon came back to me just now as I was pondering the question of the broadcasting of cricket. There is no question but that the broadcasting of other sports – football, racing, and the Boat Race, etc. – has been among the most successful efforts of the BBC, and it follows therefore that the national game cannot possibly be ignored. I was ill in bed when England played Scotland at Rugger a few months ago, but I listened, and although I don’t understand the game (we played Soccer at my school), I was nearly sick with excitement! But imagine a cricket match towards the end of the season, with perhaps the championship depending on the result – say Yorkshire and Surrey at the Oval. The last day, a sticky wicket, Surrey with eight wickets to fall, wanting one hundred and thirty-seven runs to win. What a chance for the commentators!

    (…)

    And at that point old ladies in the Midlands (who have never seen cricket played) begin to die of heart-disease from sheet excitement. There is the sound of the Commentator drinking something out of a flask. We all begin to wish it was all over, or that broadcasting had never been invented, or that we were there, or – What a game!

    The Most Thrilling Game in the World, by Stacy Aumonier, Radio Times Issue 188, May 1927.

    Ten years hence, live commentary on cricket matches had become both popular and commonplace on the wireless, though any related increased death rate of old ladies in the Midlands region remains unrecorded. However, now there was a new game in town: radio with pictures (i.e. telly).

    It only took until 24 June 1938 for the BBC’s Outside Broadcast team to experiment with live coverage of the sport, that initial attempt picking a suitably major occasion: The Ashes at Lord’s (sadly, a week not yet included in Genome). Denis Compton and Hedley Verity featured for England, while Bradman and ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly starred for the Aussies. A big occasion for England’s national sport, and one that would surely be shouted from the rooftops in the BBC’s official organ. Surely?

    Ah, you know me too well. The Radio Times was reliably coquettish about the broadcasting breakthrough, relegating the coverage to some small print in the corner of a page, casually mentioning that “By kind permission of the MCC, the second Test match between England and Australia will be televised”.

    Broadcasting, The Times, Fri 24 June 1938

    The press were similarly coy about the coverage. The Daily Mirror’s TV listings for that day happily billed the match – broadcast for an hour at 11:30am, another hour at 2:30pm, and once more between 3:50 and 5pm – but accompanying copy regarding television was instead filled with breathless excitement at the BBC’s announcement of forthcoming footage from the India vs The World Polo match airing in a few weeks time.

    The Telegraph were a little more excited about the breakthrough, with a statement that “more than three hours of play will be shown on the screen each day” and that “this is the first time that cricket has been televised”. If you’re thinking that’s hardly effusive, consider that The Times’ Broadcasting page merely mentioning that the match “will be described at intervals in the National and Regional [radio] programmes”, with reference to TV coverage only given to readers eagle-eyed enough to pick out the millimetres afforded the television schedule.

    The Telegraph, Fri 24 June 1938

    Fortunately those behind the cameras were taking things much more seriously. A lot of the work was carried out by Ian Orr-Ewing, having worked with the suits at Lord’s to procure permission for the match to be televised by a BBC Outside Broadcast team still getting used to broadcasting outside, where the action would be captured by three cameras, each mounted on a turret in a set up described by Orr-Ewing as “so much string and sealing wax”.

    Commentary was provided by Captain Henry “Teddy” Wakelam, who generally operated as a rugby commentator (his 1927 comms for England v Wales at Twickenham comprising the first ever running sports commentary on British airwaves), but who was also skilled at lending his tones to other sports. Wakelam’s first foray into running commentary is worth mentioning here: as it had been a thing that simply hadn’t existed before he rolled up at Twickers that January morning in 1927, he’d been unsure how to play the whole thing. His producer Lance Sieveking had a plan in place for this – at the ground, he introduced Wakelam to a man from St Dunstan’s who’d be sitting next to him throughout the match. That man was blind, and Wakelam was tasked with describing the action to him, rather than the home audience. Thus, the long-standing commentary trick of ‘act as if you’re talking to one person rather than millions’ was born.

    Before that first televised test match, Wakelam had mused on how styles of commentary style might need to be adapted for the new medium, in his autobiography Half Time: The Mike and Me (London Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1938). His thinking was that, with live footage of the action being available, the commentator should become more of a compère than mere narrator of all that is happening, adding context where necessary, and not become a “mere talking machine who can tell a good story”.

    Harking back to his first-ever radio commentary at Twickenham, on being initially asked to attempt the practice that had recently taken off in the USA, he penned the typically blustery statement “On the principle of ‘try anything once,’ and also with the confined conviction that if an American could do it I could, I agreed.”

    Admittedly, the front cover doesn’t suggest it’ll be a laugh riot, exclamation point or not. It kind of makes you feel you’re going to spend the next few hours being told off.

    With Wakelam on compère duties (history doesn’t seem to have recorded whether he wore a sparkly jacket), that inaugural broadcast was deemed a success. It certainly helped that the match was one where (to go by the match report from the following day’s Times) “the weather was delightful and the wicket true”, with England closing at 409 for 5, and batsman Wally Hammond grabbing an undefeated 210 (“one of the greatest innings of his career”). In fact, that opening broadcast went so well, permission was swiftly granted to allow an additional hour of broadcast at 6.15pm – though as no television was scheduled to be broadcast between 5pm and 9pm that day, it’s questionable how many viewers would have known to tune in for it.

    “Aw, I’d hoped to settle down and watch some nice relaxing static.”

    The press were also enthused by the coverage, that weekend’s Sunday Times printing the following review:

    The televising of Saturday’s play in the Test Match allowed viewers to see players more intimately than most of the spectators could have done (writes our Television Correspondent). The ball was clearly visible most of the time, particularly when close-ups were given of Bradman at the wicket. A clever piece of television technique was employed as Bradman hurried back to the pavilion, apparently unconcerned at having scored only eighteen. The applauding crowd was brought in as a background to the retreating Australian, Ames crouching down expectantly behind the wicket, Verity wetting his hands as he walked back with the ball, the way in which Bradman kept his eye on the ball until it met the bat – such details were clearly visible.

    “Close-Ups” of Ball and Batsmen – Television Success, Sunday Times 26 June 1938

    With the coverage widely accepted as a success, the only question that remained was: when could they do it again? This being the very early days of television meant that subsequent Test matches at Headingley and Old Trafford were out, as transmitters weren’t yet in place to beam footage back to London (which contained Britain’s entire TV audience at the time). Luckily, the fifth Test of the series was back in London, at the Oval, meaning London’s televiewers could enjoy more coverage of TV’s latest sport. As quite the treat it was, too – England won by an innings and 579 runs, with Leonard Hutton helping himself to a record-walloping 364 runs.

    The following summer saw the BBC concentrate on improving their cricket coverage. The start of the first Test against the West Indies on 24 June 1939 saw coverage airing at 11.30am, 2.30pm, 3.50pm and 6pm, while on-topic light relief was offered by Charles Heslop starring in Reginald Arkell’s comedy play Percy Ponsonby Goes to the Test Match at 3.30pm. But this was no small undertaking. It was soon discovered that none of the gates in place at The Oval were large enough to admit the BBC’s Outside Broadcast van, meaning a team of workmen had to be hired the following month to construct a large gate for future broadcasts. Until that has been put in place, interim solutions such as knocking the roof off the van and deflating the tyres had proved fruitless, and instead a thousand feet of cable had to be laid from the OB van’s location outside the ground. Still, with the new gate in place, there’d surely be no interruption to future cricket coverage on the new Television Service. Hoora… sorry, World War What?

    Following the war, the BBC Television Service would resume on 7 June 1946, and only a couple of weeks after that, cricket coverage resumed to lift the spirits of a battered Britain (or at least the bits of it that liked cricket). Lord’s was the location, and India were the opponents. That week’s Radio Times promised that “the television cameras will be exceptionally well-placed for the game”, and a full hour of extra evening coverage was promised each day at 5.30pm. Aiden Crawley was at the lip-mic, accompanied by Brian Johnston (at the start of a commentary career that would last for almost fifty years), the pair promoted by the RT as there to help viewers ‘follow the play’ rather than as mere commentators. Johnston later recalled his decision to move into the ‘play-follower’ box, pointing out that by that point, only four Tests had ever been televised, so the producers, commentators and cameramen were pretty much as new to the broadcasting experience as he was.

    Cricket being cricket, and British summers being British summers, 1946 saw the first real instances of something that would become a hallmark of cricket coverage: filling the airtime with something, anything whenever rain stops play. This was a time long before the option of action replays, or even available footage of previous matches. Something needed to be done – as we all know, dead air is a crime – and Crawley and Johnston were the men to do it. Such as the time during the Oval Test of 1946, where viewers were promised ‘a surprise’ during a rain break as the camera slowly panned through the crowd to focus on “the Prime Minister”, who’d been enjoying the match with a small entourage, including “his wife, Mrs Churchill”. Except, of course, it being 1946 and the PM taking time away from Number 10 to attend the match was actually Clement Attlee, along with – crucially – his own wife, Violet Attlee. A correction was duly issued, albeit after the remark had been repeated, and there’s some proof for you that it’s probably better when sports presenters do know at least the basics of politics.

    Unless you really want to pretend this was better than a regular Match of the Day.

    1947 brought a new foil for Johnston, in the name of Jim Swanton, at the time known for his work at the Telegraph and on the radio. On television, he would also go on to fill the role of prank-recipient at the hands of the mischievous Johnners. Such as the time when, on starting his summary of play, finding his braces grabbed and pulled by Johnston, and left to deliver a five-minute summary wondering if or when his cohort would let them snap back against his body.

    Not that Swanton was the only stooge in the commentary booth. 1977 saw veteran Aussie mikesman Alan McGilvray feature in the radio commentary box for Test Match Special. During a brief lull in play, Johnston muted his mic and offered his cohort a large slice of sticky chocolate cake. McGilvray duly accepted, and took a generous mouthful, only to hear the words from next to him “that ball just goes off the edge and drops in front of first slip… let’s ask Alan McGilvray if he thought it was a catch.”

    As the 1940s came to a close, live television broadcasts were still largely restricted to London-based grounds, but efforts were ongoing to make the most of the coverage. New camera angles were employed – such as positioning a camera to capture action behind the bowler’s arm, providing a much better view of deadly fast bowlers or devious spins. Johnston and Swanton had settled into a real double-act role, and cricket fans returning from work would ensure they’d tune into coverage just before the 6.35pm news, where Swanton’s colourful summaries of the day’s play beat newspaper reports to the punch by several hours. Swanton summarised his technique for a summary that didn’t have any defined duration – it had to start after the end of the final over and finish thirty seconds before 6.35pm prompt – taking the approach of pretending he was merely letting a friend know what they’d just missed. By all accounts, Swanton mastered this art to perfection – though one time the wild gesticulations of the floor manager that time was running out resulted into Jim snapping, whilst on-air, “WILL YOU KEEP STILL?”

    1950 brought a new era in the BBC’s TV coverage of cricket, with the first journey outside the capital to broadcast a match, travelling all the way to… Old Trafford? Trent Bridge? Edgbaston? Well, the complexity involved in setting up camera positions meant that the sojourn into the provinces didn’t reach any further than Ilford for a three-day match between Essex and Warwickshire, with scaffolding erected to offer a slightly precarious home to BBC cameras and cameramen – an internal BBC report at the time noting how the operator of Camera One had to move with special care, what with him standing on the edge of a sheer drop.

    With coverage completed from Essex, the next trip was north to Trend Bridge for the third Test, marking the most northerly point a live BBC TV Outside Broadcast had been made at the time. The choice of camera positions allowed for a lens to be trained on West Indies spinner Sonny Ramadhin’s bowling hand, giving viewers an inside track on what England’s batters were facing – an innovation that lacked the close-up finesse one might have nowadays, but which generated gushing column inches in the press of the day.

    July 1951 saw another landmark moment, with a women’s Test match between England and Australia getting live coverage throughout the day on a Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On top of that, the match commentary team was led by Marjorie Pollard, former England hockey international turned cricketer and founder member of the Women’s Cricket Association. The experience wasn’t entirely new for Pollard – she’d first provided radio commentary for a men’s cricket match in 1935 – and she was perfectly clear about her preferred audio-only role, announcing “I’m no glamour girl and I don’t want to face that dreadful TV instrument”.

    The construction of a new transmitter at Holme Moss outside Manchester meant that in 1952 cricket’s TV footprint could finally include Old Trafford and Headingley, meaning the BBC could now broadcast pictures from all five Test match grounds. With that year’s Test match visitors being India, an internal BBC memo from veteran radio commentator Rex Alston provided a guide to pronouncing the names of visiting players correctly. Not that Test debutant Fred Trueman was in anywhere near as welcoming a mood, taking three of the first four Indian wickets without a run being scored. The second Test was the commentary box debut of Peter West, a name that would become familiar to TV spectators over the next few decades.

    The range of locations from which cricket could be broadcast continued to grow, so much so that provincial regions could now be expected to provide coverage of matches. If STANDARDS were to be maintained, however, guidelines had to be laid down. And laid down they were, with producer Antony Craxton putting out an internal memo on How Things Should Be Done:

    Unlike some sports which we cover, cricket on television is, in my opinion, second best to being on the ground. Only one reason is needed to prove this in that it is just not possible to follow the ball often enough, and thus wickets fall unseen. It is therefore most important that the producer of televised cricket should have a pliable plan in his mind as to how best and how faithfully he can reproduce cricket on the screen, realizing that all the action cannot be covered. Above all, he must have a wide knowledge of the game, not only so he can anticipate as far as is possible events on the field, but also to guide his commentators along the best lines of thought.

    Then, of course, he ought to be an enthusiastic cricket watcher or player, for any slight relaxation on his part may: result in the missing of a vital catch or an important incident. He must in fact not get bored or feel that cricket produces itself, as has been suggested. There is no doubt that an enthusiastic producer can make a rather dull game into enthralling viewing by clever use of his cameras – not only on the field of play. He must, however, not fall into the major trap of distracting the viewer with off-the-field close-ups at tense moments in the game when all the attention is demanded on the actual play.

    Antony Craxton, Internal BBC Memo, 1952

    Craxton’s dedication to the art extended as far as setting out preferred positions for cameras around any cricket ground, and what they should capture. He also expressed opinions on how commentary should be handled, recommending that commentary during weekday working hours be a bit more descriptive, as the cricket hardcore are less likely to make up the bulk of the audience. Okay, he said at that time of day the audience were “predominantly of the female sex, and I feel they would prefer more commentary”, but at if nothing else he was at least conscious of the time of day each broadcast aired, and considered how best to meet the needs of that audience.

    One major problem encountered by cricket coverage was that the bulk of live coverage came during weekday working hours. Outside of those hours – especially in the period where BBC2 didn’t yet exist to offer an alternative channel – there was a lot more competition. Much of the 1950s saw internal conflict at the Beeb between the Children’s Television department who’d want to keep a place for their programming each day, and the Sports department who’d quite like it to move out of the way in case an important wicket was missed. The sports department went as far as offering commentary adapted for children on Test match days if the Children’s department would surrender half of Children’s Hour to cricket coverage. But, unsurprisingly, no dice. Joanna Spicer, Head of Programme Planning put out a BBC memo in 1957 stating that “while Brian Johnston is more than capable of adjusting his commentary to children, other announcers would not be so good at it.”

    “Step on my turf again Johnston, I’ll slit yer face.”

    This would be a longstanding issue until the arrival of BBC-2 in 1964, where at least the two could peacefully co-exist. Well, aside from any bickering over who got the top bunk of BBC-1, anyway.

    By the late 1950s, BBC-tv schedulers decided that the general audience might prefer to see other programmes at the close of cricketing action, but Swanson was understandably less than keen on the plan. As a result, he wrote to Head of Outside Broadcasts Peter Dimmock (a regular name in this rundown), pointing out the sacks of mail his summaries generated from a grateful audience. This was backed up by an internal memo from BBC Sports Organiser Jack Oaten, who believed the summaries to be “of greater importance as a service to the viewer than a good deal of the play earlier in the day”. As a result of this campaign, the summaries survived. At least for the time being.

    The hip and swinging sixties saw further changes to the way cricket was covered on the BBC. 1963 saw the introduction of one-day cricket, which ushered in a new sense of immediacy to the sport (well, in the sense that taking a whole day to play a match is better than it taking several), and with such changes afoot some of the old voices behind the coverage such as Johnston and Swanton were nudged out of the TV commentary box in favour of former cricketers.

    The start of the end for Johnners et al came during the final Test of the 1961 series between England and Australia. As the final match at the Oval meandered towards a draw, Johnston and guest co-commentator Jack Fingleton passed their time sharing gags, quips and anecdotes, along with musings on the wife of scorer Roy Webber. Head of Outside Broadcasts Peter Dimmock was far from amused, and neither were a number of viewers, who wrote to the broadcaster to complain. Within a few years, Johnston made the switch to radio commentary, his whimsical musings feeling much more at home. In his autobiography (It’s Been a Lot of Fun), Johnston mused that “I’ve always maintained that a TV commentator can never hope to please everybody any of the time. He will also be extremely lucky if he can please anybody all the time.”

    Also available as an audiobook. It’d be a crime if it wasn’t, really.

    1964 saw the arrival in the TV commentary box of Richie Benaud, who’d been a part of the Australian team a few years earlier while Johnston and Fingleton controversially waxed jocular. Already familiar with sharing his views in print and broadcast media, he proved a popular addition. This was no coincidence. Whilst still a player, Benaud attended a three week BBC course on covering sport instead of travelling with the rest of his team to Asia, and would routinely appear at the back of commentary boxes to observe the craft at close quarters. By 1960, he was providing occasional radio commentary for the BBC, before becoming a full-time cricket journalist and commentator following the end of his playing career.

    Benaud’s sense of preparation went as far as putting together a list of phrases to avoid at all costs, including cliches such as “at this point in time”, “I really must say”, “Of course”, and “to be perfectly honest”. Filler phrases all, that add nothing to the illumination of the viewer, with Benaud keen to avoid talking down to viewers. This thoughtful approach would later be underlined to commentary teams by Controller of Sport Jonathan Martin, who would point out that the Titanic was a tragedy, the Ethiopian drought was a disaster, so a mere dropped catch in a Test match should never be deemed a suitable cause for either word.

    1964 saw another major change for cricket on the BBC. Namely, the introduction of BBC2. This afforded an extra hour of cricket coverage each evening without the need to trample over children’s programming. Similarly, several uninterrupted hours of coverage could be screened on Sundays without needing to break for mandatory religious programming, starting in May 1965 with the first edition of Sunday Cricket, a series of matches played under knock-out rules, starting with the spectacularly-named International Cavaliers XI taking on a Worcestershire XI. This could run from 2pm to 6.30pm, with only occasional intervals, making a treat for cricket fans lucky enough to own 625-line sets and live in a region that received the new channel.

    As Johnston started his migration back to radio, John Arlott made the move in the opposite direction. Another radio commentator of the highest regard, Arlott moved to television for occasional Test matches and would become part of the main commentary team for the Sunday Cricket coverage. However, Arlott’s florid commentary style never felt like a suitable accompaniment to television pictures, and he would move back to radio where this true stengths lay. For both Arlott and Johnston, it’s probably fair to say this was no demotion. Cricket enjoys a rare reputation for being a sport a lot of people prefer to experience over the radio airwaves, especially at a time when TV coverage needed to dip in and out of matches to make way for Watch With Mother or the news.

    A more successful – if eccentric – addition to the TV commentary team was former England captain Ted Dexter, whose voice was heard on BBC Television for the first time in 1968. After reducing the amount of time spent at the crease, he’d initially moved into the world of business, as well as dipping his toe into politics, contesting Jim Callaghan’s Cardiff South East seat on behalf of the Conservatives in 1964. For the BBC, he’d take on the role of summariser, taking in a few Test matches each summer, and his association with the Beeb would last over twenty years, despite his other interests. One of which was racing. So much so he’d bring his own portable TV to the ground, so he could keep one eye on the latest action. This proved a boon on an occasion at Canterbury when a power failure caused the BBC’s monitors to fail. Dexter offered up his own screen as a workaround, and the broadcast was able to continue.

    Not that electricity was always his friend. On one occasion at Edgbaston, rain had stopped play during a test match. On chatting to Peter West atop the pavilion roof – both holding umbrellas to compensate for lack of shelter – dark storm clouds gathered overhead. As Dexter recalls, “We were just going into the interview and felt a crunch and a jolt in my arm. I said: ‘Peter, I think I’ve been struck by lightning.’ He said: ‘Never mind that, what about Boycott’s innings?’.”

    By 1969, the lush greens and cricket, erm, whites could be enjoyed in full colour on the BBC, and a fresh approach was brought to TV coverage. The unflappable Peter West stepped away from the commentary box to became cricket’s first anchorman, a role he would enjoy for the next eighteen years. Former spin rivals Richie Benaud and Jim Laker were now first choice for the commentary box, the latter having moved from ITV in 1968. Ted Bexter and Colin Milburn (and, for a spell, Denis Compton) alternated as summarisers.

    In addition to the live cricket coverage the BBC had so rightly been lauded for, highlight programmes were now a feature of the TV schedules. Previously, highlights had been restricted to the closing moments of live coverage, but now they were found to be suitable filling for a Twenty-Four Hours/Late Night News sandwich. With the holy quadrinity of West, Dexter, Laker and Benaud in situ, BBC TV’s cricket team were well equipped to see out the 1970s, able to remain unfazed at the rise of streaking at cricket matches.

    Tempted to post of photo of a streaker, but some of you might be at work.

    The 1980s saw a new spark of popularity for the sport, a particular jolt coming in the 1981 Ashes series, with an unstoppable Ian Botham being the difference between the two sides. Tom Graveney had been added to the commentary line-up following a 1979 appearance as summariser, a stint that would last for fourteen years.

    Graveney, a flamboyant batsman who often found himself out of favour by selectors in favour of more workmanlike players, had the humility to dip into his own catalogue of mistakes when passing comment on others. He was far from immune at making occasional gaffes during commentary either – an inadvertent comment about Curtley Amrbose’s bowling style included a remark that “the big fella can get it up any time he likes”, generating a swarm of letters from the amused and the affronted.

    With this being the BBC in the 1980s, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the use of computers was introduced around this time, albeit from a slightly unlikely source. While the Beeb’s main computer evangelist Ian McNaught-Davis was promoting all things micro-based as part of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, it was Ted Dexter who was determined to introduce a tech-based solution. His goal was for a computer program to store reams of cricket-based info in a database. Dexter’s business connections let him spread the word around the UK’s tech industry, with the UK arm of American outfit Honeywell expressing an interest. As a result, the Beeb’s old system of expressing the score – physical letters and numbers moved into position on a magnetic board that was duly chromakeyed onto the screen – was replaced with a computer-based equivalent. This, along with Dexter’s database, meant much more relevant information could be thrown on screen in a fraction of the time.

    The computerised system could also be used to run up a ruinous phone bill.

    Further innovations came about as the decade progressed. One major change was the use of double-ended coverage. Previously, one fixed camera would be used for the main angle, so at some points action would be viewed behinds the batsman, at other times behind the bowler, the former coming with the risk of action being obscured by the umpire. With double-ended coverage – an innovation first used by Australia’s Nine network – the view could remain behind the bowler, no matter which side of the field they’re bowling from. Similarly, an in-stump camera was employed, another idea first used by Nine. A clever bit of trickery involving a camera around the size of end-to-end packs of Polos placed inside the middle-stump, with a mirror angled to capture action from between the batter’s legs.

    As the digital age of broadcasting beckoned in the 1990s – at which point an arms race between BBC and Sky was in place over sports coverage, super slo-mo cameras were deployed, offering a forensic view of action, especially in the event of contentious calls by the umpire. The rise of technological innovation in broadcast even led the ECB to request the BBC’s help in introducing the third umpire. This proto-VAR system was first used in 1992 for the South Africa versus India series, where Karl Liebenberg adopted the third umpire role, using TV replays to aid on-field umpire Cyril Mitchley regarding a run-out decision that saw Sachin Tendulkar dismissed. Television had now become a part of cricket to an extent that would have seemed unimaginable just a few decades earlier.

    The BBC was at the top of its game by the late 1990s, but when you’re at the top, everyone wants to knock you down. Not only was subscription-based TV a challenger to the BBC Sport’s coverage – top-flight football had long fallen into the clutches of Sky – but a sport like cricket, with it’s well-to-do audience and break-heavy nature was pure catnip to commercially-funded broadcasters.

    And so, in October 1998 – just over sixty years from BBC-tv’s inaugural cricket coverage – came the announcement that Channel Four had secured the live rights to most England home Test matches, with Sky Sports owning exclusive rights to the remainder. That meant £103m pouring into the ECB coffers, and the BBC left with just the rights to radio coverage. Accompanying the TV rights over to Four was the BBC’s voice of cricket for 35 years, Richie Benaud. The silver-voiced Australian would be sticking at the Beeb for their World Cup coverage, but then he’d be making the move to the commercial broadcaster.

    The Times, Sat 31 Oct 1998

    And so, with live coverage of the 1999 Cricket World Cup, live TV cricket coverage on the BBC bowed out for a couple of decades. The rights to all live matches within the UK would become exclusive to Sky Sports from 2005, and a year later highlights of England home matches moved to Channel 5. It took until the 2006 Ashes before late-night cricketing highlights reappeared on the BBC.

    In 2010, even ITV started riffing on the BBC’s pain by securing live rights to the new Indian Premier League, before adding 2010/11 Ashes highlights to their line-up.

    At one point, BBC Studios-owned digital channel Dave had more live cricket rights than the BBC proper come 2016, when it procured live rights to show live coverage of the Caribbean Premier League.

    Luckily, even when it comes to high-level live sports rights, what goes around comes around, and in 2020 live cricket coverage finally returned to the BBC. The ECB’s decision to ensure both subscription and free-to-air TV had a share of the pie meant the BBC finally recovered some live rights, and as a result – starting with England’s T20 match against Pakistan on 30 August. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given free-to-air coverage and lockdown preventing a live crowd, the coverage was a ratings hit, the daytime BBC coverage attracting 1.7m viewers compared to Sky Sport’s average of 331,000.

    Luckily, for anyone who likes a sense of closure, live cricket is (at the time of writing) once more a fixture on BBC television (and, as programme trails inevitably add, iPlayer). Since 2020 both Men’s and Women’s matches in T20 and The Hundred have been broadcast live on BBCs One and Two, while highlights of One Day Internationals and The Ashes have enjoyed a place on primetime BBC Two.

    And long may it continue. Sky may have deep pockets, but money can’t buy history, and the BBC has that in spades. Or unusually wide cricket bats.

    EXTRA BONUS CONTENT: With huge thanks to the ever-splendid Paul R Jackson for providing me with a comprehensive list of names throughout the BBC’s cricketing history. Which is handy, because there was no way I could have included everyone in the write-up above. Over to you, Paul!

    BBC TV CRICKET (List by Paul R Jackson, October 2023)

    Presenters

    Peter West 1968-86
    Tony Lewis 1987-99 (Tests until 1998)
    David Gower 1998
    Isha Guha 2020-
    Ebony Rainsford-Brent 2022

    World Cup (1979; 1983; 1999)

    Frank Bough 1979
    Tony Lewis 1983; 1999
    Peter West 1983
    Tony Gubba 1983
    Jonathan Agnew 1999
    Steve Rider 1999
    John Inverdale 1999
    Dougie Donnelly 1999

    Cavalier Matches (1966-68)

    Frank Bough 1966-68
    Peter West 1966

    Sunday League Matches, BBC Two (1966 & 1969-89; 1993-?)

    Corbet Woodall 1966
    Frank Bough 1969-73
    Peter West 1971
    Mike Carey 1972
    Peter Walker 1973-89

    Gillette Cup

    Mike Carey 1972

    Benson & Hedges Cup

    Peter Walker 1976

    Commentators (with a tenure spanning three or more years)

    Aidan Crawley 1939;1946-48
    E.W. (Jim) Swanton 1946;1948-66
    R.C. (Raymond) Robertson-Glasgow 1946;1948
    Brian Johnston 1946-69
    P.G.H. (Percy) Fender 1946-48
    W.B.Franklin 1946-48
    Robert Hudson 1947-64
    Peter West 1947-86
    Richie Benaud (Australia) 1964-70; 1972-99
    John Arlott 1965-80
    Neil Durden-Smith 1966-68
    Jim Laker 1968-85
    Peter Walker 1974-89
    Christopher Martin-Jenkins 1981-86; 1988; 1995
    Tony Lewis 1981; 1983; 1986-(94)
    Ralph Dellor 1986-89; 1993
    Ray Illingworth 1987-93
    Jack Bannister 1988-99
    David Gower 1994-99
    Jonathan Agnew 1994; 1998-99; 2021-
    Simon Mann 1999; 2022
    Alison Mitchell 2020-
    Isha Guha 2020-
    Nick Bright 2021-


    Summarisers (with a tenure spanning three or more years)

    Jack Fingleton (Australia) 1956;1961
    Denis Compton 1958-75
    Richie Benaud (Australia) 1960; 1963
    Colin Cowdrey 1963; 1969
    Ted Dexter 1965; 1968-87
    Geoffrey Boycott 1969; 1977-81; 1990-(99)
    Ray Illlingworth 1975; 1984-93
    Tony Greig 1975-76; 1983
    Everton Weekes (West Indies) 1976; 1979
    Ian Chappell (Australia) 1977; 1989; 1993; 1997
    M.J.K (Mike) Smith 1978-81

    Tom Graveney 1979-(93)
    Peter Loader 1979; 1983
    Ian Botham 1980-81; 1983; 1988
    Tony Lewis 1981; 1985-86
    Bob Willis 1982-83; 1985-87
    Jack Bannister 1983-84; 1987
    David Acfield 1987-89?
    Mark Nicholas 1989; 1994
    Simon Hughes 1992; 1994-99
    David Gower 1993; 1998
    Colin Croft (West Indies) 1995; 1999
    Chris Broad 1995-99
    Ravi Shastri (India) 1996; 1999
    Dermot Reeve 1997; 1999
    Phil Tufnell 2020-

    Milestones:

    24/6/38 1st televised Test match: England v Australia at Lord’s

    27/4/69 1st televised Sunday league match: Middlesex v Yorkshire at Lord’s

    30/8/98 Fourth days play England v Sri Lanka at the Oval, last test match coverage until 2020

    30/8/20 1st live cricket on BBC since 1999 – T20 England v Pakistan, Emirates Old Trafford

    Phew. That was quite a long one, wasn’t it? Next update soon: which might not be quite as lengthy.

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  • Blue RePeter Returns: Another Fact-Based Addendum

    Blimey, you lot.

    Following yesterday’s extra batch of Blue Peter information from Paul R Jackson, Daniel James Webb has written in (okay, he posted in the comments, but I’m trying to get a Blue Peter aesthetic going) with the following list of details of presenter reunions for each landmark anniversary. Take it away, Daniel!

    20th anniversary (16th Oct 1978): 7 from 9 living ex-presenters present (77.78%)

    Anita was missed when they did the research for this programme, and subsequently left out of the show’s official history for the next 20 years. John N was filming Go With Noakes on the day, but sent a pre-recorded message on film.

    25th anniversary (17th Oct 1983): 9 from 13 (69.23%)

    Anita remained forgotten. John N and Lesley were not there, but clips of them were shown at the appropriate point during the presenter parade. Leila was also not there, and, as far as I can glean from the archive, not mentioned during the presenter parade, presumably as no footage of her time on the show survived.

    30th anniversary (17th Oct 1988)

    No presenter reunion as such, although Val presented the O.B. during which the Outstanding Endeavour Award was announced, and Simon G, Peter D, Janet and Sarah all sent pre-recorded messages on VT.

    35th anniversary (14th Oct 1993): 13 from 18 (72.22%)

    Peter P and Janet each appeared on VT introducing their favourite moment on the show. Anita was still forgotten. Christopher W and Yvette were not there and not directly mentioned in the part of the show regarding past presenters, although as Mark’s favourite moment was being deafened by Yvette at Blackpool Pleasure Beach she was at least seen in archive footage.

    40th anniversary (16th Oct 1998): 24 from 25 (92.31%)

    The only living presenters that weren’t there were Anita West (whose association with the show emerged in the press very soon afterwards, resulting in her being invited to take part in the Blue Peter Panto that Christmas with various other ex-presenters) and the then-recently-departed Romana.

    45th anniversary (15th Oct 2003)

    No returning presenters this time. Instead viewer Ryan Gilpin became a presenter for one show.

    50th anniversary (16th Oct 2008)

    No returning presenters again, but Christopher T’s granddaughter was interviewed.

    55th anniversary (17th Oct 2013)

    No returning presenters yet again.

    60th anniversary (16th Oct 2018): 27 from 33 (81.82%)

    Matt Baker appeared via either pre-record or satellite (not sure which) from Broadcasting House in London, as he was doing The One Show that evening. Mark Curry was explicitly mentioned in the show as having become ill at the last minute. Three consecutive presenters, Simon G, Chris W and Tina were all absent and unmentioned, and the way the other presenters were lined up in consecutive order meant that an obvious space at one end would have been precisely where Simon, Chris and Tina would have gone if they’d been there, which made me suspect they had in fact turned up and something of some sort may have happened before transmission that prevented them being in the live show, although that is entirely speculation on my part. Gethin Jones also seems to have been missing too.

    65th anniversary (13th Oct 2023)

    No full reunion, but Matt, Radzi and Lindsey returned and took part in the show.

    Lovely stuff. A (still solely spiritual) Broken TV Gold Badge to Daniel for all that excellent work. Now, unless someone is able to go even further with, I don’t know, an exact transcript of Christopher Trace’s inner monologue from the first episode, that’s probably where the Blue Peter ship sets sail from this blog, at least for now.

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