Channel 4

[timmunton]

C4 was overall excellent in its early years
(I don't include stuff like the American football).
Lots of old weird short & occasionally feature length animation from round the world, especially eastern Europe, much of which was brilliant.
BBC2 had previously showed some similar stuff for a long time (even BBC1 had, with children's stuff like the Czech "Slip and Slap" & so on).
C4 really did a good job on it & I increasingly focussed on it. I'm especially grateful that they introduced me to the work of, who then became my favourite film director, Karel Zeman.

Even Brookside was ok for a few years or so; it expressed more of a Ken Loach type of kitchen sink vibe; basically it had a sort of humanitarian respect & compassion for its characters, even when they were dodgy. Not unlike its creator's previous series Grange Hill, in that respect.
Then later it was awful, apeing Eastenders sensationalism & that method of being essentially highly cynical; beneath the melodramatic ups & downs a feeling that those making it had that Eastenders type sense of a sort of contempt for the characters & people like them.

Things like After Dark were good fun. C4 also showed philosophical discussions sometimes which could be interesting.
There was also the sometimes whacked out experimental (but not animated) low budget short film series "Ghosts In The Machine". Mainly, possibly completely, featuring experimental work recorded on videotape rather than film.
These varied & could be rather pretentious sometimes but were overall a good effort.
My favourite was "The Assignation" based on Poe with Eddy Tenpole-Tudor, which is a blast; visually over the top & weird in a good way, a bit pretentious (possibly knowingly so) & quite poetic & a little bit pleasantly absurd.

This all stopped (though maybe there were a few residual sputters for a while) in the early or mid '90s. At that point the channel to my mind perversely abused its charter (new management no doubt) which said it had to be innovative in form & content & made all sorts of trash & piffle, but with new angles of presenting this stuff, so as to technically be seen to be fulfilling its brief.

At that point myself and a few like minded friends felt vaguely robbed.

[rebeccajansen]

Thanks for the feedback, info and thoughts! Sadly the cheap to make/trashy/reality things have been a real scourge all around and not just via Channel 4. I remember one of the early cable or satellite services BSB was very reliant on re-running older quality shows and then got gobbled up like all those once separate ITV regions. That and the expanding number of adverts (rather than charging more for fewer and keeping people from simply flipping, muting or fast forwarding).

I can't understand why U.S. 'Football' was something Channel 4 would have sought out. I'd have sooner seen it become an annex or supplement to ITV sports on say cricket which had a strong minority following, or football matches of interest to a minority community but not a big draw commercially. Perhaps having an international or world/multicultural outlook circa 1982 was more unusual than I can know, but Channel 4 does seems like an opportunity missed by being too often a more or less fourth rate channel with a smattering of highlights and things not available elsewhere. Also perhaps I imagine a curiosity for television from outside the Commonwealth/U.S.A. as having more wider appeal than it would actually have had. That it got even less interesting or unique later is a bit like damning with faint praise.

It's been a fascinating subject alongside the histories of the various ITV regions and their regulatory bodies... from the ideal to the reality to the ultimate bottom line result. New Dawn Fades as Ian Curtis sang might be my ident theme for Channel 4. It's funny the things that could be afforded and were still possible even during recessions and depressions in the past that are now considered luxury. Then again some people probably do buy DVD sets of practically new hit shows while here we tend to most long for older shows of quality since lost! A couple of dozen 24 hour channels and not much on... before only three or four and there seemed lots of good things.

I do like the early Brookside, it seemed realer than other soaps of the time. There was a character named Lucy that went to CND marches and such that I connected with, and I suppose others might've felt a realistic connection with other characters. Later it got sensationalist like the usual attention grabbers and became far less easy to buy into, so for awhile it was definitely something unique.

[timmunton]

I agree with a lot of what you say Rebecca. Though I would say that, overall, the early C4 in my memory/assessment seems quite a lot better to me than how you rate it yourself:
This may well be for fairly selfish reasons on my part! - quite a few of my friends and myself (I was 19 when it started) were very much liking unusual animation, philosophy etc. as mentioned & also very much into psychedelia & '60s culture & old stuff in general & so on - & of course C4 repeated many 60s classics eg.as well as Prisoner & Munsters also Danger Man, Avengers, Car 54, Batman, Mr Ed & so on.
Regarding all these interests (& some others too probably) it seemed like the C4 listings were liberally peppered with such stuff on a daily basis.

Basically we felt like it was catering to our tastes quite nicely & far more than the other channels! Hence my fond recollections & a feeling of being slightly robbed later.
I can see your point however and that if not so many of a person's interests, or indeed those of society's less represented social strands, were catered for then yes, it wouldn't have seemed so good. And it would have had a much wider social value if it had done the things you mention

It did seem to be generally & noticeably a lot more tolerant & appreciative of minority groups (eg. gay people) compared to the other channels - which made it feel positive & likeable & gave it a sort of anti-authoritarian vibe because this contrasted, quite a lot back then, with the tone of the other 3 channels.

[rebeccajansen]

I can only wish I could've seen some of the shows, although I may have and not known they were Channel 4. It's been disappointing how little mention most of the programming receives in Dorothy Hobson's history of the early years book so it's helping to educate me right here!

I refreshed my memory of The Tube the other day and the non-music segments were unique I think, and probably just getting Toy Dolls doing Dig That Groove, Baby would be priceless at the time.

[garygraham]

This is TV-AM at the end of 1986 discussing the red triangle which Channel 4 included in the corner when it showed various films late at night. Looking back that seems very much in line with some of the pretence used in later years to pull in audiences. 

[Kev Hunter]

Dec 23, 2021 21:39:31 GMT Richard Marple said:

It was probably Victor Lewis-Smith's TV Offal which poked fun at Ayds, as the show normally took no prisoners!

Speaking of TV Offal, who could forget the Gay Daleks? Not sure it whether it would be screened now..

[Richard Marple]

Channel 4 seemed to be an influence on BBC2 commissioning more programming that wouldn't be out of place on C4, though this trend had started in a small way a few years earlier.

[rebeccajansen]

I've done some more digging and learning and the early Channel 4 show Black On Black is the kind of 'minortiy' program I was expecting to find them to have aired! It was merely a title to me before but now i understand something about what it did and showed. It and other shows get no mention in one of the published histories of the channel, and is simply a title mentioned in another. I've also found out about sitcoms like No Problem! and others now. It's too bad some of the books are so focused on Isaacs and the well known smattering of 'hit' shows.

So it was delivering on it's remit to serve minority communities, at least in that early ten or twelve years, more than I had previously been able to know which is good. Then the era of the CEO accountants, cheap ratings grabber shows, selling off, firing, subcontracting, out-sourcing, more adverts allowed, and digital quantity with a sort of technical quality but lack of substance, hit pretty much everywhere.

[garygraham]

Around 1993 there was a discussion programme called "Doing It With You Is Taboo." About black men dating white women from what I remember. I have it recorded but haven't watched it since. 

[petercheck]

Jan 22, 2022 20:06:22 GMT rebeccajansen said:

I've done some more digging and learning and the early Channel 4 show Black On Black is the kind of 'minortiy' program I was expecting to find them to have aired! It was merely a title to me before but now i understand something about what it did and showed. 

Black On Black was co-hosted by Pauline Black of The Selecter. I recall Toots and The Maytels guesting on the show circa 1985.

[Mark Tinkler]

I think "Black on Black alternated with "Eastern Eye".

Slightly different was "Irish Angle" that came from a couple of suppliers in the Republic of Ireland that C4 showed on Sunday mornings...

[Richard Marple]

I think C4 tried showing RTE's Late Late Show for a time.

[Mark Tinkler]

Yes they did - might have been part of The Irish Angle - I can't remember it that was it - a long time ago. I was working at Channel 4 Presentation at the time...

[petercheck]

Jan 23, 2022 21:54:58 GMT Mark Tinkler said:

Yes they did - might have been part of The Irish Angle - I can't remember it that was it - a long time ago. I was working at Channel 4 Presentation at the time...

They definitely did in 1993: Jerry Lee Lewis was on the show, and Channel 4 showed a slightly edited version of the Irish broadcast. 

[rebeccajansen]

Jan 22, 2022 23:22:08 GMT petercheck said:

Black On Black was co-hosted by Pauline Black of The Selecter. I recall Toots and The Maytals guesting on the show circa 1985.

I loved all the 2-Tone ska artists, plus Toots, plus Buster Bloodvessel and Bad Manners! Now I'm really wishing for a Black On Black DVD set (and while were at it the 'Dance Craze' film finally on DVD too).

It looks like Channel 4 and BBC2 stayed fairly steady at around 10% of viewers for many year, but the first two years of Channel 4 people were still adjusting sets to get it I think. Those early more 'commercial' hit series and U.S. football were necessary to help get people interested in going to that bother I suppose, so that's pretty smart that they did have an eye towards that!