"50 Years of ITV London" documentary

[Deleted]

Theare was a mention on this forum about "ITV1 had a programme about London independent TV ", which features a rare b/w clip of "Rolling Stones" on "Frost on Saturday" show '68.

Those who saw this documentary, can you confirm this?

Thanks in advance

[Simon Winters]

Yes, this was shown on ITV London in September 2005. On the sunday afternoon of ITV's 50th anniversary week, each region did an one hour documentary about ITV in the region. These were transmitted simultaneously, so to record the lot you had to have a lot of people helping you!

The one you mentioned is called simply '50 Years of ITV London'.

It had several clips form the early LWT Frost programmes. There is a short entry for this programme on the BFI Database.

The programme is actually quite rubbish, with virtually nothing from Thames and Rediffusion. The show's opening titles is supposed to be a montage of ITV London station idents - but has the ATV Midlands ident by mistake. Probably produced by an eighteen year old researcher with no knowledge or interest in tv history.

[Deleted]

Thank you very much for info!

Was anyone able to record it?

[robb]

yeah i did and the HTV one

[Kev Mulrenan]

Anyone know if Tyne Tees will do any celebrations next year like ITV Wales?

[Andy Howells]

That would be good, I grew up in the Tyne Tees region and remember many good shows and presenters, I seem to remember seeing a video tape a few years back reduced in Woolworths with clips from Tyne tees history , when I went back fr it, it had gone anyone know of it?

[Simon Winters]

That's the 'Tyne Tees Time Capsule'. There was also a Yorkshire version and two Granada versions - one for Manchester and one for Liverpool. All four videos from the series come up regularly on Ebay. They are not very good!

I very much doubt if there will ever be any more ITV regional station 'lookbacks'. The Wales one is only because it is a 'nation'. ITV have just totally ignored 50 years of ITV West, which has the very same anniversary as Wales, being until recently one and the same franchise. The series currently running on ITV1 Wales has not given one second to the West part of the franchise.

In fact, ITV are constantly playing down regional coverage - encouraging people to go to ITV local internet services in the hope of enticing them off the 6pm local news I suspect.

I believe ITV trying to ditch the remaining regional material at the earliest possible opportunity. Why would they want to celebrate 50 years of Tyne Tees - it only reminds viewers that regional output has completely gone.

This Government has got a lot to answer for - allowing Granada to destroy ITV!!!

[Andy Howells]

Thanks for that info Simon