You did completely miss it. It was shown at a Kaleidoscope event, and then put out on the mythical Missing Believed Wiped DVD.. which somehow has made its way on to YouTube, such is life!
I think I have only ever heard the Westward handover to TSW too. Very strange transition indeed. The bit that cracks me up the most is when someone shouts "Jolly good!" after their slug of champers. Interesting newspaper articles from the period too, thank you. Amusing that the best (and almost only) thing they can find to say about Westward is that it gave Angela Rippon her first break.
IIRC Westward was suffering from continual boardroom battles immediately before the franchise round, and Bridget Plowden and the IBA board were not particularly impressed. It may have assisted with TSW's takeover of Westward though.
...did I
completely miss
the moment when the Westward/TSW handover was finally found?! That was a holy grail of lost TV for years, I've only ever heard it as a low-quality audio recording before (PP file 10695, complete with my comments from age 17) before. Amazing to finally see it.
Always thought the actual TSW ident was played at the handover, rather than a (slightly bizarre) closeup of someone's champagne erupting. Explains the odd 'pop' sound at least which I assumed for years was just ambient noise from the audio recorder's house...the audio at least reveals that the full ident was played just after, linking into the Peter Cook movie.
There were two more tweaks when the new franchises kicked in.
Although Granada lost the Lake District and some Pennine relays, it gained (from ATV Midlands) the Buxton relay.
(As far as I know the Beeb also switched the relay from W Midlands, to North West around the same time)
And HTV West gained Marlborough from Southern. (The Beeb had always carried their West region from the relay)
The three extra relays in Norfolk to restore Anglia, also carried BBC 1 East (but not BBC 2 or C4, so viewers still had to use Belmont for them, as the article alludes to)
The three extra relays in Norfolk to restore Anglia, also carried BBC 1 East (but not BBC 2 or C4, so viewers still had to use Belmont for them, as the article alludes to)
Does one of those relays cover Sandringham? ISTR hearing HMQ prefered Look East to Look North...
Wasn't there a bit of beef between Southern and TVS, with Southern not allowing the new company access to it's building until their franchise ended?
While it all looks like sour grapes, I believe there was more to it than this. Southern wanted to continue as an independent production company for the new Channel 4 and retain its facilities to hire out to other indies. So they held on to them for a while. For whatever reason this didn't quite go to plan, but key figures from Southern went on to found Limehouse Studios which were incredibly successful in the 80s (the home of programmes such as Treasure Hunt, Spitting Image and Network 7). Limehouse eventually moved to what is now Fountain.
Last edited by Whataday on 24 October 2016 9:32pm
:-(
A former member
That isnt the full song... it was included in the Last Day by day which got transmitted ( song in question come from gala dinner for the jumped up managers...)
Don't forget the bitter speech from said AGM that was also broadcast as part of said news programme. Why the hell they thought the need to broadcast that... it was pure petulance!
I was looking for that one to put up on here. Watched it by chance about six months ago. An interesting watch.
TT
ttt
I believe the plans for Southern to continue as an indie were quite advanced, even attempting to hawk off 'Worzel Gummidge' off to the BBC, Channel 4 and at least one ITV station.
It would explain the sudden spike in prime time productions from the company in 1981, up to that point they were fairly quiet on that front. Too little, too late perhaps?
