Programmes Certain Companies just didn't like

Survival? As in Anglia's wildlife documentary series? What was that doing on between kids shows? If I was in charge I would've had the birthday slot on before Survival, because I bet a lot of kids would've switched off or put BBC One on.

There's a clip on either YouTube or TV Ark which shows Survival listed as one of the Watch It! programmes one afternoon back in 1982. There's also a Thames Watch It! link which has Little House on the Prarie in the kids slot.

Make of that what you will.

When I was a child, ( 1970s) ITV tended to show 'kidult' shows on Thursdays, and nothing networked, perhaps they couldn't be bothered to compete against the BBC Blue Peter powerhouse? The Time Tunnel on Thames, LHotP on Southern, and Fireball XL5 on ATV spring to mind

I believe HTV also had Crossroads for years at 5.20., TSW also moved crossroads to 17.20 aswell. STV never moved crossroads until Bloackbusters second series.



Although Little house wasn't networked it was part networked. To be fair I used to watch the series when I was a kid when it was shown on Ch4, The Waltons also seem to do pretty well on T4, back in the 90s awell, for no good reason.

Also remember up until 1981 the 15.45 slot tended to be fill by content made by the rest of the big 5.

Southern showed Crossroads at 17:20 too, I can't remember whether TVS carried on with that.

Channel wanted to keep Crossroads at 18:35, so when TSW came along with their bright ideas, Channel were forced to timeshift it, and obtained IBA dispensation to use UMatic for non news use

TVS Did move Crossroads to 18.35, there had the bright idea of having Coast to coast starting at 17.30, that never lasted long. Im sure TSW moved it because it give them lots of extra time for that rabbit.

Channel never moved Crossroads back to 18.35 until Autumn 1983 I thought we dubunked that as the main reason for Channel switching to TVS. When that change happened there still took TSW, 18.30 show twice a week, while having local content at 17.15 bar Mon and Fri for emmerdale farm, or something like that.

A bloke called Andrew or Alister (bear in mind I was fairly young so my recollection isn't 100%)... it may have been Alister Pirrie who went on to host Razzmatazz but I'm not sure. Lyn definitely left in 1979 though and hung around as a freelancer, presenting programmes for a few years.

I remember I used to watch the Tyne Tees show until around 10.30 when the film came on and then either switched over to Swap Shop or went out. Loved TISWAS when it finally reached my tellybox, hated Number 73 although by then I was probably not their target audience any more

Wildlife programmes are quite popular with kids. In the real world it's impossible to draw a hard demarcation line between programmes for children and adults.

I'm not sure we ever have sorted out the reason ?

Was it because the IBA discovered they could arrange a higher quality feed from Rowridge rather than Stockland Hill, and so Channel were forced to adopt TVS as their 'buddy' mainland station, or did Channel request to the IBA that they wanted to be tied to TVS, and the IBA engineered the new link ?

Well, in 1981 Lyn Spencer was presenting the first series of Razzmatazz for Tyne Tees.



In 1988, the Beeb showed Wildlife on One during But First This, I remember watching it...
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1988-08-25

In those days of course you had Animals in Action on Children's ITV repurposing footage from Survival, and though these shows were adult programmes, they had a huge family audience so were seemingly considered suitable enough for repeating in children's time if they needed filling. Of course shows like Swap Shop and Ask Aspel would regularly show archive wildlife clips as an item. And there were certainly a lot of occasions where ostensibly "adult" programmes were shown in kids time, in the summer of 1990 for example But First This showed Our House, which was an American family drama - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1990-08-24

It's been mentioned here before but up until the launch of Children's ITV in 1983, Thursdays usually wouldn't have any networked kids shows, even in the Watch It era, and the various regions would show a family film, or indeed something with a family audience like Little House On The Prairie or Survival. I don't know why that was the case, I know HTV did Welsh language kids shows on a Thursday so maybe the idea was that all the regions would have the opportunity to show their own local kids' programmes on that day. But hardly any of the regions could be bothered doing local kids shows. I dunno.

We had London Bridge in the Granada Region for a while. Don;t forget we also had Revelations which was a combined Granada, Carlton, Central Production so that is probably why we had London Bridge too.

I remember watching Emmerdale Farm back in August 1986 on a Monday Evening in the TSW Region. A post earlier said it aired Mondays and Fridays for a while there. Were they the same episodes shown on other days of the week across the network or were they slightly behind?

I remember at one stage Emmerdale Farm being shown at 6:30pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the Granada Region again mid eighters but can remember the exact year. Did Yorkshire TV as makers show the episodes first?

I remember the reason Sky Analogue never carried L!VE TV was because Sky owner News Corp saw Mirror Group as the deadly rivals. The short lived revival of L!VE TV was on Sky Digital.