[
Home and Away probably did rate better at 6, but also it would have rated better there than the alternative which they showed at 5:10.
I remember a 15-1 question where William G Stewart asked what was on ITV at 6pm on weekdays. The contestant didn’t know and the “correct” answer was Home and Away.
[
Home and Away probably did rate better at 6, but also it would have rated better there than the alternative which they showed at 5:10.
I remember a 15-1 question where William G Stewart asked what was on ITV at 6pm on weekdays. The contestant didn’t know and the “correct” answer was Home and Away.
How would that have worked if the contestant local area had H&W at 17.10? like TT? Westcounty or TVS. strangely most did have it at six oclock going in to the local news at 18.28
[
Home and Away probably did rate better at 6, but also it would have rated better there than the alternative which they showed at 5:10.
I remember a 15-1 question where William G Stewart asked what was on ITV at 6pm on weekdays. The contestant didn’t know and the “correct” answer was Home and Away.
How would that have worked if the contestant local area had H&W at 17.10? like TT? Westcounty or TVS. strangely most did have it at six oclock going in to the local news at 18.28
They may have done. It was a bad question!
For me, Home and Away was always 5:10, because that’s what it was in the two regions I had access to, UTV and Border.
Last edited by Richard on 6 April 2018 4:05pm
:-(
A former member
To be fair Border did move H&W around alot in the 90s. Most of the companies moved H&W back to the 17.10 around September 1998 in prep for the news changes due in March 1999. With Only Anglia, Central and HTV keeping H&W at 18pm ( the first two had Shortland street at 17.10)
To be fair Border did move H&W around alot in the 90s. Most of the companies moved H&W back to the 17.10 around September 1998 in prep for the news changes due in March 1999. With Only Anglia, Central and HTV keeping H&W at 18pm ( the first two had Shortland street at 17.10)
I am pretty sure Border had Home and Away at 6:30PM during a certain part of not most of the run.
In Granadaland we had 5:10 then 6:00 which kept rotating every couple of years until then finally settled on 5:10 when Granada Tonight returned to 6PM in 1997.
I suspect the Good Evening Britain was a throwaway line in a bigger interview which the reporter/sub just picked up and developed. As a "wouldn't this be nice?" as opposed to a considered idea. Certainly, while ITV is doing perfectly well in the afternoon/early evening slot as it stands there's no reason to change.
On the logic that it happens in the US: a lot of other things happen in the US that don't work here. Late-night chat shows and, in fact, the original concept of Good Morning Britain (before Piers Morgan came in and it became personality-led). The US has a bigger audience to target, states which are equivalent to the size of Britain, so it's more viable to do stuff like local TV and local news because if you get x% of 35 million, say, that's going to be bigger than x% of five million.
As it stands, short of the likes of the long-debated Scottish Six, the current set-up is the best way of doing it. Some regions struggle to fill half an hour, London has never really quite worked out what to do with its local news, and The One Show can always be dropped or crashed into by those who need the extra time if needs be.
Mentioning London, remember it took the BBC until 1984 before they gave London and the South East a proper dedicated local news service. From 1959 until 1984 their local news output was always provided by the national presenters, especially during the Nationwide and Sixty Minutes eras. Even ITV didn't bother to cater for London news properly until 1977 with Thames News launched. So local news is not straight forward here as it is in the US.
I suspect the Good Evening Britain was a throwaway line in a bigger interview which the reporter/sub just picked up and developed. As a "wouldn't this be nice?" as opposed to a considered idea. Certainly, while ITV is doing perfectly well in the afternoon/early evening slot as it stands there's no reason to change.
On the logic that it happens in the US: a lot of other things happen in the US that don't work here. Late-night chat shows and, in fact, the original concept of Good Morning Britain (before Piers Morgan came in and it became personality-led). The US has a bigger audience to target, states which are equivalent to the size of Britain, so it's more viable to do stuff like local TV and local news because if you get x% of 35 million, say, that's going to be bigger than x% of five million.
As it stands, short of the likes of the long-debated Scottish Six, the current set-up is the best way of doing it. Some regions struggle to fill half an hour, London has never really quite worked out what to do with its local news, and The One Show can always be dropped or crashed into by those who need the extra time if needs be.
Mentioning London, remember it took the BBC until 1984 before they gave London and the South East a proper dedicated local news service. From 1959 until 1984 their local news output was always provided by the national presenters, especially during the Nationwide and Sixty Minutes eras. Even ITV didn't bother to cater for London news properly until 1977 with Thames News launched. So local news is not straight forward here as it is in the US.
So what did Thames do before '77?
The
Today
programme, not really news as such, more of a showbiz/chat show (bit like a 70s version of The One Show), which gained national infamy in Dec 1976 for the Sex Pistols incident. It arguably killed off the show, and it was replaced by Thames at Six/Thames News the following year,
The
Today
programme, not really news as such, more of a showbiz/chat show (bit like a 70s version of The One Show), which gained national infamy in Dec 1976 for the Sex Pistols incident. It arguably killed off the show, and it was replaced by Thames at Six/Thames News the following year,
And yet didn't it launch because of criticisms that Rediffusion's London coverage wasn't up to scratch?
I'm much too young to remember it, but Today seems like an odd beast - there are some clips around of fairly highbrow discussions on the programme and it seems to have been a bit of a vehicle for Eamonn Andrews. Apparently the original studio at Television House on Kingsway had windows facing the street so viewers could see the show go out (shades of the One Show again!). Sadly, there seem to be no complete shows online.
I wonder how long it would have lasted if it hadn't been for the Sex Pistols fiasco. I can very dimly remember Thames at Six, which seemed to bridge the gap between Today and Thames News in the late 70s. (This is supposed to have been the first Thames at Six, there's a longer clip lurking around somewhere.)