Channel 4 on the Channel Islands

just a quick question - we all know in the early days that itv stations handled advertising locally on channel 4 ... did channel tv do as every other station and try to sell advertising on channel 4 (because i would imagine they'd have just about managed to fill their own air time!) or did tvs do the honors?

It was probably TVS as I have never seen a local [channel island] advert shown on Channel 4.

A good example I can recall would be the furniture store "Courts" adverts run in the last decade or so that featured Bruce Forsythe as a judge (complete with wig and all). He would say at the end something like "see you in court!"

But here in the channel islands (well Guernsey at least) our branch traded as Brennans Langlois (Langlois pronounced "Long-wa" by the way). So when they filmed the adverts they also got Bruce to say "see you in Brennans Langlois" as well for the CTV showings complete with the visual name changes on screen but the Channel 4 showings seen in the islands were "as intended for the mainland" ie. the Courts brand.

I always wondered why the Brennans longlois adverts were 10 times better than all the other static adverts with cheap music on them, which we still seem to get today.

The only decent advert on Channel is the Rivoli Jewellers advert. Now that is a good ad! Although I remember the Voisins one being rather good too.

I would've thought that in the early days of Channel 4 that the Channel Islands adverts would be handled by TSW as I think TSW was the original ITV region that provided the network feed to the Channel Islands before it was changed to TVS/Meridian.

I bet it seems rather strange to Islanders during the ad-breaks on Channel these days when an advert for somewhere like Southampton pops up when Channel haven't put a regional advert in themselves.

Geographically, aren't the Channel Islands due-South of South West England, rather than South/South-East England?

Therefore, having Westcountry as their default feed would be more sensible than Meridian. After all, they get BBC South West, not BBC South!

Originally, Channel Television picked up their feed of the ITV Network from Westward Television (based in Plymouth), but they had an agreement with Southern Television to take their some of their programmes too. Remember that regional schedules were very different from each other in those days! They received the incoming feeds off-air with television aerials pointing at the nearest mainland transmitters.

However, in 1982, both Westward and Southern lost their licenses (to TSW and TVS respectively). Channel TV set up an arrangement to take an off-air feed from TSW, but the new Plymouth broadcaster turned their schedule upside down, replacing popular networked shows with regional programmes and moving programmes to odd slots. Crossroads, for instance, was moved from 6.35pm to 5.20pm causing a good deal of protest on the islands. Channel arranged to tape such programmes and put them out in the original slot until they reached a new agreement with TVS in 1985 to take the network feed from them. TVS lost their franchise in 1992 and Channel's Master feed then came from TVS's successor Meridian.

Much of this information is taken from The Continuity Booth

Now returning to the threads actualy subject, presumably Channel's early Channel Four relays came from TSW until 1985 and then from TVS until Channel Four took over the transmission of it's own advertisements, when I suppose it will have become part of C4's Southern region.