Sunday morning TV memories

We all remember Saturdays but what about Sundays?

One of the reasons T4 really worked for C4 was because the BBC and ITV didn't have the same presence on Sundays as they did Saturdays. Fully Booked is the only landmark show CBBC really had on Sundays that I remember, and it kind of felt it was there as it wasn't quite good enough for BBC1 on Saturdays.

Also in the 90s BBC2 did a bit more for the older audience with the likes of The Sunday Show, This Morning With Richard Not Judy and I think TOTP Play at the end of the decade. Other than that the biggest thing I remember CBBC doing is rerunning classic Grange Hill.

As for ITV I think they had the Disney Club which straddled GMTV and ITV itself, but it never really caught the public's attention in the way Saturday shows did.

It was TOTP Plus (but I believe it used the same set as the Play UK version:

(Apt that it’s from Father’s Day)

I loved the early afternoon bbc two line ups, especially as I loathed the fact that Eastenders took up too much of the schedule, that, religious services and politics shows were a turn off for me.

As you say T4 worked because it appealed to the hangover crowd (especially when it was restructured in 1999 with dropping of the Waltons, later start time and teen/young adult programmes only). The closest terrestrial competition would have been ‘The Mag’ on Channel 5 from 1997, but this later morphed into a Sunday only debate show.

Other memories as you mentioned Brekkie were Fully Booked, Disney Club on ITV, later CITV took the slot with Warner brothers cartoons, etc., the classic grange hills and in later years the CBBC show ‘Sub Zero’.

TMWRJN was a masterpiece. I also rather enjoyed The Morning After Show, presented by Simon Amstell - not that I can really remember much about it and there doesn’t appear to be a huge amount on YouTube from it.

It probably was early afternoon rather than morning but I remember watching Dawson's Creek on the T4 strand. (Oddly, I'm pretty sure there was a time when Channel 4 used to air Dawson's Creek at around 7pm on summer Saturday evenings, also.)

To think that was over 20 years ago... insane!

I get a bit fed up when people get misty-eyed about weekend morning telly and say it's rubbish these days when kids have several channels, and up until not very long ago there'd be absolutely nothing on Sundays for kids at all.

If you were to look in the late eighties, the Beeb only had regular Sunday morning shows between October and January, when the Open University was on its winter break. The rest of the time there'd be half an hour on BBC1 at 9am with a Play School/Bus repeat and then a kids' religious show like Umbrella, before the rest of the morning was further education and religion. When C4 started breakfast broadcasting in 1989 there'd be a few kids shows, but after 9.25 there'd be politics and Asian programmes, with one other kids show at 11am - usually a repeat and usually catering for deaf or disabled children.

ITV was probably the best for kids' shows on a Sunday and TV-am would do a few, until David Frost took over at 8am. ITV would also have kids' shows and between 1987 and 1989, that would involve a spin-off of the Saturday morning shows. Get Fresh, No 73, Motormouth and Ghost Train all had Sunday spin-offs, but they'd be pretty low-key, usually a few pre-recorded links around cartoons, with Border producing the Get Fresh and Ghost Train spin-offs. They'd only last an hour or so. Then in 1989 the Saturday spin-offs were replaced by the Disney Club, but that only ran in the winter, and in the summer it was back to films and repeats.

So in the summer circa 1990, the kids' output on a Sunday morning would be...
7am-8am All kinds of oddities from TV-am
8am - 9.25 A few things on C4
9am-9.30 Playbus and a religious show on BBC1
9.30-10.45am A film and a repeat of Follyfoot and the like on ITV
11am-11.30 A kids show on C4
...so most Sundays you'd be absolutely bored witless. Indeed I often think about Sundays back then, it seems incredible to think that all the shops would be closed and there'd be nothing on the telly, God alone knows what we used to do. I remember somebody on Twitter saying "no wonder the Top 40 used to feel like Live Aid" because it was by a million miles the most exciting thing broadcast on a Sunday.

That said, between October and January when the OU was off and there'd be kids' shows on the Beeb it seemed very exciting. I know it sounds idiotic now but it seemed amazing that you'd have about four or five hours, it felt like it went on forever. I used to think Simon Parkin and Andi Peters were a good pairing, and I really loved Boxpops. This was the line-up I most remember - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/1989-12-03 And it seemed especially exciting because you'd only get it for a few months, and one of those would be interrupted for the start of the RAC Rally.

In the nineties they started doing CBBC all year round, and Sunday lunchtimes became established on both BBC2 and C4 as a youth spot with shows like The Sunday Show and Simpsons and Shooting Stars repeats.

I can't speak for the 80s, by then I'd discovered girls, but I seem to remember 70s Sundays LWT made a bit of an effort for children (while Southern didn't). Thunderbirds or other Gerry Anderson stuff at lunchtime, plus Catweasel late afternoon. ATV used to show Space 1999, or UFO Sunday lunchtimes. The Beeb did nothing.

You're spot on about the Top 40 at 5pm, the whole nation stopped for that !

That was part of T4 wasn't it after he quit Popworld, and IIRC was actually on in the afternoon. Think it only ran for one series.

There were cartoons on T4 for a couple of years or so after that until around 2001, I know CatDog and Johnny Bravo turned up frequently in that time, but I guess a fair few older viewers liked those shows too.

I went to a public rehearsal of TMWRNJ, at Riverside Studios where the main show was filmed - essentially the same as the recorded version but testing out the material with an audience before it went to camera the next day. I stood out by both arriving a bit late and being by far the youngest there at ten years old - and as we sat down, Lee & Herring paused their script and started talking to me in the audience, clearly amazed/happy that they were attracting a young crowd and asking me what my favourite parts of the show were. It’s definitely a highlight of that era for me and they waved to me in the cafe after when I was having a Coca Cola with my parents.

The series only very recently all appeared on YouTube and it’s rather astonishing the things they got away with saying and broadcasting for the time slot.

Sundays have mornings?

My memories of Sunday mornings on BBC One and ITV in the early to mid 80s were that they largely comprised adult education and DIY/consumer programmes (such as Make it Count, Me and My Camera, Build a Better Bathroom, Be Your Own Boss); magazine programmes for those with special needs or “handicaps” (as we said then without any malice) such as Link, Getting On, and the long running Let’s Go with Brian Rix. Morning Worship was always shown at 10am. There was also kids show to start the day on BBC One. Remember The Sunday Gang - Bible readings, songs etc. Some ITV regions inserted their farming magazine before noon.

Until 1987, there were no commercials on ITV before noon (except on Saturdays) so Sunday morning was a good time for anoraks to see the “interval” - a slide or menu between programmes accompanied by music - unless the region was feeling adventurous and played a pop video as a filler!

Off topic: the last time I remember an unscheduled pop video being shown was on Tyne Tees in 1996, at about 11.10 one night before Prisoner. Say You’ll Be There by the Spice Girls. Perhaps TTT’s regional programme after News at Ten was shorter than YTV’s, so there was time to kill. I think everything was pretty much transmitted from/via YTV by that point, so Leeds probably played it out - possibly even to both regions.

I think we're pushing it now to say 1989 was "not very long ago".