A PHONE rings in the Northern Newscast office at the Granada TV Centre in Manchester. News editor David Plowright answers it, then turns to reporter Terry Dobson and says: “Four feet snow drifts on the Snake Pass. Take the radiophone car — and hurry!”

Dobson grabs his overcoat; rushes to the waiting car. The engine of the black saloon is ticking over as he slides into the seat beside the driver. Off towards the hills — and another eyewitness story.

Granada’s car was the first in the North to be fitted with the new telephone equipment. It has given on-the-spot communication in remote country districts where telephones are rare.

As the car races along slush-covered roads, Dobson makes his first call to base. “Car A102 calling exchange … car A102 calling exchange.”

Twenty miles away on Winter Hill, only a stone’s throw from the ITA transmitter, stands the GPO receiving station through which Dobson’s call passes to the new Peterloo exchange in Manchester.

Dobson, in the car, and Plowright, in the office, discuss how the story shall be treated. Then Dobson relaxes as the long climb to the snow-clad moors begins.

Another hazard lies ahead — patches of fog close in on the narrow road that twists over the Snake Pass. The car edges cautiously round hairpin bends, bumping along over rutted snow, dodging drifts which in places have hidden the low stone walls marking the roadside.

Suddenly the headlights of a stationary lorry are seen. The car stops and Dobson steps out — into a knee-deep snowdrift. The lorry driver tells him of hold-ups on his run from Sheffield. Back into the car goes Dobson to report progress — by phone.

Farther along the road are more lorries. Some are moving; some have been stuck for hours. Film cameraman Steve Stephens records the battle against the weather as lorry men help each other to dig their vehicles free from snow.

As we watch, Dobson tells me: “This is the sort of story we get right through the winter. The weather is always news.”

Dobson phones his story from the car. This way it can be quickly assessed against other news pouring in.

The typewriters of copy typists Barbara McDonald and Freda Roberts are chattering out more reports from the towns and villages bounded by Carlisle and Middlesbrough to the North and Barmouth and Grantham to the South.

Every correspondent is pinpointed on Plowright’s wall map by flags names and telephone numbers for and easy reference.

On another wall is a chart into 20-year old newsroom secretary Anne Beaty sticks coloured pins denoting the number of times cities and towns have been mentioned in the bulletins week.

“This gives us a picture at a glance of the newsiest spots in our area and the places which might yield good, off-beat stories,” said Plowright.

“We are a team which goes into people’s homes every night to tell them in a simple, but vigorous, manner what has been happening.

“The news we aim at is not all death and disaster. We try to keep a balance by using the lighter, more human items, the stories with a touch of glamour or oddity them.

“We concentrate on getting material which has not appeared in the evening newspapers so that we have a fresh and lively bulletin.

“That is why, each night, we present a tailpiece to the news that is unusual or amusing. These are items which lend themselves to a brief, humorous comment from the newscaster.

“We work to a five o’clock deadline for film and are proud that we have given pictures of an event which has taken only 45 minutes earlier.

“News stories, of course, can be accepted right up to time we go on the air.”

Keeping Northern viewers in the news picture is a tough but exciting job that has taken Dobson and his colleague, Don Kerr, thousands of miles, often in trying conditions.

Dobson and Kerr write the stories the and the film commentaries needed for the six-minute bulletin. “We always write more than are actually needed so that we can pick out the best just before we go on the air,” Dobson told me.

He has checked through the reel of film shot by Stephens on the Snake Pass and decided, in consultation with film editor Dick Thomas, the sequence and running time.

In the newsroom, urgency increases as programme time nears. Newscaster Brian Trueman arrives just as Plowright is shuffling through a wad of stories for a suitable news tailpiece.

The room is now full of people. Final checks and changes are made. Trueman sits in the tiny studio. A red light flashes … and another Northern Newscast begins.

The post Car A102 speeds the news appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

YORKSHIRE will have an Independent Television service from Emley Moor, near Huddersfield, in October. The Lancashire station at Winter Hill will open at the beginning of May, and the two stations will together serve more than 12m. viewers in the North Region, of whom nearly 5m. will receive Emley Moor transmissions.

Details of the new ITV service were given at a Press conference in Manchester yesterday by the Director-General Sir Robert Fraser, Mr. Howard Thomas (managing director. ABC (Television) Ltd., in which “The Yorkshire Observer and the “Telegraph and Argus” are minority shareholders), and Mr. James Phoenix (Northern Administrator, Granada TV network).

The primary service area from Emley Moor will extend in the North to Harrogate (about 30 miles), in the East to Hull (about 55 miles), and in the South to Newark (about 50 miles).

The secondary service area extends in most districts to places between five and ten miles beyond the primary areas, reaching Ripon and possibly Northallerton in the North and Driffield and Grimsby in the East.

IN SECONDARY AREA

Keighley and Ilkley fall in the secondary area for Emley Moor transmissions, and Earby, Skipton and Linton in the secondary area for Winter Hill.

Moot viewers in primary areas (unless in specially unfavourable positions immediately behind high ground or screened by high buildings) will get satisfactory service

In secondary areas a substantial proportion of viewers will get satisfactory service, but in some local areas reception conditions will be poor.

Outside both these zones some favourably situated viewers will obtain a reasonable service.

REGIONAL EMPHASIS

As regards programmes, emphasis will be on the regional.

At the outset the Yorkshire and Lancashire programmes will be the same, but it is expected that a logical development will be the opening of studios in Yorkshire with a different Yorkshire programme.

A.B.C. will provide the week-end programmes, in which newly-signed MacDonald Hobley will visit a “Home Town” every Saturday and present the town and its folk.

LEAGUE CRICKET

One of first places visited will be Morecambe, and the programme will include Janette Scott and her mother Thora Hird.

Lancashire league cricket is promised and the possibility of televising Bradford League cricket will be considered when the Yorkshire side of the region is developed.

Granada will provide the Monday to Friday programmes.

The post ITV for Yorks in October – with a regional “accent” appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

VIEWERS in Lancaster and Morecambe will be able to receive a television service from the Independent Television Authority (Northern Region) transmitter at Winter Hill, south of Chorley, which is expected to begin sending out programmes early in May.

The city and Morecambe are in the secondary service area which extends in a narrow belt from North Wales, through the Midlands south of Manchester to parts of Yorkshire, where it links with the other transmitter at Emley Moor, and to the Ulverston and Barrow districts. Carnforth lies on the outer fringe of this area.

Within these zones a substantial proportion of viewers will receive a satisfactory service, but there will be some local areas in which reception conditions will be poor.

The area inside the secondary service zone is the primary service area. [or, to put it in a way that doesn’t require mental gymnastics, the secondary service area surrounds the primary one – Ed]

NEW AERIALS

Reception depends on the correct type of receiving aerial being used for the various: localities and the appropriate conversion of single-channel receivers to obtain the alternative programme.

The programmes broadcast from two Northern transmitters will be provided on Mondays to Fridays by Granada T.V. Network. Ltd., and on Saturdays and Sundays by Associated British Cinemas (Television). Ltd.

The Winter Hill transmitter will have an effective radiated power of approximately 100 kilowatts and signals will be transmitted from a 16-stack high-gain omnidirectional aerial which will be carried on a 445ft. self-supporting tower. As the site is 1,450ft. above sea level the total height of the tower above sea level will therefore be 1,895ft.

VIEWERS’ SURVEY

At a press conference in Manchester recently, Mr. James Phoenix, Northern Administrator of the Granada TV Network, said that a detailed survey of what the North wanted from television had been carried out and to get the facts, research workers had been in many hundreds of homes to find out how people in the north spent their time.

Conversion of sets in the north, he said, were far higher than the figure just before opening date in London and appreciably higher than in the Midlands and it was a figure which was rising all the time. Mr. Phoenix declined to give details of Granada’s plans but he said this did not mean that they had not been laid.

REGIONAL TALENT

Sir Robert Fraser, director general of the I.T.A., stressed that programmes would be on a regional basis. One of the worst things of the past 30 years had been the over-concentration of all kinds of talent in London, but they were hoping to widen the field with television in the North.

Mr. H. Thomas [Howard Thomas], managing director of A.B.C. Television, said the local accent would be on sport, entertainment, personalities, and writers but outstanding London shows would be relayed to stations in the North. Local week-end programmes would include a “home town” show which would visit various cities and towns, a Lancashire serial and visits to repertory theatres.

The post Second TV programme to begin early in May appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

Adjust Sets, Say Dealers

Radio engineers on Merseyside were inundated with calls to-day from TV owners complaining about imperfect reception of last night’s opening programmes on the Northern ITV channel.

“But in nearly every case,” said a Liverpool dealer this morning, “the complaints could have been put right by a twist of a knob.”

Most of the viewers who had trouble complained that when they switched from the BBC channel to ITV, they could receive a good picture but the sound was dead.

Throughout to-day, TV engineers have been answering telephone calls and patiently explaining to viewers that when switching from one channel to another they have to make a slight adjustment to the “fine tuner” control.

This control, in most types of receiver, takes the form of an inner or outer knob incorporated in the “13-channel” switch by which the channel is selected.

NO CHANGE

A Liverpool engineer said to-day: “All this could have been avoided if ITV had put out a full strength signal earlier. By delaying it until this week, TV engineers have had no chance at all to instruct viewers on how to tune in correctly on channel nine.”

Reception of ITV in Liverpool was generally described very good. “There was much less interference in some city areas than has been the case on BBC TV,” said a dealer. “The only areas reporting ‘ghosting’ are those blanketed by very large blocks on buildings or those on the blind side of a hill.”

In many areas of Merseyside, viewers with 13-channel sets and no special aerial reported that they were nevertheless able to receive ITV fairly satisfactorily.

NOT SO GOOD

Reception in the Birkenhead area was not quite as good as that of the B.B.C. There and in other Wirral areas, particularly in Hoylake, dealers received complaints that on channel nine viewers had sound but no picture, or alternatively a picture but no sound. Some discovered that by tuning to channel eight [ATV’s transmitter in Lichfield – Ed] viewers they were able to get a fair picture but again no sound.

Bebington and Rock Ferry reported generally good reception. At Wallasey some indifferent periods were reported.

The ITV programme was seen as far away as Llandudno, when an Echo Correspondent reported: “The quality of the picture was equal to that of the B.B.C. transmitter.”

At Wrexham there were mixed comments. Within five miles radius of the town reception was good, but other places, notably in the Dee Valley, reported only “fair” reception.

In Chester and on Deeside, “fair” reception was reported but with picture quality not so good as the B.B.C.

Russ J Graham writes:

Newspapers did not welcome the arrival of Independent Television. For a start, it would be directly competing with them for advertisers. It would also directly compete on news – removing one of the main reasons for the public buying a newspaper. It might also kill the cinema industry, leaving empty space when once there were advertisements for film show times and cheap filler article on movie stars. This was particularly acute for the publishers of the large regional evening papers, like the Liverpool Echo, whose business model was based on people buying a newspaper on their way home from work to read whilst they had their tea. Now they might eat their food in front of the TV instead. Imagine the consequences.

Therefore it’s not a surprise that articles about the new ITV stations coming on air in each region were lukewarm to say the least. The papers piled on, accusing ITV of being too light or too dull or whatever came to hand as a way of bashing it.

Granada had done their homework on this, and their short first night was very carefully tailored to make sure there was something for everybody and even a programme paying tribute to the BBC.

With no ammunition available to them, the Liverpool Echo resort to saying that the picture isn’t very good, or there’s no sound, or that television sets are big, complicated things that are far too difficult for the average person to use effectively.

They don’t quite pull it off. Problems are not unexpected, and the ones here are strange: it’s very unlikely you’d get a picture with no sound – you’re far more likely with VHF television to get the sound fine but no picture; it’s quite weird to tune into the DX signal on channel 8 – the Echo seem unaware that it’s a different company, farther away – and get a picture and no sound: Transdiffusion was in Hoylake at this exact time and could only get the ATV sound, with the occasional very grainy picture in hot weather.

All in all, a good attempt at a hatchet job on the new ITV service from Winter Hill, but one that doesn’t quite work.

 

The post How ITV Was Received on Merseyside appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE creation of a large organization is usually a slow evolutionary process. Small beginnings are nurtured by experience, guided by precedent and enlarged by expansion or acquisition. This is true of the industrial complex, the machine of government, the voluntary organization, and the commercial enterprise. It is not true, however, of the establishment of Granada tv Network.

In May 1954, Granada Television consisted merely of a decision. This decision was that Granada Theatres should enter television, and it was taken when the Television Bill, which was to embody in statute the scope, the duties, function and methods of Independent Television, was still being debated and amended in the House of Commons. The Bill did not become law until July 1954.

In May 1955, one year later, the contract was signed which laid on Granada the responsibility for providing a weekday television service for the North of England. At this stage, apart from a contractual obligation, Granada TV consisted of little more than a general idea of what the new television service should seek to attain. There were no tools with which to carry out this idea: no studio, no electronic equipment, not a single camera; no directors, electricians, camera-men, sound and vision mixers, typists, or designers. The craftsmen, technologists, administrators and creative workers who were to create Granada Television were working at other jobs in Manchester, Toronto, London, Liverpool and New York, many of them unaware that their future lay in television.

Just a year after the contract was signed, the first Granada transmission went on the air from the most modern television centre in Europe — a building which is eight months had risen on a waste plot of ground in Quay Street, Manchester, the first building in Britain expressly designed for television. It was bright, spanking and shiny new, from the electric control lighting panel to the ash-trays; from the unique lighting grid in the studio (festoons of lamps hung on telescopic battens) to the smallest valve in the master control-room.

This year of construction and creation had been hard and difficult. The Quay Street site was bought in May 1955. It was 4½ acres in size. Only half an acre was needed for the first stages of building, but the plan was to build a compact, comprehensive television centre embodying studios and workshops and offices. The first problem was to build the first section of this centre on the half-acre site, and to build it to a tight schedule during the winter months of bad weather, when it rained for days on end and the ground was churned into a muddy morass.

The first thing built was a wooden hut: in this the newly appointed Northern Administrator of Granada set up office with a secretary, a desk, and a couple of chairs. Then the skeleton of the building began to rise under the direction and drive of the building foreman, an Irishman who hustled, cajoled, and struggled to keep to the time-table despite occasional setbacks.

As the building took shape the staff grew. Instead of the hut a warehouse opposite, with 30,000 square feet of floor space, was taken over to be turned into offices. The whole building had to be gutted and rebuilt inside; at first the only offices were on the third floor, where a handful of people coped with a hundred jobs.

More formidable even than the physical problem of building were the problems of public relations: Granada TV, itself a new community, had to be established, even before opening day, as a recognized feature of Northern life; public authorities, prominent citizens of the North, and the Press had to be contacted and their support — or at least their friendly interest — secured.

The background to all this was a somewhat confused general public reaction to independent television. The new services had opened in London in September 1955, and in the Midlands in February 1956. Many viewers were eager and receptive. Some sections of the Press were hostile. Advertisers, after the first few months, had begun to approach the new medium more cautiously. Rumours were publicized about losses suffered by the companies already operating; there were newspaper criticisms of extravagance. It was assiduously suggested in some quarters that independent television was a gamble without a future. All this shook confidence, and did not make it easy to work creatively on the myriad problems of planning, building, and establishing a new service in the North. But enthusiasm grew as the organization began to take shape. Programme planning went ahead; there were difficult and even tense negotiations for the networking of programmes with the companies already operating; and actual Granada programmes were scripted, rehearsed, and tested.

Granada’s policy was, and still is, not to publish a mass of advance information about the content of new programmes. Before opening day both the Press and the advertisers were persistent in their demands to know what was being planned. Rumour and speculation spread, but Granada insisted that realization was better than anticipation, and that the new service would speak for itself and must be judged by results not blurbs.

At the same time people had to be recruited and trained. Above all, methods, drills and systems had to be worked out, tried and rehearsed; for television is an association between technology and the creative arts, dovetailed and timed to a second.

When the day’s transmission starts, there are 25,200 seconds to go before the signing-off signal; for time, in television, is measured in seconds rather than in minutes or hours. The immediacy of the medium means that the instant an image is received by the camera it is seen on the screen in the home. There is no time for revision or second thoughts. In newspaper production or moviemaking. the finished product is seen by its creator before it is seen by its consumer. In television, creator and consumer receive an identical image at the same moment. If an actor fails his cue, five million viewers see him fail. If a scene-shifter drops a chair, millions of people hear it fall. The producers and technicians cannot say: ‘Stop. Now do it again.’

So the essence of television is pre-planning, the perfection of split-second drills so that everyone knows where he is, what he is to do, and why — and what to do in an emergency. In devising a technique and method of this fine degree of accuracy, there was relatively little experience and precedent to go by. It was not possible to create a system simply by adopting or copying rules and formulae well-tried elsewhere. So to the problem of recruitment was added that of training, and then that of coordination, of fitting the units into an effective whole.

The method followed was to decide, in outline, the various departmental responsibilities and functions, and then to engage for each department at least one expert whose job it was to recruit and train his staff and evolve the systems and methods by which they would work. The departments, roughed out in this way, were: Programming, Production, Engineering, Sales and Advertising, Film Operations, Network Operation, and Press and Publicity; managerial departments were responsible for Accounts, Personnel and General Administration. A short description of the main departments will give some idea of how a television service works; but the departments cannot be arranged in any order of priority, because each is integrally dependent on the others. It is simplest, therefore, to trace a new programme through its earlier stages.

The creative centre of a television company is its Programmme Department. Here ideas are conceived, shaped and developed into programmes by producers, directors and writers.

When a programme begins to take definite form, a period of rehearsal and experiment follows. A script is prepared and details of cast, costume, scenery, make-up and music worked out. At this stage, the Production Department adds its services to those of the Programme Planners and Directors. In co-operation with the Programme Department the Production Department is responsible for scheduling and equipping a programme for the cameras. This department organizes the construction of sets and provision of properties, wardrobe and make-up, and allocates studio space for rehearsals and final performance.

Even when a series programme is scripted, cast, clothed and rehearsed, it is still some way from transmission. Next comes a phase of assessment and appraisal. The Engineering Department transmits the programme on a closed circuit, so that it can be seen by executives as it may later be seen in millions of homes. The decisions made at this stage determine the future of the programme.

If it turns out to be altogether below standard, it will be scrapped or sent back for improvement.

If it seems right in content, casting and direction, it will be shown. This, however, is not just a matter of fixing a day and time and leaving it at that. The new programme, or series, will have to be fitted into the complex jigsaw of a programme schedule—and the details of this are arranged by another department, the Network Operations Department.

The programmes fed from the Manchester TV Centre to the transmitters at Winter Hill in Lancashire and Emley Moor in Yorkshire, come from several sources. Live broadcasts come, in the main, from the Granada Studios or from the Granada Travelling Eyes. Other live programmes come on network from the studios of other programme companies. National and international news comes from the studios of Independent Television News, a company owned collectively by all the programme companies. Local news comes from the Granada studios in Manchester. Film — which may either be a feature film, one of a series, a filmed advertisement, or an interview or exterior shot in a play or documentary — is prepared by the Film Operations Department and transmitted by the Telecine Department.

The Network Operations Department controls and co-ordinates all this material. This involves both technical and administrative work, the linking of one source with another — Granada studios with the network studios, with Telecine, and with Travelling Eye — and the preparation of precise time-tables.

The Film Operations Department is another important part of the machine. It collects the various film items from advertisers, film studios and film libraries, checks them for quality, content and length, and makes them up into continuous runs of film ready for transmission. Again, as throughout all television, timing is by the fraction of the second.

In one year this whole organization was devised, recruited, trained and set to creative work. Special training was needed in all departments. Eighty per cent of the engineers had never even been in a television studio before: they came from the workshops and assembly-lines of industry, from recording studios and from sound-broadcasting studios and control rooms. Production staff came from films, sound-radio and stage. It was not enough to tell these new-comers to follow instructions automatically. They had to learn to understand and appreciate the work of all the departments — the others as well as their own. They had to be as adaptable and flexible as the medium itself.

Studios in London, normally used for testing television equipment, were taken over by Granada for a nine-week training course which started in January 1956, fourteen weeks before the opening. Here operational studio conditions were simulated to give authenticity to training. Lectures were given on engineering and production problems. Trainees were taught the principles of lighting, scripting, designing, casting, programme-building, floor-planning, staging and the use of film and music. Then came the practical exercise: teams, each consisting of director, floor-manager and production-secretary, prepared and presented short plays, panel-games, musical programmes and interviews.

Camera-men were trained. Vision-control engineers mastered their new machinery and then studied the more personal task of making a good picture on the screen. Not one experienced microphone-operator was available: sound-crews were selected and trained to follow the sound action smoothly while keeping microphones and boom-shadows out of camera range. Vision-mixer/gramophone-operators learned their craft by constant exercise and practice.

At the end of the nine weeks, the trainees designed and produced their own original programmes and transmitted them on a closed circuit.

Meanwhile the Travelling Eye teams were being assembled and trained. Two units were designed and built for Granada. They were, in effect, studios on wheels, complete with cameras and microphones and linked to the transmitters by radio and visual lines of communication. They had also to be serviced by mobile power generators for occasions when it would not be possible to use the normal power supply.

The Travelling Eye teams were first trained in London in the techniques of handling and maintaining their equipment. After one month of this basic training they moved north to transmit ‘dummy’ outside broadcasts, from Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Wigan, from outdoor sites and from inside buildings, practising in every sort of situation which they would be likely to meet once Granada transmission started.

On May 3, 1956, only a few weeks after the course had finished, these newly graduated trainees brought Independent Television for the first time to the people of the North.

The post A TV service is born appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

ON May 3, 1956, at 7.30 p.m., Granada TV Network went on the air with this opening announcement: ‘From the North, this is Granada — on Channel 9. A year ago Granada was a blue-print, a promise. Tonight the North has a new television service created by the devotion and hard work of thousands of Northerners and friends from all over the world. Come with us now — to meet the people.’

This expressed the mood of Granada’s approach. The new service was for the people — and so Granada’s first programme featured the people. Quentin Reynolds, the American writer, known to millions in Britain for his wartime broadcasts, introduced some of the people who had worked behind the scenes to put Granada on the air — the building foreman, the architect, a telephone operator and an engineer, for example. Then he introduced the Lord Mayor of Manchester (Alderman Tom Regan) and the Chairman of the Independent Television Authority (Sir Kenneth Clark). Jack Hylton and Gracie Fields brought the friendly greetings of people in show business. But there was no long, pretentious inaugural ceremony.

Granada then presented a typical evening’s viewing — the aim being to show viewers what they could normally expect to see rather than to raise false hopes by the presentation of the extravagant and the spectacular. The evening’s viewing included a variety programme, ‘London salutes Lancashire’, featuring Arthur Askey, Bob Monkhouse and Dennis Goodwin, Pat Kirkwood and Lena Horne.

At the end of the evening, Granada presented ‘Tribute to the BBC’. This was an acknowledgment of the debt which television in Britain and the world owes to the pioneers who at Alexandra Palace initiated and evolved public-service television. This programme was produced by the BBC and compered by Aidan Crawley. Among those taking part were Sir George Barnes, then head of BBC Television, Gilbert Harding, and Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

‘For most of you tonight’, said an announcer, ‘Independent Television has been a new experience.That evening, too, Granada faced its most controversial task — the presentation of advertising to people who had never before seen it on television: on their approval or disapproval hung the future of the new service.

‘We have brought advertisements to your television screens at home. We think you will like them, not only because they are entertaining but because they are informative. Products and services, whose names you will be seeing, are a guide to sensible buying and will help you to get value for your money. Television advertisers have faith and pride in what they offer. Granada stands behind them and their statements. We hope their names will become as familiar to you as the names of your friends and neighbours. You can use Granada advertisements as a trustworthy guide to wise spending.

‘Wise spending eventually saves money. And savings can help deal with one aspect of our country’s economic problems. So before we shop let us say to ourselves “is it essential?” If it is let us buy the best we can afford, if it is not essential can we save? Save not only for a rainy day but also to make sure that tomorrow and the day after will be sunny.’

Finally there was a word on behalf of those for whom this evening had been the first big test:

‘This has been opening night. We have all been working around the clock for months to make it possible, and we have all been nervous and tense. If we slipped here and there during this evening’s transmission, we hope you will forgive us… and now, goodnight all, goodnight.’ After the big night came the reaction from the North. Here is the comment of the Manchester Evening News:

‘It was altogether a more imaginative opening night than the first night in London or Birmingham. The idea of informally introducing a variety of men who had contributed to the delivery of Granada was good. So was the notion of a tribute to the BBC…. Serious in mood, entertaining to the eye, this was television interviewing at its best. Nothing extravagant, nothing boastful. There are other improvements to report. The breaks before and after a group of advertisements are well defined. They are presented more smoothly. And Granada’s programmes were better controlled than those on the first nights in London and the Midlands.’

And here are some immediate comments by viewers reported next day in the newspapers: ‘It’s so slick’, ‘superb entertainment’, ‘better than the BBC’, ‘wonderful reception’.

That, then, was the start—direct and down-to-earth, as is appropriate in a service for the people of the North. This was Granada — from the North.

The post The Big Night appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.