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Now is the time to step into a Time Machine and go back exactly half a century. The Big Bang of daytime television occurred at the start of the third week of October back in 1972; all of a sudden, housewives, the retired, the disabled, under-fives and school refusers were given excuses to stay in and watch the box in the corner (or in the last case, another excuse not to go to school).
Watersheds don't just happen after 9.00 pm - they can happen during the day on television, and the autumn of 1972 was one of many examples during the decade which saw the landscape of British television reform from its pre-monochrome status to getting ready for the fourth channel (which had already existed back then, provided that one could pick up more than one ITV station, probably Anglia from Belmont if you lived east of Nottingham, or Yorkshire just two years later from the same transmitter).
You would have to wait until Thursday evening for Top of the Pops, but just imagine songs like Mouldy Old Dough at the top of the charts, deputised by 10CC's Donna. Gilbert O'Sullivan's Clair was entering the chart and Lindsey de Paul's Sugar Me leaving it.
I often regard Monday 16th October 1972 as a watershed of such an example, especially from a commercial television perspective. Although the bigger regions put out the odd film here and the odd lifestyle programme there, by mid-October, scheduling looked more "prominent and deliberate" in a uniform style and more programmes were being networked as a result, even if one or two regions still did not show them yet.
Having a look at the schedules from that precious day looked something like this: firstly, on BBC 1 (Colour), schools programmes at 9.38 am. Countdown (nothing to do with the letters and numbers game which started a decade later) was the first programme; followed by Merry Go Round at 10.00 am and USA 72 following that. A repeat of a Sunday morning educational programme Profit by Control; a programme about production planning, which was followed by in those pre-S4C days by some Welsh programming, let into some of the English transmitters for good behaviour.
After five minutes of news, we have the brand new "afternoon version of This Morning of the Seventies": Pebble Mill (I don't think that it was even called "Pebble Mill at One" back then until sometime later?), which was just as new as a lot of ITV's afternoon programmes, staring just two weeks beforehand, just after the 1972 Olympics had finished. Live from Birmingham in the now-long demolished Pebble Mill studios, the unmistakable tune of As You Please invited us to tune in for 30 minutes of entertainment and lifestyle, and Bob Langley.
Watch With Mother at 1.30 pm gave under-fives Along the River, and that was followed by the history series Look Stranger which ran for the best part of 20 years, mostly repeats. About Britain was ITV's answer to it which was also given an afternoon slot later on in the week - it was always Anglia for some reason...
The schools programmes return at 2.00 pm with Words and Pictures - now, I was familiar with the early to mid 1980s Vicky Ireland version which by 1983 was set in a library thanks to my Infant School, and we also saw it there on Mondays at 2.00 pm as well - a timeslot kept in tact right up until 1990. Yes, I watched how Magic Pencil drawn a small letter "b": top to bottom, up and round...
Words and Pictures was also another relatively new series, starting in 1970; the autumn 1972 episodes were part of a series called Sam on Boff's Island, with an almost "before he was famous" Tony Robinson in the title role, and Miriam Margoyles was involved as well. Michael Rosen was the scriptwriter for this series. Gabriel Woolf presented the previous series and Henry Woolf (any relation?) did the deed later on in the decade. Schools were rounded off by series on work experience and Mathematics up to 3.00 pm.
Moving to children's television, no CBBC in those days, but there was a repeat of Play School at 4.10 pm. the Magic Roundabout and Jackanory followed. Blue Peter saw Lesley Judd "recently" replace Valerie Singleton to work with Messeres Noakes and Purves on the show. And then a one-series wonder, The Long Chase which does sound like a Look and Read series - it was repeated in 1974 on Sunday teatimes.
Some News and some more Nationwide (which I believe 1972 was the first year that it was on Monday evenings and was not replaced by Graham Kerr). Transworld Top Team had Banbury v Halifax (that's the one in Nova Scotia, not West Yorkshire). Z Cars parked up for duty at 7.10 pm with noneother than Geoffrey Hayes himself (ironically on the same day as the first ever episode of Rainbow went out) playing a semi-regular police officer in the series. Of course, DC Dave Scatliff was no longer seen when Hayes got the Rainbow job.
Panorama has an interview with President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia (passed away 1982), with Australian Gold Logie winning journalist Michael Charlton (who is still with us as of October 2022, aged 95) doing the honours. After the Nine O'clock News, a prison-themed Play For Today entitled A Life is for Ever (two words), about a man sentenced for murdering a policeman. A rather late scheduling for the first series of Mastermind, with Magnus Magnusson starting but not quite finishing his stint as quizmaster.
We can thank the controversial sitcom Casanova 73 in this equivalent slot the following year for Mastermind having more pre-watershed prominence and more success - Casanova was more of a Mary Whitehouse complaint vehicle, and so was later put post-watershed in October 1973 in the Play for Today slot - there wasn't going to be a Casanova 74; the year after that there was a showing of The Thomas Crown Affair was in that place. So there was a watershed after all... Some late news, a documentary about Ireland and then it was Closedown.
BBC 2 started with Play School, to be repeated on BBC 1 later on. Nothing else on air until the "University of the Air" (born January 1971) started at 5.35 pm. A programme about Children Growing up at 7.05 pm, repeated until at least 1978, mostly in the afternoons. News at 7.30 pm, followed by western series Alias Smith and Jones, which I thought was "Alas Smith and Jones" at first, thinking that it was amazing that Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones had started out in a comedy series as early as 1972, considering Tony Robinson had also appeared on TV on this day.
In the slot that Call My Bluff would usually be in (and the autumn 1972 series was delayed because of this), there was a quiz series about 50 years of the BBC, a one series wonder called Out of the Box and was presented by Frank Muir's colleague Denis Norden. I assume that it was not too dissimilar to Looks Familiar - this episode looked at Music and the Arts and I believe that celebrities in the ilk of Joyce Grenfell and Beryl Reid were guests. Probably more like a 1970s version of Telly Addicts - I wonder whether the BBC has the series in the archives or whether they had been wiped decades ago? I did ask BBC Archives in 2018 just after Norden passed away but got no response.
The Show of the Week starred Sacha Distel in "Sacha's in Town", and even featured Sid James from the United States, although one could see Sid more on British soil earlier on the other side. Getting late, The Philpott looks for Jesus in a Shepherd for a City. A repeat of John Sebastian in Concert; a five-minute 1972 equivalent of Newsnight at 11.15 pm; and then Late Night Line Up looks at Cole Porter (1891-1964). Line Up was to come to an end at Christmas after eight and a half years being the bedtime cocoa on BBC 2 since the station launched back in April 1964. And then Closedown at midnight.
(Continued...)
Watersheds don't just happen after 9.00 pm - they can happen during the day on television, and the autumn of 1972 was one of many examples during the decade which saw the landscape of British television reform from its pre-monochrome status to getting ready for the fourth channel (which had already existed back then, provided that one could pick up more than one ITV station, probably Anglia from Belmont if you lived east of Nottingham, or Yorkshire just two years later from the same transmitter).
You would have to wait until Thursday evening for Top of the Pops, but just imagine songs like Mouldy Old Dough at the top of the charts, deputised by 10CC's Donna. Gilbert O'Sullivan's Clair was entering the chart and Lindsey de Paul's Sugar Me leaving it.
I often regard Monday 16th October 1972 as a watershed of such an example, especially from a commercial television perspective. Although the bigger regions put out the odd film here and the odd lifestyle programme there, by mid-October, scheduling looked more "prominent and deliberate" in a uniform style and more programmes were being networked as a result, even if one or two regions still did not show them yet.
Having a look at the schedules from that precious day looked something like this: firstly, on BBC 1 (Colour), schools programmes at 9.38 am. Countdown (nothing to do with the letters and numbers game which started a decade later) was the first programme; followed by Merry Go Round at 10.00 am and USA 72 following that. A repeat of a Sunday morning educational programme Profit by Control; a programme about production planning, which was followed by in those pre-S4C days by some Welsh programming, let into some of the English transmitters for good behaviour.
After five minutes of news, we have the brand new "afternoon version of This Morning of the Seventies": Pebble Mill (I don't think that it was even called "Pebble Mill at One" back then until sometime later?), which was just as new as a lot of ITV's afternoon programmes, staring just two weeks beforehand, just after the 1972 Olympics had finished. Live from Birmingham in the now-long demolished Pebble Mill studios, the unmistakable tune of As You Please invited us to tune in for 30 minutes of entertainment and lifestyle, and Bob Langley.
Watch With Mother at 1.30 pm gave under-fives Along the River, and that was followed by the history series Look Stranger which ran for the best part of 20 years, mostly repeats. About Britain was ITV's answer to it which was also given an afternoon slot later on in the week - it was always Anglia for some reason...
The schools programmes return at 2.00 pm with Words and Pictures - now, I was familiar with the early to mid 1980s Vicky Ireland version which by 1983 was set in a library thanks to my Infant School, and we also saw it there on Mondays at 2.00 pm as well - a timeslot kept in tact right up until 1990. Yes, I watched how Magic Pencil drawn a small letter "b": top to bottom, up and round...
Words and Pictures was also another relatively new series, starting in 1970; the autumn 1972 episodes were part of a series called Sam on Boff's Island, with an almost "before he was famous" Tony Robinson in the title role, and Miriam Margoyles was involved as well. Michael Rosen was the scriptwriter for this series. Gabriel Woolf presented the previous series and Henry Woolf (any relation?) did the deed later on in the decade. Schools were rounded off by series on work experience and Mathematics up to 3.00 pm.
Moving to children's television, no CBBC in those days, but there was a repeat of Play School at 4.10 pm. the Magic Roundabout and Jackanory followed. Blue Peter saw Lesley Judd "recently" replace Valerie Singleton to work with Messeres Noakes and Purves on the show. And then a one-series wonder, The Long Chase which does sound like a Look and Read series - it was repeated in 1974 on Sunday teatimes.
Some News and some more Nationwide (which I believe 1972 was the first year that it was on Monday evenings and was not replaced by Graham Kerr). Transworld Top Team had Banbury v Halifax (that's the one in Nova Scotia, not West Yorkshire). Z Cars parked up for duty at 7.10 pm with noneother than Geoffrey Hayes himself (ironically on the same day as the first ever episode of Rainbow went out) playing a semi-regular police officer in the series. Of course, DC Dave Scatliff was no longer seen when Hayes got the Rainbow job.
Panorama has an interview with President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia (passed away 1982), with Australian Gold Logie winning journalist Michael Charlton (who is still with us as of October 2022, aged 95) doing the honours. After the Nine O'clock News, a prison-themed Play For Today entitled A Life is for Ever (two words), about a man sentenced for murdering a policeman. A rather late scheduling for the first series of Mastermind, with Magnus Magnusson starting but not quite finishing his stint as quizmaster.
We can thank the controversial sitcom Casanova 73 in this equivalent slot the following year for Mastermind having more pre-watershed prominence and more success - Casanova was more of a Mary Whitehouse complaint vehicle, and so was later put post-watershed in October 1973 in the Play for Today slot - there wasn't going to be a Casanova 74; the year after that there was a showing of The Thomas Crown Affair was in that place. So there was a watershed after all... Some late news, a documentary about Ireland and then it was Closedown.
BBC 2 started with Play School, to be repeated on BBC 1 later on. Nothing else on air until the "University of the Air" (born January 1971) started at 5.35 pm. A programme about Children Growing up at 7.05 pm, repeated until at least 1978, mostly in the afternoons. News at 7.30 pm, followed by western series Alias Smith and Jones, which I thought was "Alas Smith and Jones" at first, thinking that it was amazing that Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones had started out in a comedy series as early as 1972, considering Tony Robinson had also appeared on TV on this day.
In the slot that Call My Bluff would usually be in (and the autumn 1972 series was delayed because of this), there was a quiz series about 50 years of the BBC, a one series wonder called Out of the Box and was presented by Frank Muir's colleague Denis Norden. I assume that it was not too dissimilar to Looks Familiar - this episode looked at Music and the Arts and I believe that celebrities in the ilk of Joyce Grenfell and Beryl Reid were guests. Probably more like a 1970s version of Telly Addicts - I wonder whether the BBC has the series in the archives or whether they had been wiped decades ago? I did ask BBC Archives in 2018 just after Norden passed away but got no response.
The Show of the Week starred Sacha Distel in "Sacha's in Town", and even featured Sid James from the United States, although one could see Sid more on British soil earlier on the other side. Getting late, The Philpott looks for Jesus in a Shepherd for a City. A repeat of John Sebastian in Concert; a five-minute 1972 equivalent of Newsnight at 11.15 pm; and then Late Night Line Up looks at Cole Porter (1891-1964). Line Up was to come to an end at Christmas after eight and a half years being the bedtime cocoa on BBC 2 since the station launched back in April 1964. And then Closedown at midnight.
(Continued...)
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