TWW (Television Wales & West) otherwise known as Channel 10 lost the ITA franchise it had held from 14th January 1958 to HTV (Harlech TV) in 1968.
The promoters of Harlech appear to have included film stars Stanley Baker and Richard Burton.
TWW had been providing television services and news provision to the West (with Bristol having a very small studio) and to Wales (centred on Cardiff). This included services in Welsh for they had been obliged to take over Teledu Cymru, which also covered Central and North Wales. They had planned to start colour broadcasts.
Forced to sell their franchise, they ceased broadcasting five months early, leaving HTV totally unprepared and handed over to them on 20th May 1968. ITA had to step in to provide services in the interim, and the unwritten promise to provide enhanced cultural and artistic TV, and presumably with a greater focus on Welsh language, never happened. Those big names never even read the news, but Lord Harlech did get his name on top of a building.
Television coverage was certainly the poorer for Stroud and the West with even more “canned” programmes being bought in from other regions in the initial months of HTV .
Thank you so much Lord Hill.
This fiasco took the word independent out of Independent Television, and the whole story would now probably make a good TV docudrama.
With live entertainment and audience Programme controller Brian Michie, plus an announcer wearing Bow-tie and Sir John Betjeman speaking the final words of the broadcast, I just had to record this on film.
Mum and Dad’s 405 line TV had a problem with the horizontal hold. Combine that with 25 ASA film stock, each frame photographed at 1/30 second at F1.8 – it probably was not going to get anything on film, so I was very economic with the length of shots.
Why didn’t I switch on the reel to reel tape recorder and capture the sound? I really thought I was throwing film away at the time of shooting this.
In the 1970s Stroud based Cotswold Cine Club visited the Bristol studios of HTV. There was not a lot to see, apart from a blue screen set up, possibly for a quiz show. Blue plastic covered the walls and a freestanding desk unit constructed of blue coloured EPS.
