We've talked a few times over the years about the impact of various strikes on broadcasting in the 70s and 80s, but I don't think this is a topic we've previously covered and there certainly seems to be very little information about how the 1974 three day week impacted on television. I've not found much more than is on
Wikipedia or briefly mentioned in general articles on the events of the winter of 1974 published in the last few days, so hoping some people here who know their TV history can expand on that.
At the time the majority of companies had to operate on a three day week in order to conserve energy, but television channels were able to continue broadcasting daily, but had to go off air by 10.30pm. This was later relaxed to the BBC and ITV alternating their 10.30pm cut-off due to the power surge it caused at 10.30pm when both went off air. There were exceptions made for Christmas.
Now I don't think the stations aired much beyond midnight then anyway and only aired limited hours in the daytime anyway, so they probably only lost about an hour a day. I suspect too like over the last 18 months that having entertainment in their living rooms at a time when people weren't working most of the week and I think many pubs were closed as well, was seen as important.
However presumably even if the channels were allowed to broadcast on a daily basis there must have been an impact on production similar I guess to what we saw last year. Does anyone have more details on that? I guess ITV may have been able to get around producing live content at least by utilising it's regional network and weekday/weekend franchise in London, but were the soaps, dramas and comedy of the time restricted in what they could film?
My recollection was BBC 1and 2 and ITV alternated with 22:30/22:20 close downs. As a result NaT was curtailed when it was ITV's turn to close down at 22:20.
I don't think the three day week affected TV production, it was intended to conserve energy by shutting down heavy industry (Steel Works, Car Factories etc). Telly was not, and is not heavy industry. In fact, we don't have much heavy industry now, but that's another story out of scope...
Radio's audience surged, as did the birth rate the following year !
Markymark post_id=41761 time= user_id=1078 Wrote:My recollection was BBC 1and 2 and ITV alternated with 22:30/22:20 close downs. As a result NaT was curtailed when it was ITV's turn to close down at 22:20.
That's right - it was adjusted to that. It meant, for example, Match of the Day being at 9:20pm on 26th Jan, so they could close at 10:20. Similarly, Sportsnight on 16th Jan had to be over by 10:20 as well - I recall that football wasn't allowed to be played in the evenings - so I guess their football (League Cup semis) was from somewhat earlier in the day.
We had been used to it by then - the previous year there had been regular timed power cuts - we generally had three hours on, three hours off, which would have halved possible viewers.
RR post_id=41773 time= user_id=827 Wrote:We had been used to it by then - the previous year there had been regular timed power cuts - we generally had three hours on, three hours off, which would have halved possible viewers.
That was it, with a schedule printed in the local paper. Almost 50 years on, the smell of candle wax takes me back to those days
Brekkie post_id=41753 time= user_id=976 Wrote:Now I don't think the stations aired much beyond midnight then anyway and only aired limited hours in the daytime anyway, so they probably only lost about an hour a day.
Well, for all that television was quite badly affected, Parkinson moved to Friday at 9pm on BBC2 -
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...8#at-21.00 - and Whistle Test was on Sunday afternoons. As mentioned, shows like Sportsnight were massively truncated as well (John Conteh would have needed to have got a move on in this fight, the show was 23 minutes long -
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...3#at-21.55) and indeed the Commonwealth Games were taking place at the time so they didn't get much coverage. And obviously films or dramas lasting more than an hour were compeletely out of the question after nine o'clock.
I've got several Radio Times from this period and that was badly affected for a couple of weeks as well, there were two issues in January which were a single national edition with just 32 pages, so with two pages a day for TV and two for radio, that left just two pages for any other editorial. Good job there wasn't much on to write about.
As mentioned, sport couldn't use floodlights so most matches on a Saturday kicked off at 2pm -
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...2#at-14.02
Nick Hornby writes in Fever Pitch about going to see Arsenal play an FA Cup replay in 1972, which because of ongoing power cuts was rescheduled to 2pm on a Wednesday, saying that he skived off school to go and assumed that the crowd would consist of fellow truants and the odd pensioner, but in fact it got Arsenal's highest attendance of the season.
I can't find what it was but I read somewhere something like that the voltage of TVC's lighting changed at this time and was never put back afterwards.
sdaonline post_id=42003 time= user_id=1185 Wrote:I can't find what it was but I read somewhere something like that the voltage of TVC's lighting changed at this time and was never put back afterwards.
The mains voltage was reduced during that period, so lamps etc were dimmer, kettles would have taken longer to boil etc. Studio lighting would also have been affected, but in those days of incandescent lamps the only way to restore the light levels might have been to use European spec (220v) rather than UK spec (240v) lamps?
I remember the 84/85 miners strike, and similar reductions in voltage and frequency. My bedroom clock that used the 50Hz mains as its timing refernce would lose a minute during the day, and regain it overnight. Normally it would lose and regain about 20 seconds over a 24 hour period
There was a similar issue a few years ago on mainland Europe, with the voltage being slightly under 50Hz for a few weeks as a result of the Serbia/Kosova situation back then. Tom Scott explains all with the aid of a Teasmade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o
I remember my Dad telling me that when the voltage was reduced in the 70s, the picture on their TV would appear smaller, and wouldn’t fill the whole screen.
Spencer post_id=42438 time= user_id=891 Wrote:I remember my Dad telling me that when the voltage was reduced in the 70s, the picture on their TV would appear smaller, and wouldn’t fill the whole screen.
He was right, back then the way voltages were supplied to the internal circuitry lacked any sort of regulation, and lower mains voltage could mean a reduced scanning size . In the 80s, different types of power supplies were used, that basically can accept anything between 100 and 250 volts, (called switched mode) Have a look at the working voltage range on your laptop PSU or phone charger ?