The same thing on all five channels. I don’t just mean all five channels reporting the same news from a studio (as would have happened for Diana and briefly did for Prince Philip last year) but actually showing pictures of the same live event. Channel 4 opted out of Diana’s funeral and Philip’s I think was only shown on BBC1, ITV and the news channels so this is an incredibly
rare occurrence. I can only definitely recall two occasions when this happened, all the more remarkable because they occurred back to back. On 6 July 2005 all five channels covered London winning the 2012 Olympic bid, with BBC 1 showing a N24 Special and BBC2 as part of the Daily Politics. On 7 July all channels carried Tony Blair’s reaction to the 7/7 attacks, with the BBC covering the same way again, ITN with live news on ITV and Channel 4 and Channel 5 I think at that time took Sky News. Logically, I think at the millennium all 5 channels would have been showing Big Ben at midnight (Genome shows BBC2 joined 1 for 15 minutes). I think all channels covered Brexit Day at midnight with a Newsnight Special on 2, ITV News and a Last Leg Special on 4. BBC One is a given but I can’t remember if 5 did anything. 9/11 was probably on all five at some point that horrible afternoon, as BBC2 I believe was covering the TUC conference which of course took a back seat so they’d probably have shown live pictures with the rest at some point, but my memory is hazy.
Tomorrow I believe is the first time a domestic football match will be shown on two terrestrial channels since 1988 so that in itself is a pretty big deal. The World Cup Final 1966 and a couple of subsequent FA Cup Finals were shown on all three existing channels (because only BBC2 could show 625-line/colour coverage)
The Channel 4 days really were fantastic. They also had the ‘Easter egg’ of the Film Four coverage during racing where the commentators for the most part would just do a highlights commentary, very little chit-chat in between.
There’s been great Ashes series since 2005 but none has captured the public imagination like that year. The way that series played out was almost magical, and the public interest was so intense. Even the Scots were talking about it! I reckon even now, the same series would not attract the public interest if it were on a channel like ITV4. Though less so than nearly 20 years ago, the main channels are still a powerful draw.
rare occurrence. I can only definitely recall two occasions when this happened, all the more remarkable because they occurred back to back. On 6 July 2005 all five channels covered London winning the 2012 Olympic bid, with BBC 1 showing a N24 Special and BBC2 as part of the Daily Politics. On 7 July all channels carried Tony Blair’s reaction to the 7/7 attacks, with the BBC covering the same way again, ITN with live news on ITV and Channel 4 and Channel 5 I think at that time took Sky News. Logically, I think at the millennium all 5 channels would have been showing Big Ben at midnight (Genome shows BBC2 joined 1 for 15 minutes). I think all channels covered Brexit Day at midnight with a Newsnight Special on 2, ITV News and a Last Leg Special on 4. BBC One is a given but I can’t remember if 5 did anything. 9/11 was probably on all five at some point that horrible afternoon, as BBC2 I believe was covering the TUC conference which of course took a back seat so they’d probably have shown live pictures with the rest at some point, but my memory is hazy.
Tomorrow I believe is the first time a domestic football match will be shown on two terrestrial channels since 1988 so that in itself is a pretty big deal. The World Cup Final 1966 and a couple of subsequent FA Cup Finals were shown on all three existing channels (because only BBC2 could show 625-line/colour coverage)
(12-05-2022, 11:37 AM)madmusician Wrote: Taken me a bit of time to reply to this one - what a lovely idea for a thread!
Like so many of us, my earliest TV memories are CBBC/CITV ones, but lots of that curiosity has been sated by various YouTube uploads over the years, so I've relived plenty of Studio A/Studio 9 CBBC continuity and early-00s Gas Street CITV continuity, enough to remember the general 'feel' of what you used to get on a weekday afternoon. Even big things that I remember like the 1997 CBBC move to Studio 9 is pretty well documented on YouTube.
There's the odd thing that I remember, like a birthday cards slot one morning (hosted by Josie D'Arby in my memory) when the sound didn't go out and they tried a couple of times but had to bail into the programmes. And I've no idea how accurate my memory is with that particular occasion (or, indeed, when it actually was within a period of about three years) - but most of the big stuff is there for me, when it comes to children's telly.
My own personal 'holy grails' are all related to Channel 4's cricket coverage. I'm a bit of an obsessive about it all (and it came at a really formative time for me - their seven years on air coincided with me being aged 7-13, so I was naturally going to remember it very fondly) and whilst I've got certain things recorded (most of which I've put up on YouTube), I wish that I had so much more.
I'd especially love to see an episode or two of the Saturday morning Cricket Roadshow once again - in my memory, it was a genuinely brilliant programme that hasn't been matched since (in terms of cricket coverage) - lively features, interesting interviews and pitching for the younger audience. I remember one in particular in 2002 that kept falling off air (at one point, it was off for so long that a filler was shown by pres), when they were opening a new cricket ground in South London that C4 had helped to fund (and you don't see Sky doing things like that these days). All a bit of a shame that the programme kept falling off air, but we did get to see Alex Tudor deliver the first ball on the new strip (which I do have footage of, but only for about 30 seconds!)
It's obviously all still in the archives, and bits of the highlights shows pop up on the ECB YouTube channel occasionally, but the long fills, the phone-ins at the lunch intervals, the Saturday morning Cricket Roadshow - they'll never pop up again, sadly, and very little seems to have been recorded or put up online.
I did have contact once with a C4 cricket fan account on Twitter (not long after I released an edited tribute to C4 cricket on YouTube) and they said that they had enquired about the archive, and it was available for purchase on a programme-by-programme basis (at a very expensive sum) and would I be interested in contributing to a purchase - sadly not for that cost!
Anyway, that's enough of that, and I know it's a bit of a niche interest, but for me it is all about the TV presentation from C4 cricket, rather than the action itself (which is easy enough to get hold of).
Shameless self-promotion further links, just in case anybody is remotely interested:
Said YouTube channel that has most of my recorded archive on it: https://www.youtube.com/user/madmusician91
An article I wrote about C4 cricket just before the 2019 World Cup Final: https://njfreestone.wordpress.com/2019/0...et-and-me/
The Channel 4 days really were fantastic. They also had the ‘Easter egg’ of the Film Four coverage during racing where the commentators for the most part would just do a highlights commentary, very little chit-chat in between.
There’s been great Ashes series since 2005 but none has captured the public imagination like that year. The way that series played out was almost magical, and the public interest was so intense. Even the Scots were talking about it! I reckon even now, the same series would not attract the public interest if it were on a channel like ITV4. Though less so than nearly 20 years ago, the main channels are still a powerful draw.