Despite the opportunistic rebranding of tat as ‘vintage’, charity shops still occasionally unearth little gems that sneak under the eBay radar and are picked-up by grateful punters bereft of an ulterior motive; a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon an entry in the long-running and collectable ‘Observer’s Book of…’ series, a 1980 reprint of 1973’s ‘London’, complete with a suitably avuncular Yeoman Gaoler on the cover. These nifty little pocket book guides were published on a variety of subjects between 1937 and 1982, with a one-off revival as recent as 2003; this particular copy cost me a quid. It reminded me that, even now, it remains possible to locate such items for next-to-nothing, regardless of the change in approach that came via the negative impact of Mary Portas and her reality TV assault on the charity shop ethos around 15 years ago. When I first began to frequent high-street bargain-bins in the 80s, it seemed everything on sale was a giveaway because nobody really wanted anything in there (bar amateur antiquarians such as myself), and one fascinating fossil I found back then cost me 70p, an item that had originally retailed at 6/- when published in 1963. It was the BBC Handbook 1964, looking ahead to an especially eventful year as the Corporation prepared to launch its second television channel.
The early 60s had been tough for the BBC. Not only had the arrival of ITV in 1955 broken the Beeb’s 20-year monopoly of British television, but the populist manner of commercial TV’s instant connection with a viewing public eager for choice had seen a mass defection to the other side; there was also a blow dealt to the BBC’s three radio networks with the arrival of pirate radio, playing non-stop contemporary pop rather than serving listeners tantalising rations of it sandwiched between hours of archaic Light music aimed at middle-aged housewives. The BBC’s first response to this attack on its dominance was to shake-up its TV output by calling time on the 50s with adventurous new programmes like ‘Z Cars’, ‘Steptoe and Son’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘That Was The Week That Was’; its next move was to launch a second television service, albeit one that wasn’t intended to compete with the huge viewing figures of ITV. The aim of BBC2 was to offer a highbrow option compared to what was largely perceived as the downmarket ‘Americanisation’ of British television by the Beeb’s rivals. The 1964 BBC Handbook says, ‘BBC2 will be complimentary to BBC1 (as the existing service will come to be known) in the sense of providing an alternative and different programme for the viewer at any time when both services are on the air. Its scope will be as wide as BBC1 and will cover the whole range of what the public has come to expect from a comprehensive and national television service.’
One of the main difficulties the BBC faced with the advent of BBC2 was their intention for the second channel to transmit on the superior 625-line system as opposed to the standard 405-line system both BBC1 and ITV used (and the system the majority of the nation’s sets were produced to receive). 625-line TV was already fairly standard in Europe, but in the UK it meant transmitters would have to be altered to accommodate the UHF band that 625-lines were broadcast on, as opposed to the VHF band that handled 405-line TV. The BBC were looking to the future, primarily of colour television; but in 1964 625-line TV was an expensive luxury requiring the kind of investment on the viewers’ behalf that needed enticing programming, something that BBC2 didn’t appear to have as far as the average TV audience was concerned. The eccentric schedule for the station’s intended opening night on 20 April 1964 included a production of ‘Kiss Me Kate’ starring Howard Keel; 45 minutes of a fellow called Arkady Raikin – who was billed as ‘the Soviet Union’s leading comedian’ – accompanied by The Leningrad Miniature Theatre Company; there was a live fireworks display from Southend Pier; and there was also ‘The Alberts’ – a surreal comedy/musical ensemble who were associates of both Spike Milligan and Ivor Cutler and who were fresh from a West End show titled ‘An Evening of British Rubbish’.
An additional hurdle hampering the launch of BBC2 was the fact its initial transmissions were restricted to the Crystal Palace transmitter in South London. As the 1964 Handbook admits, ‘It will be some years before complete national coverage of BBC2 can be achieved, but it will be extended from London and the South-East to the Midlands in 1965 and it is hoped to cover some 75 percent of the country’s population by 1966/67.’ A map in that week’s issue of the Radio Times shows the signal from Crystal Palace radiating as far north as Saffron Walden in Essex, but no further. So, not a lot there that promised to challenge the BBC’s reputation as an elitist, middle-class service catering for the Home Counties; I doubt ITV’s franchise holders felt threatened by its arrival. Then, come the opening night, the final disaster struck. About half-an-hour before BBC2 was scheduled to begin broadcasting at 7.20pm, there was a huge power failure caused by a fire at Battersea Power Station; most of West London experienced a blackout, including the Underground Central Line and – more importantly from the BBC’s perspective – Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush.
At the time of the blackout, BBC1 had already switched to its regional centres for local news programmes, so the senior service continued to be received by viewers outside of London; once everyone realised what was happening, network broadcasting then switched to Alexandra Palace, the site of the BBC’s TV beginnings 30 years before. Periodical bulletins were issued on BBC2 from Alexandra Palace as the few who could receive it waited for programmes to begin, but the decision was eventually taken to postpone the launch till the following day. Rumours swiftly circulated this had been a dirty trick by ITV, a revenge attack for the BBC stealing the headlines on ITV’s launch night in 1955, when the dramatic death of Grace Archer shocked the-then far larger radio audience; but nothing was ever proved. With the intended opening a write-off, a new children’s series aimed at the pre-school viewer, ‘Play School’, therefore became the first-ever BBC2 programme by default when it went ahead at 11.00am on 21 April 1964. When the service belatedly began proper at 7.20 that evening with ‘Line-Up’, the first image viewers saw was a candle that was then blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy before uttering the immortal words, ‘Good evening. This is BBC2.’
The new channel’s commitment to innovative programming was soon reflected in two contrasting successes – the heavyweight documentary series, ‘The Great War’ (which benefitted from the fact there were still plenty veterans of the conflict alive in the mid-60s) and ‘The Likely Lads’, a sitcom that put the vogue for The North on the small-screen in a comedic context for the first time. But it wasn’t until David Attenborough accepted the offer to step back from the camera and become BBC2 controller in 1965 that the landmark programmes for which the channel’s eclectic early years remain defined by were produced. Amongst those that appeared on Attenborough’s watch were ‘The Forsyte Saga’, ‘Civilisation’, ‘Alistair Cooke’s America’, ‘The Ascent of Man’, ‘Man Alive’, ‘Call My Bluff’, ‘The Money Programme’, ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, ‘The Goodies’, and ‘Pot Black’. The latter series, as with BBC2’s Wimbledon coverage, couldn’t have happened without 1967’s shift into colour broadcasting, another innovation Attenborough oversaw.
BBC2 today, as with the television landscape as a whole, is a very different beast indeed; a cursory glance at the channel’s schedule on the day of its 60th birthday finds a trio of lunchtime cookery programmes, live snooker and women’s rugby, and a glut of repeats intended to mark the anniversary. Part of me wishes ‘the Soviet Union’s leading comedian’ was amongst them, but not so, alas. Happy birthday, then, BBC2; I knew you when you were worth watching.
© The Editor
Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?fan_landing=true&u=56665294
winegumtelegram 