TRANSDIFFUSI⭕️N

Both newspapers are sure that this is the beginning of something bigger. As with 11 years earlier, the ITV companies have responded with lockouts and random sackings. The wounds of 1968 have spent a decade festering, and this time other unions are prepared to join the ACTT's action.

Total blackout feared at ITV

The Wolverhampton Express and Star adds Ulster to the list of those who were off last night, and expects HTV to join them today. ATV was also blacked out for most of peak time.

ITV FACES A TOTAL BLACK-OUT

The Hartlepool Mail this morning reports that Thames and Southern, the two companies most often taken down recently, were off entirely last night and are not expected to come back on air tonight.

Today in 1979

In the last 3 weeks, there have been periodic interruptions to programmes across the ITV network, affecting companies not involved as network programmes don't appear and the staff require the screens to remain blank (showing alternative programmes is thought to be scabbing).

Look-out! Celebrating ITV's programmes for children | Check out 'Look-out!' on Indiegogo.

You have less than a week and a half left to order this book! Once the order window is finished, that's that. Susan Stranks would likely be very disappointed if you missed it!

To be fair to the BBC, everybody knew this next US election was going to be a sea change in American politics, and the tide was for the Republicans. Whoever would be chosen by them was pretty well guaranteed to become president. Europeans were fascinated that it could be Nixon of all people!

Playbill. Boys act out a scene set on the deck of a sailing ship while a Westward studio camera watches.

Maggie's Moor. A young woman in mid-century attire and wellies walks a border collie.

It was hard for the smallest companies to get on the ITV network, even for children's programmes. Westward's network output included 'Playbill' in the 60s and 'Maggie's Moor' in the 70s.

Buy our book to find out more. Only 10 days left to order!

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Daily Express: ALL REGIONAL ITV channels carry the Thames TV programmes today

Time now for a look at what's on ITV tonight in 1968 in your region.

The facts behind the Elstree studio strike - THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion Val Parnell gives the management's side of the dispute that overtook the opening of the new studios at Elstree

The facts behind the Elstree studio strike (1961)

Val Parnell gives the ATV management’s side of a dispute that overtook the opening of the new studios at Elstree

associatedtelevision.network/studios/the-...

Daily Mirror listing for Nationwide. "Here's the very last edition of the 14-year-old TV institution ever alert, earnest, concerned though sometimes fuddy duddy. Tonight old hand Frank Bough is once again around as regional presenters bid their farewells. After the hols there'll be a new show to fill the slot called Sixty Minutes."

Daily Mirror: The last round-up. "DID you know about the man who built a concrete boat? He checked everything carefully to make sure it would float. But when he launched it he realised he'd forgotten to check the depth of the water. At high tide it was only six inches deep. So the boat stayed high and dry. Then there were the two sisters who painted horses. One would start at the head, the other at the tail, and they met in the middle. Regular viewers of NATIONWIDE - they number about seven-and-a-half million-will no doubt remember these moments from its past as clearly as Frank Bough does. He presented the programme for more than ten years until he left for breakfast television at the end of last year. But he'll be back in his old seat for the last edition tonight (BBC-1, 6.0). The programme which first went on the air on September 9, 1969 is giving way to a new current affairs programme, 60 Minutes, due to start later this year. "I enjoyed it best when Nationwide was a really good light-and-heavy mix," Frank says. "We had everything from skate-boarding dogs to the latest news story. "Its strength was its regional input, and this last edition will be a regional round-up to end all regional round-ups,'" says Frank.

Daily Express: Nationwide looks back with pride. "AND SO we say farewell lo Nationwide tonight (BBC 1, 6.25) after 14 years of keeping us amused and Informed at tea-time. Frank Bough-one of the show's old stagers—-raises his glass with some friends to see the show off. They've been having a right wallow all week with Bob Wellings, Michael Barratt and Sue Lawley recalling golden moments and Glyn Worsnip digging in the archives. I have to take Issue with Hugh Scully, however, who said Nationwide started a new type of journalism with its consumer investigations. In fact, the Dally Express Introduced this service much earlier with Action Line. The print still usually shows TV the way. Nationwide will be replaced with a new show called Sixty Minutes In the autumn.

Tonight in 1983 we waved goodbye to skateboarding ducks and badly timed opt-outs as Nationwide came to an end.

The epilogue – a vicar telling us what Jesus would have been watching today. Probably BBC-2.

From The Times, here's the listings for the start of the Independent Television Emergency National Service on this day in 1968.

Note that the start-up sequence is specifically mentioned: someone was too rushed to take it out of the material sent to the newspapers!

YouTube video by Sound and Vision from Transdiffusion [Recreation] Independent Television Emergency National Service 1968

What you would've been watching tonight in 1968…

This predates adopting the "switch over" concept of BBC(1) & ITV to UHF. Adorian was never in favour of a national UHF network because of the cost of 1000+ stations. His solution was to wait for satellite instead, which he thought would be viable by 1980.

Talk Radio pays tribute to James Whale following his death at 74 Sad news today as Talk presenter James Whale has died aged 74, following a long illness. He had been living with cancer for several years.

TV and radio broadcaster James Whale has died aged 74.

radiotoday.co.uk/2025/08/talk...

ITV SHOWS ARE POOLED IN BID TO BEAT BLACKOUT – Live programmes axed as crisis grows – 3,000 men are out, says union

The Daily Mirror credits the idea to Thames, who appear to have been preparing for this moment even before they came on air for the first time less than a week ago.

BOSSES KEEP ITV ON THE AIR

But it's too late. The ITV companies have decided to go it alone, says the Western Daily Press, running a nationwide service using what they've already got in the can and staffed by management. This also involves sacking the striking technicians and locking out anyone else who protests.

"New threat to ITV as technicians 'black' film"

Events of Sunday 4 August 1968 in the ITV strike, as told by the morning newspapers the next day.

The Newcastle Journal reports that the unions have a new tactic: calling out the workers in the main film processing plants, leaving ITV with no video, no telecine and now no new film to show.

Full coverage or a third programme? There's a choice looming: 100% coverage for BBC-1 and ITV, or a BBC or ITV-2… but not both

Full coverage or a third programme? (1961)

There’s a choice looming: 100% coverage for BBC-1 and ITV, or a BBC or ITV-2… but not both

Sunday Sun: It's a day of chaos on ITV – and talk of strike

The Sun (not that one) in Newcastle adds TTT and Border to the list of management-run services, with the union saying staff at Tyne Tees were locked out rather than on strike. The paper reckons things will only get worse and believes this coming week will see a full strike taking all of ITV off air.

Sunday Mercury: ITV MEN SACKED IN MIDLAND BLACK-OUT / Police called to Aston studios

The Mercury in Birmingham has a different slant: ATV technicians pulled the plug at 6.48pm, taking the station down all evening. The union says police were called to lock them out; management deny this. The paper says Anglia, Granada and Southern staff have walked out, replaced by management.

Express: ITV CHAOS – BLACKOUT IS SPREADING

ITV strike events for today in 1968 [from tomorrow's newspapers]. The Express reports that staff at LWT in Wembley have all walked out; Westward and Harlech are both still on air with a management-run service. But programmes today were unaffected, with just the odd glitch, it says.

Short answer: it got too expensive to buy compared to the BBC making stuff and selling it to the EBU. Long answer: a feeling in the BBC that audiences didn't want "foreign" cheap crap and would prefer domestic cheap crap, plus the end of "variety", which Jeux Sans Frontières almost was, as a genre.

Partially because the companies acted tough with sackings and lockouts and the ITENS thing in 1968 and then caved completely anyway; in 1979 the folk-memory was that the same would happen. It did.

A lot of the 1979 strike was a failure to actually resolve things in 1968. A decade of mutual suspicion and increasingly grating industrial relations on both sides.

If you live in an obscure postcode area, please buy our book in order to give our curator something to do of an evening. Especially if you're in the Shetlands as that will really annoy him.

Which Thames marked by running their skyline ident backwards, a very silly idea ("we'll be back on Monday, now drown, you damn weirdos") that didn't resume after the strike.

London Weekend Television LWT's controller of engineering talks about the company's studios

London Weekend Television (1970)

Your weekend long read: LWT’s controller of engineering talks about the company’s studios

Coronation Street - written by Susan Pleat (2nd August 1971). It's a red letter day for Hilda as a new television set is delivered (and not any old set - this one has real life living colour).

You can, if you wish, try to make the above make sense by inserting likely words into the places they are clearly missing. Sorry.