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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ม.ค. 2009
- Taken from the Melvyn Bragg; Story of ITV programme in 2005, the talk is about the troubles ITV had with the Unions, especially in 1979 and the TV-am dispute.
NOTE: If I am breaking any copyright please feel free to PM me and I will remove the clip. - บันเทิง
According to the UK inflation calculator £150,000 in 1979 is now worth over £750,000.
Thank you for this-most interesting it is too. I remember seeing this series at the time in 2005-indeed I think I recorded it on the old VHS video tapes I had at the time too. I remember too that it dealt with the sad end of Southern Television as an ITV contractor, as well as ATV, Westward, and then later of course Thames, TVS, TSW, TV-am and Oracle and so on. Also the new companies who came in such as Central, Carlton, Meridian, Westcountry, GMTV and Teletext at the time, in the 1980s and then the 90s. Well done too!!
It's 1979. I come home in the evening. Turn on the TV. What do I see? "Due to industrial action..." no Muppet Show, no Professionals???? Shit!!
ITV could have continued on during the 1979 strike by putting out a restricted service of repeats, which Channel Television region in the Channel Islands were doing. ITV had a huge archive of material, it would have been easy to just air repeats from 4.00pm-Midnight - and have that instead of blank screens for 10 weeks in 1979.
Channel Television (CTV) had to run an emergency service because if they hadn't, the station would probably have hit the buffers and gone bust.
They couldn’t. The Post Office technicians who were responsible for linking the ITV stations to their transmitters were also ACTT members and if management ran a service, they could cut off the links to the transmitters and walk out on strike in sympathy. Many of those same technicians operated telephone service equipment in major exchanges as well, so could stop the telephone infrastructure. ITV management wouldn’t want to be at the root of causing that!
@@stickytapenrust6869 So how come in 1968 a national emergency schedule was aired during that strike? And during the 1984 Thames strike, a management run service remained on air for two weeks?
@@johnking5174 There were different agreements with Post Office workers in 1968 and 1984. And different managers who had different opinions on things like taking risks like running management-led services.
Also, this is 1979 we’re talking about. What relevance have 1968 and 1984 to it? Rules change. Also IIRC the 1984 strike didn’t matter to the newly-created BT technicians as the Thames strike meant it was only one union branch agreeing to strike, not all of them!
If ITV management had balls, they could have aired a temporary schedule from 5.00pm until Midnight filled from the ITV archive. They did it back in 1968. So for example - 5.00pm Cartoon Time. 5.30pm Sapphire and Steel. 6.30pm News Summary provided by ITN and read by a continuity announcer. 6.35pm Classic episode of Crossroads. 7.00pm Classic episode of Coronation Street. 7.30pm George and Mildred. 8.00pm The Avengers. 9.00pm The New Avengers. 10.00pm News Summary provided by ITN and read by a continuity announcer. 10.05pm Late Night Movie. 12.05am Closedown.
They had no power and no techie people to do anything
@@rareads No power? Why?
The technicians went on strike and the electricians would not cross the picket lines. The most militant of all unions within ITV (up until the 80s) were the electricians because, if you forgive the pun, they had the power to stop studios from operating. They simply pulled the plugs.
Whilst it is one thing to get secretaries and middle management to operate cameras, it is another to get them to operate the electrics - there are legal requirements, health and safety needs and I suspect the various companies’ insurers would be none too impressed either at having untrained people in charge of the power supply.
By the mid 80s the electricians union had changed in the light (another pun) of Thatcherite policies and even quit the TUC so instructed their members to keep working at Tv-am. It was that which really crushed the TV unions - once the electricians broke away, it was much harder to keep stations off the air.
@@yellowbelly06 Hence why strikes like this are less common now.
@@yellowbelly06 Operating videotape machines to run a TV service isn't hard to do and it doesn't need specialised knowledge to lace up and run the programmes.
Does anyone know the name of the russ Abbott sketch here??
The unions really knew how to take the proverbial and the management, as said here, were pretty gutless. My problem with management is that by the time thatcher came to take on the unions she took on people who werent taking the proverbial: Miners, steel workers and dockers. Peope who actually did deserve better conditions, pay and shorter hours but they werent even striking for that, they just wanted their jobs. Its buttholes like these itv unions that make the rest look bad.
Channel Television in Jersey carried on regardless of the ITV strike on the UK mainland using their archive library of videotape and film programmes to maintain a service of sorts because if they hadn't have done so, they would've gone bust.
Subtitles?
The BBC strike of December 1978 was settled within 11 hours, the strike at ITV lasted 11 weeks. Just showed how bad ITV were at talks with the unions compared to the BBC.
All because ITV was run by the fifteen regional companies compared to the two BBC national television channels.
because itv had 101+ million regions while the bbc didn't 😒
-Myina xx
And of how militant the ACTT was compared to the ABS.
Michael Grade was one of the stupid bosses at ITV who he mentions!!!
and his Ol' Uncle Lew Grade.
An example of what happens when unions have too much power. A Labour government would take you back to those bad days of a 3 day working week and lots of strikes from bin men to no TV
The three day week was under the Tories.
Agreed.
No it wouldn’t because a Labour Government hasn’t existed since 1979. Kinnock, Smoth and Bliar have changed the party to just be a slightly redder shade of Tory. What we had between 1997 and 2010 is in no way even a vague resemblance to what we had between 1974 to 79 and before.