The Television page

Television has always been an interesting medium for me. The earliest I can remember dates back to 1974, when there were only three channels. At the time, I was living in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the BBC North and Yorkshire Television area. I noticed that things were a bit different in 1976 when I moved to the Midlands, most noticeably a channel called ATV! This became Central in 1982, and Channel 4 started later that year. I remember watching the opening ceremony of Channel 4, and did the same by video for Channel 5 (now known as FIVE), which started in 1997.

Television has always had a technical fascination for me... such things as "How does it work?" have been big questions for me. Also, many programmes I enjoyed in the past have disappeared from modern television, at least on terrestrial channels. Although on the whole I didn't like ATV, they were responsible for a few good programmes, as were Central in their early days. I have also appeared on Central, as mentioned on the politics page.

What are your favourite programmes?
Over the years, I have particularly enjoyed:

• Children's television (I wonder how many of these old programmes my nephews will get to see)

  • Sooty

  • Trumpton/Chigley/Camberwick Green

  • The Book Tower

  • Supergran

  • Postman Pat

  • Smith and Goody

  • Ace Reports/CBTV

  • Grange Hill

• Comedy

  • Not The Nine O'Clock News

  • [Alas] Smith and Jones

  • Wood and Walters

  • Victoria Wood As Seen On TV

  • The Jack Docherty Show

  • There's A Lot Of It About

  • Keeping Up Appearances

  • Red Dwarf

• News and Current Affairs

  • First Tuesday

  • Heart Of The Matter

  • Modern Times

  • This Week

• Drama

  • Auf Wiedersehen Pet

  • Prisoner(: Cell Block H)

  • Upstairs Downstairs

  • Coronation Street

  • Emmerdale [Farm]

  • Brookside

  • EastEnders

  • Pobol y Cwm

• Consumer programmes

  • That's Life

  • Money-Go-Round

  • 4 What It's Worth

  • Watchdog

• Game shows

  • Gambit

  • Sale Of The Century

  • The $64000 Question

  • Countdown

  • Fifteen to One

  • Winner Takes All

  • A Question Of Sport

  • Odd One Out

  • Every Second Counts

  • Wipeout

  • Play Your Cards Right

  • The Price Is Right

  • Going For Gold

  • Say The Word

  • University Challenge

  • They Think It's All Over

  • Supermarket Sweep

  • Celebrity Squares

  • Family Fortunes

• Talk shows

  • The Late Late Show

  • Esther

  • Harty

• Odds and ends

  • Out

  • Gaytime TV

Any links you'd recommend?
Andrew Wiseman runs a super page called 625, named, of course, after the number of lines in a television picture in 50Hz countries.

Jeremy Rogers is writing a history of commercial television, the Independent TeleWeb.

The BBC has rather a lot of web pages of its own, including a whole load of Reception Advice.

Darren Meldrum's MHP includes some historical information on teletext, and a gallery of testcards, along with many other goodies.

Many of these include their own links.

Finally, I would like to refer you to a document I wrote about terrestrial reception of FIVE, though now out of date as the analogue transmitters have all closed.