Colour Strike


The Colour Strike was an industrial action by technicians at ITV companies which ran from 13 November 1970 to 8 February 1971. Due to a pay dispute, technicians refused to work with colour television equipment. Some shows made during this period aired in black-and-white as late as December 1971.

History

At that time, ITV had recently switched to colour transmissions, requiring the individual companies to invest heavily in new equipment. Early colour television studio cameras consisted of four tubes to relay the picture: three were receptive to colour with the fourth providing a high-resolution monochrome image. The final colour picture was created by combining the chrominance and luminance signals, but the technicians simply switched off the colour tubes whilst this dispute took place.
This meant that even though colour equipment was available, all shows were recorded and broadcast in black-and-white, thus denying the ITV companies the ability to sell airtime at the higher value that colour transmissions dictated.
In some film sequences for location shots in these programmes, the colour signal from the telecine machine had to be switched off in the vision mixing desk before being recorded to tape, but this was partly unsuccessful, leading to some film sequences being recorded with an odd array of pale colours. This is prominent in the second series of Hadleigh, for example.
The first Coronation Street episode to be broadcast in colour was transmitted on 3 November 1969, but due to the strike, some 1970–71 episodes, including the one featuring Valerie Barlow's electrocution, were recorded in black-and-white. The last black-and-white edition was shown on 10 February 1971, although the episodes transmitted between 22 and 24 February 1971 contained black-and-white film inserts.
All of ITV's programmes were broadcast in black-and-white throughout this period, including scheduled repeats and regional programmes. During this time, ATV showed a modified version of its regular caption slide An ATV Colour Production at the end of its shows, which had the word 'colour' blanked out, with Granada's regular caption slide also omitting the words 'Colour Production' to reflect this fact too.
The strike was called off on 2 February 1971 with all colour production and transmissions resuming on 8 February.
Four ITV regions were still broadcasting exclusively in black-and-white prior to the start of the Colour Strike and would not commence colour broadcasts until the following dates: Westward Television, Border Television, Grampian Television and Channel Television.
There was also a short dispute two years later in early 1973; this affected both BBC channels as well as ITV.

List of shows affected by the ITV colour strike

ATV

The Golden Shot Timeslip Crossroads HineThe MisfitThe Dickie Henderson Show
  • ''Girls About Town''

Granada

Coronation Street A Family at War

LWT

Budgie Please Sir Upstairs, Downstairs The Big Match World of Sport Doctor at Large On the Buses All Star Comedy Carnival The Trouble with You, Lilian Six Dates with Barker
  • ''The Frighteners''

Southern

Thames

This is Your Life Bless This House Carry On Again ChristmasDavid Nixon's Magic Box The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width Elephant's Eggs in a Rhubarb Tree The Sooty ShowThe Benny Hill Show Public Eye Shadows of Fear

Yorkshire

Dear Mother...Love Albert Mr Digby, Darling Hadleigh