Grampian Television
Grampian Television was the original name of the Channel 3 service for the north of Scotland founded in 1961 and which, decades later, was merged with the Central Belt channel STV. The northern region's coverage area includes the Northern Isles, Western Isles, Highlands, Grampian, Tayside, and parts of north Fife.
Grampian went on the air on 30 September 1961. The company was bought out in 1997 by STV Group. The name Grampian Television was retired in 2006 and the channel is now known as STV on-air. STV runs one service which covers both central and northern Scotland but with separate news bulletins. Legally, however, the two services are still licensed separately; the northern licence is held by STV North, which is owned and operated by STV Group plc, and the southern licence by STV Central.
As an independent company, Grampian had a very distinctive local personality which was quite different from STV's. After the station was bought, it gradually assimilated with STV, culminating in the change of name in 2006. STV did not adopt the generic ITV branding that is now used in the other Channel 3 regions which are owned by ITV plc.
STV's regional news programme for Northern Scotland is called STV News at Six and is supplemented by short news bulletins on weekdays. The station also produces regional television commercials.
In 2007, the United Kingdom began its five year programme to end analogue television broadcasts as part of the switchover to digital transmissions, with the eight transmitters covering the STV North region switching over from May to October 2010. The digital switchover ended in 2012.
History
Foundation and launch
Applications for the new North East Scotland contract area were sought by the Independent Television Authority in the spring of 1960. From the original seven applicants, three serious contenders emerged and the contract was awarded in August 1960 to North of Scotland Television Limited on the provision that board positions were offered to the other two final applicants, Caledonian Television and North Caledonian Television. The company's first managing director was G.E. Ward Thomas who later established Yorkshire Television in 1968.The name North of Scotland TV was considered too cumbersome for use and to reflect the input of the other applicants, a new name was chosen on 11 January 1961– "Grampian Television" after one of the key Scottish mountain ranges, the Grampian Mountains. Grampian planned to launch on 1 October 1961 and had already bought and converted their studios for the start date. However, four months prior to launch, the Post Office announced that the links which would connect Grampian to the network would not be ready until February 1962. This would have left the new station only able to broadcast output from its neighboring colleagues at Scottish Television. Pressure at the highest level of Government ensured that the links were in place in time for the station's planned launch.
The first test transmissions from the Durris transmitting station began on 1 September 1961. A week later, Grampian announced the names of their initial announcers-June Imray, Douglas Kynoch and Elizabeth Mackenzie -all of them were teachers. However, Mackenzie handed in her resignation the day before the station launched "for health reasons"; Her position was initially filled by 23 year-old Jimmy Sleigh, before James Spankie came into Grampian as the permanent replacement.
Grampian Television went on air on Saturday 30 September 1961 at 2.45 pm with the opening authority announcement from continuity announcer Douglas Kynoch and a brief welcome from the chairman of the Independent Television Authority, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick:
Douglas Kynoch:
Good afternoon. This is the first transmission of Grampian Television Limited, over the Durris and Monteagle transmitters of the Independent Television Authority. Today, we're about to join all the millions of viewers of the Independent Television network and we're very glad to have in our studios, to switch us into the network, the chairman of the Independent Television Authority, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick.
Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick:
Good afternoon. I am glad to be in Aberdeen today to welcome you into the great family of Independent Television viewers. You now have your own television company in the North East and I hope that you'll very soon come to regard Grampian Television as an essential part of your everyday life. I wish you and Grampian the best of luck and now, let us join the network.
Following the brief opening, the station handed over to ABC's networked coverage of Racing from Catterick Bridge. Later in the opening day at 7pm, Grampian's first chairman, Sir Alexander B. King, presented a half-hour introductory programme about the station. At the time of launch, Grampian served a potential audience of 332,000 people in 98,000 homes.
Early years on air
In its first year, Grampian produced nine regular regional programmes - namely News and Views, Country Focus, Women's World, Serenade, Scotland for Me, Points North, Grampian Golf, local news bulletins and monthly church services.In the early days, Grampian struggled as viewers in a key part of its transmission area, the city of Dundee, were still tuning into coverage from STV via the strong signal of the Black Hill transmitter. Three months after its first transmission, the station was only attracting 13% of the available audience in Dundee while viewing audiences across the region turned out to be less than had been hoped for. Viewer correspondence was said to amount to little more than half a dozen letters per week.
The problems in Dundee along with the effects of Television Advertising Duty and the Equity Strike led to heavy financial losses and a subsequent reduction in transmitter rental for Grampian. But by the end of 1962, the station had succeeded in increasing audience in both Dundee and the region as a whole. The success in viewing figures were attributed to an increase in regional programming.
Whereas Grampian had previously restricted its output to news and current affairs beforehand, production controller James Buchan decided to go for broke and branch out to produce light entertainment and music shows - such programming would remain a staple of the station's local output for the next forty years or so. By 1963, no less than fifty Grampian shows had featured in the local Top Ten audience ratings.
Towards the end of the decade, the station's potential audience reached a million viewers and Grampian was employing just over 200 staff at their studios in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. Prior to the 1968 contract round, smaller regional stations sought an affiliation with one of the four major ITV companies, who would provide the bulk of their programming. Grampian chose to link up with ABC Weekend Television.
1974 strike
On 6 September 1974, management learned that staff producer Tony Bacon had shown banned pornographic film Deep Throat in the studio to friends the previous day, and fired him. The Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians at the Aberdeen studio walked out that night. The strikers stated that Grampian had not followed the agreement with the union on firings, and believed firing Bacon for the showing was excessive. "More than one million viewers" lost the ITV network, the Daily Record wrote, "from the Orkneys to the Tay". Grampian refused the union's demand to challenge the firing; executives believed that the company might lose its license for the showing, and that they might be prosecuted. A striking worker said that about 40 people including executives saw the film, and that if Bacon should be fired everyone else should be too.The Independent Broadcasting Authority refused to intervene unless Grampian requested it. ITV risked the strike expanding to elsewhere in the network. ACTT asked that former controller Buchan act as business mediator between the two sides. What the media called a "sex film strike" ended on 18 September when Bacon agreed to resign, after 13 years at Grampian, and the 65 ACTT strikers returned to work. His manager, programme controller Bob Hird, resigned after admitting that he had not reported seeing the film. Bacon reportedly received a buyout to leave the company. The strike cost Grampian £100,000, compared to its £149,718 profit the previous year.
Technological advances
Grampian was slower than most other ITV stations to begin colour broadcasting which, after the company invested £180,000 in new equipment, started in September 1971—an occasion timed to mark their 10th anniversary on air.The launch of the colour service led to a strike over Christmas 1971. A new film editor had signed a mutuality-binding three-month contract, and Grampian's decision to offer him permanent employment was not exercised. For the Christmas period, Grampian had hired colour studio cameras especially for the Hogmanay programmes and the filming of a networked documentary. The station resumed broadcasting at 10 pm on Boxing Day, which allowed the station to broadcast its first networked colour documentary Two Of A Kind.
Despite this, the station did come up with a number of technical firsts. The most notable of these came in 1978 when Grampian became the first British television station to replace 16mm film cameras with Electronic News Gathering video cameras for news coverage - a move which finally allowed its regional news programme Grampian Today to extend from three to five nights a week. Grampian also developed its own outside broadcast unit, initially using studio equipment. Later developments would allow Grampian to further enhance its regional news service and on air presentation, which relied heavily on in-vision continuity.