How do we stand now, those of us engaged in making programmes, at the start of the fourth year of the company’s operation as a programme contractor?

Have we lost our originality, our fire? Has complacency taken the place of ingenuity? Are we, as one journalist put it, “playing safe” with our programme pattern?

If one is to believe what some of our Press-men are writing, then in fact ITV is just coasting along picking up its millions of profit with effortless ease.

Let us examine this suggestion, and take a glance at some of the shows we have been “coasting” along with in the past few months.

Take drama for instance.

This company’s contribution to the ITV network in 1958 was forty-one plays – far in excess of any other contractor. Two-thirds of these plays were British in every sense of the word, eighteen of them being adaptations of British stage successes, and eleven of them specially commissioned TV plays by British authors. This is quite apart from the tremendously successful half-hour British series, “Murder Bag”, which has consistently appeared in the top ten ratings. “Television Playhouse” and the “Play of the Week” series have become firmly established and represent a most important and successful contribution to the ITV programme pattern.

We intend to increase our number of British TV plays in the future and encourage more writers to work exclusively for us.

And then light entertainment can claim to have made its contribution towards originality in 1958.

“The Jubilee Show” succeeded in combining music, comedy and nostalgia in a blend of the old and new, regularly rating in the top-ten, and bringing many letters of appreciation from all kinds of people.

“Rush Hour”, “East Side, West Side”, “Free and Easy” and “Hotel Imperial” all stepped out of line and gave us new ways of presentation. “Cool for Cats”, still on the air and gaining in popularity, will continue with us into the New Year. And the two original ITV quiz shows, “Take Your Pick” and “Double Your Money”, are surely the most successful of them all, and remain the most consistently highest rated quizzes. I only mention these few shows because they are company originations, which is all we are concerned with.

How about features?

Dan Farson’s “People in Trouble” scries has brought him to the front rank as a personality interviewer. “This Week”, coming up to its fourth year, is the only programme of its kind on the ITV network and remains the most informative of all programmes with a behind-the-news format. “New Horizon”, “Conquest of Space”, “Undercurrent” – which brought Gerard Fay to the fore as a new TV personality -“Out of Step” and “Keeping in Step”, “Only Yesterday”, “USSR Now” and “America Now” make an impressive line-up of programme effort and achievement. Difficult to detect any lack of fire in this section.

How about the children?

Are we relying on cowboys and Indians for our high ratings? The facts show just the opposite. Currently the most successful live children’s British serial, “The Red Dragon”, written and produced by John Rhodes, recently passed the viewing figures of “Pop-Eye”, “Fury” and “Rin Tin Tin”. Three of our recent serials were specially written by members of A-R children’s team, and in no programme section is there more zeal and dedication to their work. It is in this section that an important new method of animation “Visimotion” has been developed and is proving of great value, as seen recently in the “Alexander the Mouse” and “The Enchanted House” programmes.

Schools programmes, in their second year, have widened their horizons and with the introduction of “The Dordogne River” programme, specially filmed on location, they stepped out of the classroom to bring the reality of the lesson to the individual. The new programmes planned for the spring term are designed to further this conception of TV education. And then, of course, there are the programmes that do not fall into any particular category — the outside broadcasts, 105 of them, in addition to the Wimbledon Tennis coverage; the “Close-Up” and “Spotlight” scries; the rapidly produced tributes to personalities, such as Mike Todd, Robert Donat and Jack Buchanan, usually mounted in a few’ hours.

So perhaps this suggestion of “coasting” is merely Press talk. Why should we expect anything other than severe criticism from a medium which is more and more finding itself in conflict with Independent Television?

We are sure of our brief. Let us keep our sights high and make quite sure that the things we do are done as well as they can be.

Let us surround ourselves with the best possible talent; let us treat every programme we do as a means of finding out how to do it better next time. Good luck to all of you who contribute to the making of our programmes. Look out, 1959, here we come!

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They said they wanted a television service to operate five days a week, to put out 4 1/2 hours a day; and we said we had better get on with it then, as there wasn’t much time. So on January 3rd 1955, Bill (Roland Gillett, first Controller of Programmes, Associated-Rediffusion, Ltd., later in the Jack Hylton TV Organization) and I sat down with a plain sheet of paper and started reckoning on what we would want to get on the air in the September of the year.Then we reckoned what we would want to stay on the air.

We put the word round among a few old TV chums that we were in business, and one or two of them came to see us – not many at first, only the ones who could smell adventure and the excitement of starting up a new industry.

Cecil (Cecil Lewis, then Deputy Controller of Programmes, Associated Rediffusion, Ltd.) had joined us, and the three of us sat them down in chairs and tried to tell them about our plans. There would be a great chance for those who really wanted to work, to pit their skill against the rest, to forget security and expose their talents in fierce competition and so on. Most of them went out with their heads high and eyes shining; some we sent back to whence they came.

So, after two months, we assessed how many we were likely to get who knew about television, and who might think our way. It wasn’t enough. We would have to train 200 to cover our minimum requirements. Then a High Person rang up and said, “Chum, we want seven hours a day from you – not four-and-a-half.” I said, “That makes things a little difficult”; and he rang off rather quickly.

Training, training, training. How on earth could we train people with nothing to train them with? And so we talked to a lot of people about this and it seemed as if they were all busy, too. Then we met George Kelsey of Marconi’s, and somehow the situation changed. Perhaps they had foreseen the problem. Perhaps they caught some of our enthusiasm. We don’t know – maybe it was a combination of both, but by the beginning of May training was in full swing at a tiny studio in Kensington. Tiny, but how valuable! George made it a priority job, and his engineers fitted this little place out as their own television studios, the first in the country.

Over 2,000 people applied for 200 jobs; and came the interviewing, letter-writing, and the feeling of excitement. Four months before programmes must start we had 160 on the staff, and there came the word to move H.Q. to the former Adastral House in Kingsway. Renamed Television House, it was to be the centre of ITV, with its own studios and modern offices.

And the week before we moved in, the builders moved in, too, with steam shovels, cement mixers and several hundred pneumatic drills: an orchestra that was to provide a non-stop accompaniment to our programme planning that will live with most of us forever. When, with a shattering roar, the blade of the drill appeared through the office wall, we gathered our dust-laden plans and moved to the next office – and so on.

At Wembley, where the old film studios were being rebuilt, deadlines were going by the board, and it seemed as if we would never be able to get away on September 22nd. So to insure against lack of TV studio space at the outset, we started filming in April at Shepperton. New methods of quick filming for television. New treatment of stories, new ideas. A production line of programme product to sustain our air time.

By July 30th the first part of the training scheme had been completed, and now we were to start operational advanced training at the old Granville Theatre, at Walham Green, where conversion for television had been going on for three months. The schedule for training had to be maintained, and everything depended on the Granville being ready. Seventy trainees were ready to move over from Kensington, eager to get into the first operational ITV studio; 70 more were ready to move into Kensington.

Then came the blow. Walham Green just wasn’t ready. And there was nothing ready at Wembley. They said they wanted another 14 days, so we said we had to have it in seven days, otherwise the training scheme would collapse, and it could affect our opening date. They said it was impossible, but they would try. So we called 70 disappointed people together in the chaos of Television House and we told them the position. We felt as if we had let them down, and we told them so. Then we sent them all away on a week’s leave.

We recast the schedule, and advanced training started at the Granville seven days later, but with a difference. Double shifts now: one batch from nine a.m. to four p.m., then the next from five to ten p.m. Meanwhile our Remote (outside broadcast) vans were out around London on dummy runs, setting up a complete outside-broadcast organization.

By August 29th we got into a studio at Wembley and started full-scale programme rehearsals. Only three weeks to go, before we would show ourselves to the public who would judge us side by side with a service that had been operating for 13 years.

Studio directors, lighting men, camera and sound operators, vision mixers and floor managers came straight off the training course to plan their first shows. The first of our sets off the scenery supply line arrived and were hastily stacked in the open with a tarpaulin thrown over. Actors and orchestras, make-up and wardrobe girls, scene men, engineers and production planners moved into Wembley and elbowed indignant builders’ men out.

On September 14th we called all the programme people together in Studio 1 at Wembley, and told them how we felt about it all with one week to go, and then we said that it was now largely up to them. And we came away feeling that nowhere before had we felt such confidence in the people with us.

The morning of September 22nd brought the first of the “good luck” messages that came from all over the world, and with them the realization that a lot of people we had never seen wanted us to do well, and that in the evening the eyes of the world would be on us.

At 7.10 that night we stood in the improvised Control Room in Kingsway and our service went on the air. And no one can know who wasn’t there just how that felt. When we were safely launched we left the room and Bill, the engineer-in-charge (Bill Cheevers, Head of Engineering, Associated-Rediffusion, Ltd.) turned to say something to us and couldn’t say it, and we couldn’t see him very well, anyway, so we turned away and walked along the corridor. It seemed strange that the only noise now was the noise of our service being on the air – but it was good music to us.

Reprinted from The Television Annual for 1957, published by Odhams

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