THAT was a decade that was. That was a decade that was…

Oh, put the emphasis where you like. The fact remains that all of us who were there on the night when Rediffusion and ITV first flickered on to the screen are now 10 – no, 11 – years older.

I’ve changed. How about you?

Rediffusion has certainly altered. For a start it is no longer ‘Associated’.

Incidentally, dear editor, it would be interesting to find out just how many people at present on the pay-roll were with the company on Night One (still known to some as the night they invented champagne).

The answer is 252 – Editor.

From my own memory book I recall Sally Sutherland, Red Lyle, Dennis Atherton, Richard Hawkins, and the late Hugh Finlay – all part of the Press Office over the years.

Where the nostalgia really hit me was at the ITA’s white-tie Guildhall banquet when 10 glorious years and all that were celebrated.

It might have been the wine and brandy but sitting there under the stony stare of Gog and Magog I suddenly realised that 10 years (and part of a hair line) had vanished since I was in almost the same seat for ITV’s curtain-up.

The instant reaction was to check for ‘old familiar faces’ along the tables around me. Of 40 or so TV ‘professionals’ within range only four, perhaps five, had been there back in ’55.

Now I know how Greybeard felt. If my memory is right was Lord Hill, now ITA chairman, at that September 22, 1955, dinner as Postmaster-General?

And at that time didn’t ABC TV consist of just Howard Thomas and a secretary?

Before quitting that particular celebration I wonder if the champagne would have flowed so freely had it been known that within one year Rediffusion would be over £3 million down?

By the way, hasn’t that been perhaps the most important change of all – turning those colossal losses of the early years into a profit?

As a privileged spectator seeing much of the game from close quarters it seems to me that Rediffusion’s development has been in three stages.

The first, naturally, was that somewhat daffy unreal period when the newly recruited army worked excitedly to get the company on the air and keep it there.

Forgive me if there is an overlap for so many shows have been crammed into the decade, but those were the days of Gordon Harker and ‘Sixpenny Corner’. Of Ralph Reader’s ‘Chance Of A Lifetime’.

The weekly sports magazine. The Granville Melodramas. And of Sgt ‘I Only Want The Facts, Mam’ Webb and ‘Dragnet’.

Wasn’t there a freakish series called ‘You’ve Never Seen This’? Book reviews in the morning. Sheila Matthews as Friday’s Girl. Wasn’t this, too, the Jack Hylton variety era… the names which occur being Arthur Askey, Tony Hancock (he once did a one-man show in an emergency), Rosalina Neri, Bryan Michie, Ivor Emmanuel, the Crazy Gang and the Water Rats?

Roland Gillett was the programme controller, Lloyd Williams was on the production staff, and the whole period was like the froth on top of a pint.

The second stage was marked by the appointment of Paul Adorian as managing director and John McMillan as programme controller.

Now the workaday face and output of the company was being established. On went the old originals in ‘Take Your Pick’ and ‘Double Your Money’.

But morning TV disappeared. Much of the early pioneering excitement went with it. And the staff settled down to a more orderly existence.

Schools programmes started – remember Enid Love? Was it in this spell or even earlier that we had those Michael Ingrams’ series? How about those Goonish shows like ‘A Show Called Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, and ‘Idiots’ Weekly’? Not only Sellers, but Milligan, too.

The work of putting in the foundations went on continuously.

‘Cool For Cats’ caught popular fancy and brought Joan Kemp-Welch’s name to the forefront. ‘This Week’ was going strong. Somewhere around this point Cyril Bennett and Elkan Allan began contributing to the company’s fortunes.

Peter Cotes is one more name I associate with this sector of Rediffusion’s fortune. And was I alone in liking America’s ‘Johnny Staccato’ jazz-thriller series?

I went down the Thames on one Rediffusion birthday party – and across to Paris for another. That was the day that George Sanders, then working on a special programme called ‘Women In Love’, helped to play host. Although only a voyage down the Seine, Captain Tom Brownrigg was also on hand.

So we had ‘No Hiding Place’ and ‘Intertel’, ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Rawhide’. But where was Tig Roe? Whither Alan Morris? Goodbye Kingsway Corner.

Out went advertising magazines. Out went ‘Jim’s Inn’ – after setting the standard for all shows of this type. But in came the many successful Pinter plays.

The most successful, of course, being ‘The Lover’, with Alan Badel and Vivien Merchant. It must have won almost every award possible… actor, actress, author and director. Surely Rediffusion’s most successful production in all those 11 years?

Just as the TV scene was growing contentedly sedate on came ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ to give half the nation convulsions and the other half blood pressure.

Visiting the ‘RSG’ studio at TV House brought back all the din of 1955 and that drilling year when Adastral House was being converted.

By now Rediffusion was part of life. Dan Farson, always prominent in company affairs on the screen (his ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’ show was not only entered at Montreux but must have been responsible for the introduction of ‘Stars and Garters’), was a notable departure.

But phase two was drawing to a close too. On went John McMillan to general manager and in came Cyril Bennett as the new programme controller.

This is now part of the latest story… come in David Frost, Stella Richman, Benny Green, ‘Three After Six’, ‘The Rat Catchers’, and David Jacobs.

Pausing only to nod a farewell to Buddy Bregman and a friendly greeting to Europe’s favourite TV ‘uncle’ Eric Maschwitz, it scarcely seems credible that Monica Rose was hardly walking when ‘Double Your Money’ was first televised.

Yes, you’ve changed all right. Some more memory jogs… Stuart Hood, that ‘Arabian Nights’ opening for Wembley Studios, ‘Hippodrome’ in colour, the American deal with David Susskind, ‘Dial M For Music’, ‘Alfred Marks Time’, Keith Fordyce, Groucho Marx, Dickie Henderson, and on, and on.

It’s been a long time. Perhaps after all it should be that was a decade that was? What’s more Gog and Magog are still waiting.

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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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Viewers saw a tuning signal in the form of a cross, accompanied by tone. This was followed by a card bearing the legend. “Opening Night Independent Television Service Channel 9,” over which viewers heard a piece of music consisting of variations on the traditional tune ‘British Grenadiers’, building slowly to a climax.

Leslie Mitchell, the former voice of the BBC Television Service, announced for the first time, ‘This is London.’ A fanfare by Charles Williams was heard as Associated-Rediffusion’s Adastral logo, with the company name and channel number beneath, formed up for the first time.

Mitchell went on, ‘This is Channel Nine, on Band III, which brings you programmes by Associated-Rediffusion, every week, from Monday to Friday.’ He was followed by an excerpt from Sir Edward Elgar’s ‘Cockaigne Overture – In London Town’. The station clock reached 7:15 pm – and Independent Television was on the air.

Then followed a short film, with voiceover by Associated-Rediffusion’s Deputy Controller, Cecil Lewis, telling the history of London – and of broadcasting itself, the pictures showing images of London, brief shots of Marconi and Alexandra Palace, Television House under reconstruction, and ultimately the face of the Guildhall with its Latin inscription, “Domine, dirige nos!”.

Lewis, on film, called the A-R outside broadcast staff to readiness, and ‘handed over’ to the live coverage, which focused initially on the guests filling their seats in the Guildhall.

The Hallé orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, played Elgar’s overture live, in its entirety, followed by the National Anthem. And at 7.45pm, the speeches began, regarded by some commentators (notably the Daily Mirror the next morning) as the low point of the evening.

The Lord Mayor of London, the Postmaster-General Sir Charles Hill and Sir Kenneth of the ITA all said their pieces, and finally things livened up as control was handed over to the then-ABC at the Wood Green Empire for a variety show, “Channel Nine”, produced by Bill Ward, formerly of the BBC and later to become a major executive producer of ITV sports programmes.

There were drama sketches. A boxing match. Four-minute-miler Chris Chataway read the first news from ITN in record time, which included coverage of the trial of Jack Spot at the Old Bailey – another first in British broadcasting history. Live coverage of the opening night party, “Gala Night at the May Fair” featured Leslie Mitchell and Shirley Butler talking to attendees including Pat Weaver, head of NBC, who called the opening “fantastic”. At 11.05,Independent Television closed down with a solemn prayer.

A-R management – and in particular Roland Gillett, the company’s first Controller of Programmes – breathed a sigh of relief. All had gone to plan. The country’s first television advert – for Gibbs SR toothpaste – aired (complete with countdown – oops), and the night was a success. Previously A-R and ATV had agreed to give the proceeds from the evening’s commercials to charity. All that remained was to tot up the figures for this successful night.

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The former office of the Air Ministry in Holborn, Adastral House on Kingsway, was purchased and renamed ‘Television House’ – though the Rediffusion symbol, a starburst, was almost immediately dubbed the ‘Adastral’ by staff members, thus continuing the name.

The first move was to gut the ornate office block internally and create offices for the company, two studios, film processing laboratories, editing suites, dubbing studios, a local newsroom, an office and studio space for Independent Television’s news company ITN, and, late in the day, provide office and production space for the temporarily homeless weekend contractor ATV.

Bovis Limited began work early in 1955, working vast amounts of overtime whilst staff attempted to create a whole company around them. A fascinating – if probably apocryphal – story involves a departmental secretary finding herself bricked up in her office and spending some time shouting for help before Bovis workers demolished the wall, rescued the secretary and rebuilt the wall, all in a matter of minutes.

To supplement the two studios at Television House, Associated-Rediffusion purchased a plot in Wembley to house four more studios, and took options on space at the Granville Theatre in Walham Green and a sound stage at Viking Film Studios.

In less then six months, A-R recruited 1000 staff members – from secretaries to Roland Gillett, the programme controller of the new company.

Despite the hurried nature of the build-up of the service, A-R were ready for launch in good time, and set their minds to the gala opening of the service on a date in late September to be set by the ITA. The transmitter began test broadcasts on 13 September, and A-R were given the final go-ahead by the Authority.

Launch date would be 22 September 1955.

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