Coronation Street Wiki
Register
Advertisement
This article is written
from a real world
perspective
.
Real world


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/ITV_Border.svg/160px-ITV_Border.svg.png


Border Television began transmissions on the ITV network on Friday 1st September 1961 and showed its first episode of Coronation Street (Episode 76) four days later. The station's territory was a strange amalgamation of South West Scotland, the extreme North West of England and the Isle of Man - all very different communities with a very rural aspect.

Precisely ten years after beginning transmissions the station converted to colour television on Wednesday 1st September 1971 with Episode 1109 of Coronation Street being one of the programmes being shown in the new medium on that day.

In a hangover from the 1975 ITV Strike, the station broadcast Episode 1499 and 1500 on 11th and 12th June respectively whereas the rest of the ITV stations (except for Scottish Television) saw them on 9th and 11th June. This was due to a dispute at the station which began on Thursday 5th June when staff received a management letter saying they would not be paid for the former strike period when a national agreement with the ACTT had said otherwise. Staff returned to work on Tuesday 10th June. During the same period there were technical problems in the same region with a burnt-out component affecting viewers in the Solway area who received pictures from the Caldbeck transmitter which consequently was only running on quarter power.

The station failed to transmit episodes 1860, 1861 and 1862 in November 1978 due to a dispute with the ACTT (Association of Cinematograph Television and Allied Technicians) union over levels of engineering staff which had led to an overtime ban by the union, although other sources state that dispute was over the number of commercials to be transmitted. Whatever the cause, forty engineers were locked out by management from 12.55pm on Sunday 12th November 1978 however some enterprising members broke into the premises in Carlisle and staged a sit-in. The dispute continued until Tuesday 21st November when management and union started talks. Although Border made efforts to stage showings of the missed instalments of Edward and Mrs Simpson and Lillie, both major drama serials at the time, they seem to have made no effort to show the missed instalments of serials such as Coronation Street.

The company was bought out by Granada Television in 2001 and merged with Tyne Tees Television on Wednesday 25th February 2009 to become ITV Tyne Tees & Border.

External links[]

Advertisement