ITV Yorkshire - Programming

Programming

Yorkshire Television was a major producer within the ITV network and produced programming in all genres.

The presenter Alan Whicker became a shareholder in the company at its inception and made many programmes for the station, most notably interviews with the Cat's Eye inventor Percy Shaw and the Haiti dictator Baby Doc Duvalier.

In drama the company had many critical successes including Hadleigh, The Main Chance, Flambards, Harry's Game, Heartbeat, The Darling Buds of May, A Touch of Frost, Coming Home, Shoot To Kill and The Beiderbecke Trilogy. In comedy, it produced many populist shows such as In Loving Memory, Duty Free, Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Joker's Wild, Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt!, Queenie's Castle, The New Statesman, Farrington of the F.O. and gave the comedian Les Dawson his first major series.

For children, YTV contributed many networked shows including Animal Kwackers, The Riddlers, Junior Showtime, The Flaxton Boys, Follyfoot and My Parents Are Aliens as well as the long-running hit How We Used to Live for ITV's Schools and Colleges' output. In entertainment, it produced a large number of networked quiz shows such as 3-2-1 and Winner Takes All and religion-oriented shows such as Stars on Sunday.

In 1969 it launched its first soap opera Castle Haven which was cancelled after one year. When the restrictions on daytime broadcasting were relaxed in 1972 it launched an afternoon drama called Emmerdale Farm, which is still being broadcast as Emmerdale.

The company invested heavily in outside broadcast facilities and was a large contributor to ITV Sport, responsible primarily for covering northern-based horserace meetings (with London Weekend Television and Thames Television covering the south and ATV covering the Midlands) amongst other sporting events.

In the field of investigative journalism the station soon gained an international reputation for award-winning documentaries: 1975 saw the transmission of the BAFTA award-winning Johnny Go Home, a startling exposé of teenage male prostitution and homelessness in London. In the same year the station transmitted Too Long a Winter (also a BAFTA award-winner), featuring Yorkshire Daleswoman Hannah Hauxwell who lived an austere and harsh lifestyle whilst running her small farm. In 1979 the documentary Rampton: The Secret Hospital, making public the treatment of patients at the Nottinghamshire mental care facility Rampton Hospital, led to a Government investigation - it also won an international Emmy award for the station. The 1989 documentary Four Hours in My Lai (broadcast as part of the monthly First Tuesday strand) revealed new information about the 1968 massacre. Yorkshire Television also produced the 1989 documentary One Day in the Life of Television.

YTV has often led the way in British commercial broadcasting. As well as building the first purpose-built colour studios on Europe it was the first to offer breakfast television. In 1977, the station took part in a nine-week trial offering viewers an extra hour of programming at breakfast time, beginning transmission at 8:30am with a 15-minute national and regional news bulletin called Good Morning Calendar alongside cartoons and episodes of Peyton Place. A similar experiment was carried out by Tyne Tees Television around the same time.

In August 1986, the station was the first to offer 24-hour transmission (when both the BBC and ITV companies closed down at around 12:30 to 1am). This was achieved by simulcasting the satellite station Music Box - both YTV and Music Box were partly owned by the same company (W H Smith). The experiment ended shortly before Music Box closed down in January 1987 and was replaced by a teletext-based Jobfinder service which broadcast for one hour after closedown. YTV re-introduced 24-hour programming 18 months later along with the rest of the ITV network, beginning 24-hour broadcasting on 30 May 1988.

In the mid-1980s, Yorkshire broke from the network by refusing to screen the BAFTA Awards, claiming them to be slaps on the backs of the BBC. The movie The Sting was a replacement in 1986. As the rest of the network overran in the live BAFTA screening, Yorkshire had to cobble together minor programmes until other regions were able to screen the late-running ITN News. In the 1990s, while Bruce Gyngell was managing director, Yorkshire declined to show The Good Sex Guide, replacing the programme with Alan Whicker repeats.