It was an odd feeling hearing that ITV will be sold.
As a UK boomer kid ITV was so important for my 60's and early 70's telly watching. After all, there were only three TV channels back then in Blighty, ITV being one, providing no less than true icons like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and The Avengers.
OK, regionalization of ITV meant that different names appeared on the box, like Anglia and LWT - where I lived in Preston it was Granadaland - but it was all ITV.
In the modern world of a million trillion stations available on everything with a screen ITV probably isn't that important now. It's not a channel I seek out myself anymore, so times have changed.
Anyways, ITV is sold. Another part of our childhood gone.
What do you think?
I really find myself totally divorced from 21st century entertainment. The shows I love are from the 60's, 70's and 80's and I have them all on DVD. I can't abide most reboots and I find it impossible to access music from this century, in order to decide if I'd want to buy it (I refuse to stream/rent my own stuff!). I am genuinely turning into an old buffer who believes that, on balance, the Internet was a bad idea! Oh well, there it is! It's only being so cheerful as keeps me going!
ReplyDeleteHere! Here! I know that everyone misses the culture of their formative years, but in my opinion the new stuff on TV is truly baneful. Slick and soulless. Burdened with CGI garbage. And always with some sort of agenda. Here's to living in the past! SFZ
DeleteHa ha, there is actually some decent stuff being streamed SF. Tons of Sci-fi. The Missus and me are working our way through 60 episodes of 2014's Falling Skies with Noah Wiley starring. It's really well made and as far as I can tell agenda less! What are you guys watching?
DeleteFortunately there's room for all ways of doing things these days Kev. I guess we're all nostalgic about our formative years. Hence this blog, itself an Internet anomaly now in today's world of instant streaming, tik tok and social media. At our age, we are who we are. Made in the Sixties. Duffers united!
ReplyDeleteHere's an anecdote relating to the limited number of channels we used to have in the UK.
ReplyDeleteIn 1982, I studied in the USA for a term (semester).
One day I was watching something on TV at my American friend's house. It wasn't very interesting, so I asked him what was on the other side. Puzzled, he walked up to the TV, looked over the back and said "Just some wires and leads and stuff."
Of course, I meant what was on the other channels (of which there were about 50 in the US at the time, including cable TV) but I'd used the British term 'other side', as we only really had two different channels at the time (BBC1 & 2, and ITV) and used to refer to them as the 'sides'.
It was then I realised how far 'behind' in TV entertainment we were, in the UK, at that time.
Television arrived in New Zealand in 1960, when the state-run New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation began transmissions, in addition to its existing radio stations. A second state-run channel arrived in 1975, with the first commercially run channel finally arriving in 1989. So three channels in the late 1960s was two more than NZ had at the time. You lucky things.
ReplyDelete