Tonight’s TWW… in 1966 

23 January 2016 tbs.pm/8345

Television Weekly gives us a run down of the programmes on TWW for Sunday 23 January 1966. Things worth noting include:

  • Television on Channel 10 begins the day at 11am with the Morning Service. This was usually supplied by ABC or ATV (the latter in this case) from somewhere there had been a sports fixture the day before – saving sending the OB fleet out just for such a loss-leader
  • Sunday Session – the name is a sort-of pun on BBC Network Three’s famous Study Session daily adult education slot – contains the usual mix of obvious educational programmes (Les Trois Coups from ATV, Say it in Russian from Tyne Tees), stuff that could be education but could also just be a dull programme displaced from weekday late evenings (ATV’s The New Industrial Revolution, ABC’s A Plain Man’s Guide to his Money) and the obviously not adult education at all in any way (The Grammar of Cookery from ABC)
  • More religion after the 2.10pm trip to ITN for the local Let’s Face Facts, a Brains Trust but with religious questions and answers rather than trivia
  • Crash Drive at 3.20pm is a 1959 melodrama from the pen of Brian Clemens – here given an extraneous “t”. You may remember him for The Avengers and The Professionals and Bugs and, well, most things. Although not probably for this rubbish
  • Speaking of rubbish, Lost in Space appears at 4.30pm. This show is famous with a generation of children and teens who saw one half of it on ABC on Saturdays. It part-clashed with Doctor Who and the viewing figures showed which the audience preferred. The ABC credit is because ABC bought it in from the US and sold it on to the ITV companies, rather than it being a network purchase. Batman had a similar credit
  • More religion at 6.35pm and 7.05pm from the two weekend companies, one dull and one ABC
  • Time Bomb at 7.25pm was released in the US as Terror on a Train. It’s an American film made in the UK about Canadians from 1953. It bombed
  • Your host at the Palladium is a 26-year-old Jimmy Tarbuck
  • At 11.25pm we’re back with the Let’s Face Facts team for more of their thoughts on viewers questions. It’s highly unlikely that the two audiences had much overlap

You Say

5 responses to this article

Victor Field 23 January 2016 at 12:48 pm

Interesting how the “Lost In Space” listing mentions William “Any relation to Raquel?” Welch and Irwin Allen but doesn’t say what the episode’s about.

n hewit 23 January 2016 at 1:53 pm

Real blast from the past, I remember Jimmy Clitheroe well, the programme was from ABC Didsbury, but I remember it being on ABC Northern Region on a Saturday evening.The opening sequence was Jimmy on a go cart riding on the pavement in a tree lined suburb of mock tudor houses in a Northern City, possibly Chorlton Cum Hardy or Didsbury, Sale or Altrincham so beloved by Granada for their later Sit Coms like the Cuckoo Waltz, (Chorlton Cum Hardy), and more recently Didsbury, home of Cold Feet, also the Lovers, which based on the references to the bus numbers was probably also South Manchester, or maybe neighbouring Altrincham, Sale or Urmston. The Lovers was a complete contrast to er: Nearest and Dearest and as time evolved these gentler comedies reflecting the real way of life( in the Southern part of the Region at least) came to hold sway, even the last series set in Bolton, Leave it to Charlie, featured a white collar Insurance Sales person, later on this was followed by Watching set in the Merseyside suburb of Wirral. One of the strength of these Granada comedies was the supporting role of one of the charecters mothers, from Berlyl’s mother in the Lovers, through to, Patsy Bryne as Malcolms mother and her scale model of Leasowe Lighthouse, they have all been strong charecters, who knew just where to draw the line on unsavoury things, to coin a phrase from Flis’s mother in the Cuckoo Waltz, “they all knew how many Blue Beans made four”! Mollie Sugden the iconic nothern lady of certain upbringing and age, who played Jimmy’s mother epitomised this and ensured every programme she appeared was a success, with her looks and throw away sarcastic comments, always maintaining good maners to the person she was scathing about. I can recollect in an episode of the Liver Birds in which Beryl’s cousin, Gloria ‘from Huyton’,( played by the self same Paula Wilcox, formerly Beryl in the Lovers) got married, Molly Sugden as Sandra’s mother sidled up to Sandra, (Nery’s Hughes) and with that wilting look on her face said through the corner of her mouth,”you know that antique cut glass bowl I gave her for her wedding present: they are using it for the trifle”, to which on the number of occasions I have actually heard such conversations would in real life be followed with, “they probably keep the coal in the bath”

Arthur Nibble 25 January 2016 at 9:26 am

Interesting to see the three football matches in “FA Cup Special” listed. At what point was it decided that BBC and ITV wouldn’t advertise the games they were covering until the half time reports (to avoid potential reduction of the crowd, through spectators deciding to watch the game on the telly instead)?

Not for the first time in this archive run, no mention of any of the host of stars at the Palladium, and they’re just as shy regarding the world famous celebrities on Eamonn Andrews’s show.

James Heaton 2 February 2016 at 2:09 pm

When I was a child in the 80s, radio’s Sport on 2 normally took second half commentary from a top game – but wouldn’t say which until 2:55pm to avoid reducing the crowd. Probably not so much at that game, but more a case of people saying ‘I won’t go and watch Shrewsbury vs Leyton Orient in the rain when I can hear Everton vs Man U on the radio.’

So probably quite recent.

Paul Mason 22 February 2016 at 3:33 am

Regarding religion I recall as a child that in our house and no doubt many others both BBC1 and ITV/ABC ,later Granada, broadcast religious output between 6pm and 7.25pm on Sunday. Our two-channel TV set (we didn’t get BBC2 until early 1973) would be switched OFF and on would go the radio for Pick Of The Pops followed by the dreary Sing Something Simple. I reckon these radio programmes had a captive audience well into the 1960s and 70s. When BBC2 came to the Mason home we would tune into a programme called News Review, which was the previous weeks news for deaf people with a sign language interpreter, which was the only non religious programme on TV.

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