ARCHIVE: The TV Room
The start of 1975 brought significant cuts to BBC services to save money.
Afternoon TV on BBC One went, BBC Two’s weekend hours were curtailed and both networks closed by 11.30pm on weeknights.
These were painful cuts which reduced choice for viewers – in particular those at home in the afternoon including the housebound.
One other cut took effect a few weeks later on 20th January 1975.
Trade test transmissions on BBC Two were drastically curtailed.
Up until then, BBC Two transmitters had pumped out up to 10 hours of the test card every day – generally only interrupted for Play School at 11am.
Until August 1973, the trade test transmissions also included colour films to provide moving images to demonstrate sets.
Goodness knows what the Carbon footprint was, to use the language of today.
In January 1975 the axe fell. Generally BBC Two transmitters were only on the air between 10.30am and 11.30am and from 4pm until shortly after the final programme of the day.
The cuts were justified by the need to save both money and fuel.
At the time, the corporation would have been billed for its electricity use directly in the same way as any other business customer.
While the draconian power restrictions of early 1974 had gone, there were still calls to save fuel.

Most of Britain’s electricity came from coal and imported oil – North Sea oil was still to come on tap. Cutting the use of power helped to reduce the use of oil for electricity generation.
It’s hard to argue against the logic of this cut. Amongst the wider public, only diehard fans of BBC Two’s test card music would have been disappointed.
But there is no doubt that this cut caused significant inconvenience to the trade.
The lack of a BBC Two signal for much of the daytime, made it harder to install sets and aerials.
An editorial in the magazine Television in April 1975 highlighted these concerns.
Television, originally Practical Television, was a useful magazine with good advice for service engineers and DX enthusiasts.
The basic concerns were justified but I cannot help but think the writer went slightly over the score.

First of all – would the loss of the BBC Two test card really cause massive problems and lead to more badly adjusted sets?
Fundamental adjustments to set up televisions – like convergence checks and balancing the colour guns – should have been done in the workshop, not a home. Many of these checks should have been done with pattern generators.
When a set was installed in the viewer’s home, it should only have been necessary to tune it in and adjust the normal controls like the brightness and contrast.
The test card was basically diagnostic – it showed up faults and allowed for adjustments.
The loss of the test card on BBC Two was, of course, partly balanced out by its increased use on BBC One in the afternoon after the programme cuts.
The suggestion that there would often be no colour signal to show the viewer seems a strange one.
By 1975, roughly half of BBC Schools programmes were in colour – including all new ones. ITV meanwhile ran a full schedule from noon – nothing was in black and white except for the odd film.
A point about the colour quality of some programmes is highly dubious. Schools and daytime programmes operated to the same technical standards as the rest of the schedule.
While the lack of any signal was certainly inconvenient, UHF aerials generally gave equally good results on all channels.
An aerial properly adjusted for both BBC One and ITV could be presumed to be set up properly for BBC Two. When Channel 4 started, there was no need for aerial adjustments except in the few instances where Channel 4 was on an unusual frequency.
Still, the move meant that many engineers would, understandably, only want to install sets when a BBC Two signal was available. But the secret was to make the most of the available time – not to make grim predictions about increased fuel use like the writer does.
All a service engineer needed to do was buy Radio Times to see when there’d be a BBC Two signal outside trade tests – for instance because of midweek racing.
The countdown number on the test card was introduced in 1976 to make it easier for engineers to use the limited time – not to tell viewers when programmes would resume.
All in all, it was a sensible economy cut. The sad thing is that the BBC’s financial position and the state of the country made it necessary.
If took until 1983 to officially reverse these cuts to BBC Two transmission time. Shutdowns ended at the same time as schools programmes moved to Two.
It’s worth noting that things were relaxed slightly in 1980 when Ceefax In-Vision slots started – usually in the half hour up to 10.30am and 4pm.
Is any of this of relevance today or is it just anoraky nostalgia?
Every organisation needs to think about its energy bill and carbon footprint – for both economic and environmental reasons.
The idea of a major channel being off the air during the daytime is unthinkable while multiplexing means that the transmitter would still be on air even if an individual channel was shut.
But the Television article is a reminder that it is possible to overstate the real challenges that trying to save electricity can bring.
It painted a worst case scenario and presented it as inevitable.
With sensible planning and foresight, many businesses and some domestic customers today could probably cut their power use and energy bills without too much hardship. Some already have.
A growing proportion of the UK’s electricity comes from renewables, nuclear power and “low carbon” sources such as biomass. Coal-fired power stations are a thing of the past.
Modern lights and TVs use far less electricity than their 1970s equivalents.
But the mindful use of power can help some people and businesses cut their electricity bills without causing the hardship of simply switching something off.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: reconstruction of Test Card F (with 'BBC 2' branding). COPYRIGHT: BBC.
An interesting article.
Just two points:
“Generally BBC Two transmitters were only on the air between 10.30am and 11.30am and from 4pm until the start of programmes.”
That would mean they were switched off again after the programmes started.
Sorry.
Anyway, it certainly could be a problem for installers if an installation was booked between 11.30am and 4.00pm in some areas. How could they make sure BBC-2 was tuned correctly if the viewer received programmes from a different transmitter to that of the installer’s workshop?
“First of all – would the loss of the BBC Two test card really cause massive problems and lead to more badly adjusted sets?”
Yes.
“Fundamental adjustments to set up televisions – like convergence checks and balancing the colour guns – should have been done in the workshop, not a home. Many of these checks should have been done with pattern generators.
When a set was installed in the viewer’s home, it should only have been necessary to tune it in and adjust the normal controls like the brightness and contrast.”
The time taken to set up colour TVs in the era of delta gun CRTs (pre-late 70s) was significant as manufacturers were not willing to do this themselves and often critical setup adjustments could be accurately adjusted in the workshop and then be completely off in the customer’s home and need readjusting, especially static convergence, dynamic convergence and colour purity as the external magnetic field around the set would be different. Even turning the set could cause colours to go off (which is why Sony developed the Trinitron in the late 60s and why the other manufacturers started using in-line gun CRTs in the late 70s). Don’t forget this is also including sets that had been repaired, not just new installs.
Test pattern generators often gave colour levels that were stronger than what was broadcast, especially compared to BBC broadcasts (who had their own standards for levels independent of the IBA/EBU). So a test pattern generator often would not give a true indication of colour levels.
“A point about the colour quality of some programmes is highly dubious. Schools and daytime programmes operated to the same technical standards as the rest of the schedule.”
Many came from colour film and the colour grading was rarely – if ever – as good as videotape or live material.