A recent archive video on YouTube might have surprised some Pres fans.
Last week a video appeared of an afternoon junction on BBC Wales in March 1978.
The gap between the regular midweek repeat of Songs of Praise and Play School was bridged by a lengthy interval.
Two things may have surprised some.
First of all, there was no regional news bulletin immediately before Play School.
In Radio Times this bulletin was billed with words such as “except London, Scotland”.
Northern Ireland had a bulletin so, given the RT billing, it would have been natural to assume Wales did too.
There is probably a simple explanation for this misunderstanding.
As a general rule, pages in RT were only changed because of actual regional programmes and schedule changes.
In English regions, this normally meant changing the Monday evening page to bill the appropriate regional news programme – on other days a generic description appeared.
Pages covering other English regional opts – which were normally at standard times across the network – were also modified.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland, of course, far more modification was necessary. There were more schedule changes and both Reporting Scotland and Scene Around Six got a daily billing.
However many pages still went through untouched. It would have been wasteful to routinely change a whole page in the Scottish or London editions for the sake of a short news summary in small type.
Wales was in a different position though.
All programme pages in the Wales edition were modified to refer to “BBC Cymru Wales” rather than “BBC 1” even on the unusual occasions where there were no schedule variations.
There was consequently no need to amend the regional news billing leaving some Pres fans to understandably assume there was a bulletin in Wales.
It is interesting though that both BBC Scotland and BBC Wales didn’t seem to think a mid-afternoon news summary was an appropriate use of their resources.
This brings us to the other point of surprise.
In the late-70s Scotland, Northern Ireland and the English regions usually only covered the evening junctions – beginning with the link into the Evening News. Network continuity appeared the rest of the time unless there was an opt, such as a regional schools programme.
In Scotland, the network junction normally appeared in the run up to Play School. English regions and Northern Ireland probably came out of the network interval on this day when it was time for the local news.
As far as we know, Presentation in Cardiff routinely covered far more of the schedule – including lunchtime programmes and the afternoon children’s sequence.
This was partly practical. Wales broadcast some Welsh language children’s programmes at lunchtime and during the main afternoon block. Obviously efforts had to be made to ensure incorrect programme information didn’t go out.
Within the BBC, internal documentation of the time appeared to treat BBC Wales as a separate channel rather than a variant of BBC One.
It would be interesting to confirm whether BBC Wales covered the whole schedule – schools junctions away from opts, weekend mornings and so on.
The local version of Test Card G was labelled as “BBC Wales” rather than “BBC 1” when it was shown – ironically to replace the afternoon repeats of Welsh language programmes shown on English transmitters.
In the 80s a number of moves took place which gradually changed the BBC’s main channel in Wales into the equivalent of BBC One Scotland or BBC One Northern Ireland.
The removal of Welsh language programming in 1982 reduced the number of alterations to the schedule substantially. The word “Cymru” was removed from the globe, clock and slides.
In 1985, the new COW and presentation package referred to “BBC 1 Wales” although the announcer still referred to BBC Wales verbally.
By around 1989, the name “BBC 1 Wales” was used by the announcers – later given as BBC Wales on One after the 1991 revamp in a move similar to one made in Scotland but not Northern Ireland.
So an apparently innocuous afternoon junction from 1978 has a story behind it.
UPDATE: BBC announcer Al Dupres provided some additional insights shortly after this article was published:
“I’ve been looking at the BBC Wales paperwork for the time. If they weren’t opting for children’s programmes they’d often take Network continuity.
“This day is different for some reason, and without having the Network paperwork to compare it with makes it difficult but it’s possibly Network-promoted England-only programmes.”
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