Logotastic ’65 

29 June 2015 tbs.pm/6641

In 1963, the Independent Television Authority decided to explain the concept of ITV – the networking, the quotas of ‘good’ material, the regionalism, the transmitters – to a public that it corporately felt may not have grasped the idea quite yet. The resulting book became an annual event, lasting almost to the end of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (as it would become when independent local radio was added) itself.

The books started off dry and technical, and over the course of a quarter of a century eventually turned into something that was loudly about the programmes of ITV and ILR and a little about the backroom stuff. But for a golden period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were mostly about the ITV companies and their interworking. This was most clearly shown with 1965’s yearbook. Imagine unwrapping this on Christmas Day (it was a favourite present for grandparents to give slightly nerdy grandsons every year) and being faced with the logos of every ITV company.

It was great!