Tonight’s Yorkshire TV… in 1979 

15 March 2017 tbs.pm/11204

The TVTimes tells us what was on YTV on Tuesday 15 March 1979. Things worth noting include:

• The Cedar Tree from ATV Elstree at 12.30pm was unaccountably popular during its 1976-1979 run, despite the terrible, terrible acting – even from Joyce Carey, camping it up as Lady Bourne – and the eightpence ATV spent on its set
• Crown Court at 1.30pm came in at about the same price, but thanks to using largely unknown actors most of the time – Patricia Hayes here is an exception – got more bang for its buck
• Anglia take Southern’s Houseparty at 2pm, while YTV’s other neighbouring regions are happier to stick with Thames’s After Noon
• Betty Foster continues her 10-week dressmaking course and there will be details of a practical subject, too. Ooh, burn
• The start of a repeat, daytime, showing for the 1977 serial This Year Next Year. It’s a Granada production, set in the Yorkshire Dales because ner-ner, starring Ronald Hines, whose name you won’t know but whose face you would instantly recognise from almost everything ever
• ATV drops This Year Next Year in favour of 1962’s ABPC vehicle for David Niven Guns of Darkness in glorious black and white
• Yorkshire’s unending fascination with the word “Calendar” continues with a local chatshow at 3.20pm with the word hammered into its name. Other variants over the years included parliamentary programme Calendar Lobby, quiz show Calendar Countdown (no, really) and fashion show Calendar Catwalk (honestly, I promise you)
• 3.50pm sees Grampian’s The Entertainers, the description of which I can only read as “Today’s guest is one of the few British songwriters who is willing to come all the way up to bloody Aberdeen to appear on telly”
• Emmerdale Farm had been moved to 7pm by most regions last year. Here Anglia (replacing it with Survival) and Granada (replacing it with University Challenge) are timeshifting it a bit earlier – 5.15pm on Anglia and 6.30pm on Granada – meaning those regions get to see the episode before viewers in maker Yorkshire Television’s region do
• A comparatively rare Tuesday outing for LWT at 5.15pm
• David Frost’s Global Village was a monthly interview programme with the USP that the audience were in Leeds but the interviewee – and sometimes Frost himself – were only present by satellite. Although, strictly speaking, it’s more likely they were connected by undersea cable, which then as now is generally cheaper for distributing pre-booked studio pictures
• The day finishes with adult education and Maggie Hanley sending us off to bed depressed about broken marriages, or worse, people staying together for the sake of the children

External links

• See the rival BBC-1 London schedule at the Genome project.
• See the rival BBC-2 England schedule at the Genome project.