ITV in 1988: London Weekend 

2 March 2023 tbs.pm/77518

LONDON WEEKEND TELEVISION

LONDON WEEKENDS

South Bank Television Centre, London SE1 9LT
Tel: 01-261 3434
Fax: 01-928 6041 Telex: 918123
Outside Broadcast Base: Units 1 and 2, Minerva Industrial Estate. Minerva Road, London NW10 6HU
Tel: 01-961 3131
Regional Sales Office: 6th Floor, Adamson House, Shambles Square, Manchester M3 1RE
Tel: 061-834 6718

Directors Brian Tesler, CBE (Chairman and Managing Director); Greg Dyke (Director of Programmes); Peter Cazaly (Director of Production); Peter McNally (Group Finance Director); Ron Miller (Sales Director); Roy van Gelder (Director of Personnel and Administration); Christopher Bland; Heather Brigstocke; Roland Freeman; Roger Harrison; The Hon. David Montagu; Jeremy Putter; Robin Scott, CBE.

Management Board EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS, TOGETHER WITH: Roger Appleton (Director of Engineering); Bernard Bennett (Controller of Research); Craig Pearman (Sales Controller); Sydney Perry (Director of Programme Organisation); Judith Thomas (Company Secretary and Controller of Legal Services); Christopher Turner (Group Chief Accountant).

Executives Linda Agran (Deputy Controller of Drama); Rod Allen (Controller of Corporate Development); Sid Blumsom (Controller of Engineering Services); Melvyn Bragg (Head of Arts); Warren Breach (Controller of Programme Planning, Presentation and Promotion); John Bromley (Controller of Sport); Ken Burley (Head of Publicity); Jeremy Canney (Controller of Studio Production); Peter Coppock (Head of Press and Public Relations); Barry Cox (Controller of Features and Current Affairs); David Cox (Head of Current Affairs); Don Dorling (Head of Staff Relations); Richard Drewett (Head of Special Programmes, Entertainment); Nick Elliott (Controller of Drama and Arts); Alan Evans (Controller of Production Planning and Schedules); Philip France (Marketing Manager); Colin Freeman (Controller of Programme Resources and Finance); Brian Harris (Controller of Production Finance); Suzanne Hatley (Head of Programme Research); Derek Hemment (Sales Manager); Jane Hewland (Head of Features); Skip Humphries (Head of Music Services); Tony Kay (Chief Accountant); Paul Kelly (Controller of Project Engineering); Stuart McConachie (Deputy Controller of Sport); Diana Parry (Head of Casting); Marcus Plantin (Controller of Entertainment); Les Roworth (Controller of Production Engineering); Clifford Shirley (Financial Controller); Alan Woolfson (Controller, Production Services).

LWTI Limited (for programme sales).
Directors Christopher Bland (Chairman); Martha Burke-Hennessy; Greg Dyke; Richard Leworthy; Peter McNally; Sydney Perry; Richard Price; Brian Tesler, CBE.
London Office: Seymour Mews House, Seymour Mews, Wigmore Street, London W1H 9PE Tel: 01-935 9000.
New York Office: Robert Shay, 444 Madison Avenue, 32nd Floor, New York, NY 10022 Tel: (212) 8327397.
Los Angeles Office: Michael Clark, 1901 Avenue of The Stars, Suite 285, Los Angeles. California 90067 Tel: (213) 5564418.

The South Bank Television Centre The South Bank Television Centre, situated on the South Bank of the Thames between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, is one of the most comprehensive and technically sophisticated television centres in Europe, containing five studios with a net total of 22,050 sq.ft, of floor space.

Enquiries and Tickets for Programmes Enquiries about artistes and programmes should be addressed to Viewers’ Correspondence. A limited number of tickets is available for audiences at certain programmes. Applications, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope, should be made to the Ticket Office.

Programmes LWT broadcasts from 5.15 p.m. on Friday evening until 6.00 a.m. on Monday morning, serving an area with a population of more than 10 million.

LWT’s South Bank studios and outside broadcast units produce comprehensive programming for the whole ITV network as well as for the London region transmission area. Its programmes range across the spectrum of current affairs, entertainment, the arts, sport, religion, drama, adult education, late-night television and community affairs. They cater for children and social and cultural minorities as well as for the general audience.

LWT assumes the principal network responsibility at weekends for current affairs with the widely acclaimed Weekend World; sport with coverage of national and international events such as athletics, football and boxing; and the arts with ITV’s major arts programme The South Bank Show, now celebrating its tenth birthday and winner of BAFTA awards and many international prizes including the Prix Italia on three occasions.

The company provides a significant proportion of the network’s drama and entertainment and is one of the largest suppliers of programmes to Channel 4. Among the thousands of hours of programmes produced since the formation of LWT in 1968, those which have won awards, audiences, critical acclaim and worldwide sales include comedy series such as Me & My Girl with Richard O’Sullivan; A Fine Romance with Judi Dench and Michael Williams; Hot Metal with Robert Hardy; The Two of Us with Nicholas Lyndhurst and Janet Dibley; and Running Wild with Ray Brooks; entertainment shows such as Cannon and Ball; Cillia Black’s Blind Date and Surprise, Surprise; Michael Aspel’s Child’s Play and Aspel & Company; The Dame Edna Experience; Jimmy Tarbuck’s Live From… series; The Royal Variety Performance; Night Of A Hundred Stars; Bruce Forsyth’s Play Your Cards Right; Jeremy Beadle in People Do The Funniest Things and Beadle’s About; The Late Clive James and Clive James specials such as Clive James on Safari and Clive James at the Playboy Mansion; Denis Norden’s It’ll Be Alright On The Night; Copy Cats; Saturday Gang; and, for Channel 4, Saturday Live; Club Mix; The Management, with Hale and Pace; and An Audience With…

LWT’s headquarters on the South Bank.

Plays and drama series from the same stable as Upstairs, Downstairs, Lillie, Bouquet of Barbed Wire and Cream In My Coffee include Dempsey And Makepeace, starring Michael Brandon and Glynis Barber; To Have And To Hold, the controversial series on surrogate motherhood; Mapp & Lucia, starring Geraldine McEwan, Nigel Hawthorne and Prunella Scales; the tense realism of life in a metropolitan fire station in London’s Burning; Bust, starring Paul Nicholas; Scoop, William Boyd’s film dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel; Dutch Girls, also by William Boyd, the highest rated single ITV play of its year; Wish Me Luck, a wartime series based on the SOE; The Charmer, starring Nigel Havers; Troubles, a love story set against the turbulent background of Ireland in 1919; and Piece of Cake, which tells of the lives of a squadron of World War II fighter pilots.

Melvyn Bragg’s The South Bank Show is ten years old in 1988. It has won many national and international awards for its weekly features on the arts. Recent special programmes have profiled Andrew Lloyd Webber, Maria Callas, David Lean and Georg Solti. The Arts Review of the Year has been a successful development of LWT’s commitment to the arts, while Book Four paved the way for Talking To Writers and the ambitious The Modern World: 10 Great Writers series for Channel 4.

The spectacular production of Torvill & Dean’s Fire & Ice was the 1987 winner of the Bronze Rose of Montreux.

Factual and special programme’s for ITV and Channel 4 audiences include Weekend World, with Matthew Parris; Our Bomb: The Secret Story, the history of the nuclear deterrent in Britain; Fortune; Credo; The Making of Britain; The Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald; Once A Thief; Evil; Whitehall; and Educating Britain. Christmas Past looks at the changing way in which Christmas has been celebrated over the years; and The World This Weekend talks to influential figures in the arena of world political affairs.

The company’s programmes for its London audience are equally varied. They include: Gloria Hunniford’s Sunday Sunday; The 6 O’clock Show; Danny Baker’s Londoners; Go For Goal, a multi-sport regional series; The London Programme; South of Watford; Concrete & Clay, a series on urban environment; Police 5, which reached its 25th anniversary in 1987; Wake Up London, with Rabbitt and Doon; The Square Mile; The Making of Modern London; The Good Life Guide; and Whatever Happened to Punk, investigates what became of the punks of ten years ago.

A new venture for LWT is Night Network, launched in Autumn 1987 with a blend of music, reviews, entertainment and gossip for the young adult audience.

At the weekend LWT is responsible for coverage of local news in the London region. The London Community Unit provides an opportunity for voluntary public service groups throughout the region to put across their messages on television, participates in major campaigns on social issues such as unemployment, encourages viewers to take part in regional activities in sport and the arts, and provides background information and follow-up material to all the programmes in LWT’s output.

LWT is one of Britain’s lending exporters of television programmes. Its programmes are seen in more than 80 countries around the world.