The ITV Colour Strike | Black & White's Last Stand | An AMTV Documentary

Not only is this fascinating, but also clarifying! I live in the US and it's very difficult to find older British dramas. I managed to find the original Upstairs Downstairs to watch through unofficial channels--but a few episodes in, everything suddenly became black and white. I rationalized this as the uploader editing the episodes to avoid copyright strikes and I regretfully stopped watching the show because I wanted the original versions. All this time, it turns out that was the original version! Thank you so much for making and uploading this video! Now I can finally go back to watching that show with peace of mind✌😂

It was arguably the perfect strike: large, looming impact on the company, minimal impact on the people. The '79 action was far more unpopular with consumers.

4:20 - NOT 4 lenses. The EMI 2001 and Marconi Mk7 had 1 lens, 4 pickup tubes. The Philips cameras, EMI 2005 and Marconi Mk8 had 3 tubes and 1 lens.

I aquired a colour set around 1974 -- it was smashed when the person stealing it from a nightclub was discovered and threw it (a 26" console model) down a flight of stairs. I was given the carcass and repaired it. There was no way I could have afforded to buy one. These early sets were not just colour but also dual standard -- 625/405 line models capable of receiving both the colour UHF transmissions and the older VHF b&w service. The complexity this introduced into the set design had to be seen to be believed, it was essentially two sets in one with a huge solenoid driven switch reconfiguring the set for each system. The set used a mixture of valves and transistors -- all discrete components. I don't like to think how much it had cost new, but obviously it was so expensive that a thief was prepared to tuck the equivalent of a small chest of drawers under his arm and try to climb a set of stairs with it.

There's an interesting effect of the colour strike on ATV's Timeslip as two episodes were recorded in monochrome during the strike. The original colour tapes were wiped or possibly were too degraded to broadcast, and aside from one colour episode all we have to watch now are monochrome telerecordings. Most of these have an ITC frontcap and endcap but with the ATV In Colour Zoom music playing over the frontcap. There are two episodes where you can hear the alternative ATV Not-In-Colour Zoom music. So it's easy to tell which episodes were made during the strike even though 25 of 26 are monochrome only these days.

The information in this video is confused! The cameras with a turret of several lenses were used to provide various shots, for example, wide angle and close up (before zoom lenses). The lens turret would rotate, to select the required lens. Separate lenses were NOT used for each of the primary colours. Inside the camera, the image coming from the selected lens, was split and focussed on three camera tubes (red, green, and blue, and some cameras had four tubes). In the case of the colour strike, a colour signal could be converted to Black & White, by removing the colour information. A bit like turning the colour down on your old CRT TV!

I've recently been rewatching Upstairs Downstairs, so this has been on my mind lately. Did you know they filmed two endings to the first episode, when they reshot it, one which matched the black and white version's ending, and led into the black and white episodes, and one where Sarah does not stay, that leads into the first of the colour episodes. If someone just wanted to broadcast the colour ones they'd use that alternate ending.

Most fancy colour TV's were rented back in the 70's and were taken away at the flick of a switch, usually with a puff of smoke too 😉😂

Our first colour TV was a Radio Rentals set that arrived in Feb 1979. The day it arrived was one of the most exciting of my childhood.

With technology having moved on in leaps and bounds, colourising 5 EPs of Upstairs, Downstairs for DVD/Bluray is not beyond reach. I do remember watching repeats of On The Buses and did wonder why it jumped from colour to black and white and back again

The quality of the colour images of President Eisenhower from 1958 is amazing...

As mentioned, the irony was that the majority of those watching at home still only had black and white TV sets, anyway, so this strike would prove to be largely ineffectual in forcing the TV companies to submit to their demands. Most people weren't able to buy their own sets, by the way, but instead rented them from such companies as Rent-a-set, Radio Rentals, etc.

My Uncle was an early adopter. I remember us all piling round to his place in 1970 to watch the F.A. Cup final in colour. It was so annoying that Leeds were in the final as they played in all white kit. I know one of my favourite series of the time, Timeslip, was affected by the strike but this has been compounded by the fact even the episodes that were shot in colour have gone missing. The entire series is available but only one episode survives in colour.

I hadn't heard of this strike. Ulster going colour afterwards meant it probably went unnoticed in NI, especially since we were turning into a war zone by then, which would affect broadcasting in other ways. An interesting story, seeing a strike which was basically invisible to viewers, compared to other bigger ones, such as the much more famous one in '79.

Just stumbled upon your channel, and already loving the information and production/editing quality! I remember my Mum telling me about when her Mum bought their first colour TV; My Mum would get headaches from watching it because her Mum insisted on having the colour set to MAXIMUM (as if to make it obvious to any visitors that she had a colour TV )

8:35 - the colour equipment didn’t go unused for months, it was being used but either with the 4.43MHz PAL colour carrier from the camera CCUs being switched off (on 3-tube cameras) or with the colour tubes removed (on 4-tube ones).

I know the BBC broadcast experimental colour transmissions in the fifties when Crystal Palace transmitter opened, but were not satisfied with the NTSC system. It was when the PAL system came along that the BBC and ITA agreed that this was the one to use. As a kid,(on holidays), I used to watch all those BBC2 Trade Test Colour Films shown during the day, but in BW, as the likes of us did not have colour sets. "Giuseppina", "The Home Made Car", Coupe des Alpes", Beauty in Trust", "The Cattle Carters", and many other titles, mainly made by Shell and BP. For normal tv viewing, our family used to turn the turret tuner knob on the telly to channels 1 for BBC 1, or 9 for ITA,(VHF 405 lines) as it gave a clearer picture.We had three aerials, a Band I for BBC, a Band III for ITA, picking up from Beulah Hill, South Norwood, and a crude Group A aerial for BBC 2.

Another great documentary Adam, super interesting hearing about the transition to colour TV and some of it's issues! I'd be interested in seeing a documentary on the technician disputes of the 70s (the ones that affected Shada)

Fascinating - I'd never heard of this. I was born in 1970 but was in the Border TV region so my parents wouldn't have noticed (my dad was an early colour TV adopter, but later on he backed the wrong horse with Video 2000 ;- ). Great stuff!

Would like to see the 1967-1968, 1980 and 1991 ITV Franchise Rounds put into separate documentaries.