[720p/50p] ITV ATV | closedown | 7th September 1981

© ITVplc/ASSOCIATED TELEVISION 1981
Dirty ILR slides, British TV's first electronic clock and that laughably AWFUL rendition of the national anthem on a cathedral organ! Yes, it can only be an ATV closedown!
When I started doing this hobby properly 14 years ago on my first channel, I never, ever, in a million years thought I'd come across continuity footage from one of the pre-1982 ITV franchises that hadn't already been uploaded elsewhere. Now, 6,000 subscribers, 5 channels and 14 years later, I've got closedowns from Southern and ATV. Now I only need some unpublished footage from Westward to complete the set!
Oh, and in case you didn't know, the electronic clock that was keyed over the "ATV COLOUR" slide was generated from a timecode generator as part of an Ampex AVR2 edit suite, which was introduced by Ampex in 1974, so this clock might have been in use as far back as then but without concrete evidence I'm reluctant to guess when it was introduced. There's evidence elsewhere on KZbin that it was in use at least as far back as February 1980, making it the first electronically-generated clock on British TV! BBC2 is often credited with having the first electronic clock, but theirs was introduced on 6th September 1980, at the very least some months after! Theirs is the first clock with a fully electronically-generated image, though. This ATV clock was an electronically-generated timepiece keyed over an optical slide.
Another factoid: the organ rendition of the national anthem was recorded in St. Chad's Roman Catholic Church in Birmingham, NOT Birmingham Cathedral as is often wrongly claimed. As with most cities, there are two cathedrals in Birmingham. One is Roman Catholic, and the other one is Protestant! The St. Chad's organ was replaced in 1990 so don't go "sightseeing" there, as the organ that was used for this is long gone!
End of Something Different (ATV Birmingham)
ATV slide: Weather forecast read by announcer Avril Carson
Generic ILR slide
BRMB frequency slide
Beacon Radio frequency slide
Radio Trent frequency slide
ATV clock (optical slide with electronic clock) (00:45am): closing announcement and organ rendition of national anthem
Black and unplug TV set warning
Black and silence

[@mrb3097]

Love these rarities from my old ATV region. Thanks.

[@pak8606]

By this time ATV would have known they were becoming Central from 1st January 1982.

[@RB-kc9by]

They'd known since December 1980 - though they didn't know they were to become 'Central' until mid 1981. IBA kind of reissued ATV with it's franchise but under certain conditions. One was the region was t be a dual news area, the other, was a Rebrand. They submitted the changes to the IBA as "ATV Midlands" - but the IBA wanted further changes to management structure and a totally different name - and along came "Central Independent Television" - this wrangling went on until late summer 1981. The Central globe wasn't decided on until the autumn - prior to this Central had a different logo that looked like the Capitol Records logo. While I was at Central - much later on - some staff still referred to it as ATV....

[@pak8606]

@@RB-kc9by I remember seeing the original Central logo somewhere. I've seen part of a news report about ATV from September 1981 which mentions they're soon to become Central.

[@ajl241]

Thanks, yeah that organ national anthem is bloody horrible, so jarring right before bedtime. Congrats on 6k subs!

[@earthluma]

What a beautiful find right there!

[@user-vk5ld5uf8l]

Nice!

[@jonarthritiskwanhc]

Did ATV ever show testcards?

[@stickytapenrust6869]

Don’t know.

[@RB-kc9by]

Each of the ITV companies had their own IBA branded Test-Card F with the station name on the bottom. It's likely this was shown for a while before the morning startup. It was certainly used internally - along with electronically generatedd Colour Bars for calibration of equipment.

[@jasejj]

Centre Radio would be off the air a couple of years later as it became the first (I believe) ILR station to fail financially. Avril Carson's voice and general style rather similar to Lesley Cairney/Manners up at Border/TTT later in the 1980s.

[@radioman951]

Correct, Centre Radio closed on 6th October 1983. The franchise was readvertised, and was won by Radio Trent, who launched Leicester Sound on 7th September 1984 Leicester Sound became Capital in January 2011

[@michaelhall6178]

All this despite having Timmy Mallett host the breakfast show.

[@radioman951]

​@michaelhall6178 He was only there for 6 weeks, he got fired!

[@VermyScrubs]

Well that certainly was a horrible rendition of the anthem, fairly ironic for one of the greatest ITV companies to have this.

[@stickytapenrust6869]

It’s in character for their presentation. ATV from the mid/late 70s tended to be a bit “different” from the others, like their use of a track with lyrics as startup music, an electronic clock (British TV’s first!) then this. That willingness to be more different was the seed from which Central’s presentation style grew.

[@pak8606]

Central was simply ATV under another name. ATV did NOT lose their franchise in 1980 but one of the conditions was the ATV name had to be changed, the IBA gave a 4-week deadline for their plans otherwise they'd have reconsidered. The name Central was confirmed around July 1981.

[@stickytapenrust6869]

@@pak8606 It wasn’t ATV under another name at all. ATV Network’s parent company, ACC, set up a new company called ATV Midlands Ltd. to apply for the franchise instead of letting ATV Network apply for it. ATV Midlands won the franchise but was given those conditions by the IBA and so became Central. ATV Network did not become Central, ATV Network had lost the franchise by default by not applying so would cease to exist. So ACC owned ATV and Central, who were two different companies with their own different boards of executives. But this allowed the ACC to make the transition appear smoother than it actually was.

[@pak8606]

@@stickytapenrust6869 I forgot they applied for the licence as ATV Midlands as they knew it would need to become a dual region from January 1982. I think what I meant was more that Central had the same announcers generally and was not different from ATV in the same way that Carlton was from Thames. Of the new companies in 1982 would you say TVS was the most different from the predecessor?

[@TheRedandWhitehandItsbruttiyu]

@@stickytapenrust6869 *Do you have southern closedowns?*

[@koiyune]

atv vide