1964: Will TV Ruin Life on SHETLAND? | Tonight | Past Predictions | BBC Archive

Cathal O'Shannon reports from the shores of Shetland, where television has arrived for the first time. How will this impact traditional life on the islands? Will the hand knitting industry be irrevocably damaged? Local residents give their views and an official from neighbouring Orkney gives a stark warning.
Originally broadcast 15 April, 1964.
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[@BarneyLeith]

My wife and I went to live in Shetland at the end of 1974 for 10 years. TV was still only 405 line, black and and white (or grey on grey). There was plenty of community life. At some point after we moved there, we got 625 line colour TV and VHS video recorders. Huge excitement and another gold rush for shops selling TVs and video recorders. And community life (am dram, choirs, amateur orchestra, fiddlers, etc) all continued! My wife knits and watches TV simultaneously, so I'm sure the traditional Shetland knitters, who knitted without looking at a pattern or at the knitting, would have done the same.

[@TinLeadHammer]

But will they be able to swipe TikTok and knit at the same time?

[@miaj5118]

I knit and watch TV now but it's at half the speed as these women

[@davedogge2280]

Interesting Shetland looks like anywhere else in 1960s Britain (say a Lancashire town). I always thought the Shetland Islands were just a few tiny country villages. Also what strikes me is how clean cut and well turned out the public are compared to say these days 1:06 All clean shaven.

[@danielfreeley5217]

Fashions chop & change, My grandparents were born in the 30's in Ireland and as we got older, my grandmother would always let us know her feelings if ever we were infront of her with full beards... It's interesting though

[@campbellgraham1979]

I heard Shetland are getting teletext this year

[@peterj5106]

We were going to then seen what was happening in the rest of the world. Ukraine then this latest with Gaza, (maybe not caused by Teletext but we didn't want to chance it), so never bothered.

[@anonUK]

The Interwebs should arrive up there around 2050 at this rate...

[@johnking5174]

Cathal O'Shannon was seen a lot on Irish television on Telefis Eireann which launched properly on Jan 1st 1962, later renamed RTE in 1966. I didn't know he worked much for the BBC too.

[@johnking5174]

5:37 - BBC Television Service arrived in the Orkney area properly in 1958 with the opening of the Netherbutton transmitter. Even since 1955 the area could receive fringe reception signal from the Meldrum transmitter.

[@gavinathling]

In a world where technology moves on so quickly, it's hard to imagine a part of the UK (or any developed country) waiting so many years for a technology to come. I'm sure 3G phone service came almost immediately in the Shetlands...

[@Huggernator]

It didn't. Shetland was one of the last places to get ADSL, for example. Shetland didn't have broadband until 2006/07. 3G didn't arrive until 2013.

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

wait till Shetland will get tiktok

[@roddymcniven8734]

It’ll need the internet first

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

@@roddymcniven8734 or mobile phones... or landline phones...

[@pyeltd.5457]

It's had TikTok since the great war

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

@@pyeltd.5457 ah, yes great war of Ukraine and Russia... I member

[@louisetaylor7884]

We have all of the above 👍🏻

[@garryleeks4848]

4:29 Gordon bennet she can knit , probably make a jumper in 2 minutes 🙄

[@Varanization]

Nearly all done by machine now. Yes, they can make them in 2 minutes.

[@ajs41]

Intrigued to know more on why TV in Orkney was such a terrible thing.

[@nictrax]

Change. People do not like change.

[@DemonetisedZone]

It's all down to the slip shod manner Outer Orkney Broadcasting Corporation was run!😏

[@folksurvival]

Because it has been a terrible thing everywhere so why would Orkney be immune?

[@ankavoskuilen1725]

In the beginning of television, you couldn't stop watching and did nothing else. That ruined community life, you can imagine. Everybody at home glaring at the blue light and nobody at the drama club etc.

[@clavichord]

@@nictrax This assumes that all changes in the world are automatically good... and therefore, to not like change must be bad.

[@BenjyDale]

I'm surprised that TVs went up to 23" in 1964. It seems pretty big to me, considering that our living room TV of the 1990s was only a bit bigger at 24". 14"-24" were the normal sizes in the 90s

[@dazednconfused31337]

Yes we had a 14" Tashiko with remote in the living room which became my sister's. A larger 20"+ Matsui went in it's place. I was bought a black 14" Matsui from Argos I think for £100. I was annoyed it didn't have a remote. A white model did - but mum wanted mine to be black as a spare for the living room. Before though I was given a big brown TV with no plug and a colour defect by my uncle. To use with my Spectrum 128k +2 🤓

[@dfpguitar]

We switched over to colour in around 1990 and had a 20" TV throughout the 90s. I remember going with my dad to buy it, even though it was second hand it cost somewhere between £200-300. TVs got a lot cheaper in the late 90s and in the 00s everyone switched to wide screens, which for most people were still CRT so couldn't get that big without looking like a fishbowl. Big projection TVs existed but were super expensive and the vividness and resolution was poor so kinda pointless. On the topic of missing plugs, I remember up until the mid 90s a lot of appliances coming without a plug when bought brand new.

[@generalawareness101]

My grandfather's old 1950's cabinet TV was 25 inches. Black and white and finally went out about 1980 when tubes became expensive and rare here in the states.

[@depniff]

When fiddles were introduced, I'm sure there were some people who thought it would be the end of something else. Fiddling will be the ruin of us all....

[@heinkle1]

Exactly, it’s all moral relativism

[@wyatt199x3]

​@@obscuremusictabs5927 passive activities drive people apart? I guess I should stop listening to music with my friends then. Also delete your channel then, because YT is passive so you're contributing to the downfall of society

[@folksurvival]

​@@heinkle1 Nope.

[@pyeltd.5457]

@@obscuremusictabs5927 TikTok brought us all together

[@clavichord]

Well, the introduction of fiddles will have taken place a very long time ago, as there is mention of stringed instruments in the bible. The ancient Romans and Greeks certainly knew of stringed instruments. Not sure if anyone lived on Shetland in those days...

[@bajoobiecuzican]

Those “rabbit ears antenna’s. They were the best!

[@elvisonwax]

Broadcast TV ruled my life and that of my peers for most of our younger years. I gave up TV when I first moved to Eastern Europe. It wasn’t hard and I have never looked back.. or again. You know what I mean. The downside is that I sometimes have no clue what people are talking about. 🤔

[@mongolmcphee7791]

I would say that if anyone can be trusted to balance the pros and cons of television use, it’s a Television media company. Good to see that even in the good old/bad old days everything in the news is the worlds biggest crisis and life will never be the same again.

[@folksurvival]

TV ruined life everywhere.

[@rareblues78daddy]

"TV will ruin the knitting industry." Well... that's a new one.

[@cauldronmoon]

I enjoy knitting hats whilst I watch telly. 🧶📺

[@miaj5118]

It halved the speed

[@fidelcatsro6948]

cant wait to get my hands on a new old stock 59yr old Alba 23" tv set in 2023!

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

new old stock?!

[@zaftra]

@@r4zi3lgintoro65 items from many years ago still sealed like the day it was new in the shop.

[@r4zi3lgintoro65]

@@zaftra I know what it is.... but how?

[@zaftra]

@@r4zi3lgintoro65 ok

[@pyeltd.5457]

I got a used one from 1973 and the tuner died when playing Sonic on the PS3

[@montyyy08]

They don’t call it a television “programme / program” for nothing 👍.

[@trevordance5181]

How were the signals transmitted by the Shetland Island transmitter fed to it from the mainland?

[@andyhame6685]

The BBC report from 1964 states "The television and v.h.f. sound transmissions from the Orkney station are received at a separate site (Fitful Head). The television programme (vision and sound) is then fed by a BBC microwave link to the Shetland transmitter. The v.h.f. sound programmes are fed to the transmitters by GPO line." downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1964-28.pdf

[@christopherhulse8385]

TV was picked up from the mainland on Orkney and passed on to Shetland via an intermediate link on Fair Isle.

[@trevordance5181]

@@christopherhulse8385 I wonder why ITV Grampian didn't do the same thing at the same time? Surely they could have worked together to reduce costs.

[@christopherhulse8385]

@@trevordance5181 the BBC and ITA didn't initially share transmitter sites so built their own for their services, when Colour came along, they were mandated to share sites which made transmission more straight forward.

[@clavichord]

If you look carefully at the pictures of the Shetland transmitter site in 1964, you will see a parabolic dish antenna on the side of the building, which, most likely, was used to pick up the high frequency TV feed over the sea from neighbouring islands and ultimately from the mainland.

[@taffymackem2596]

Very interesting

[@TheValeyard92]

I love how they talk about telly as though it's crossing the flamin" Rubicon. 😂

[@skylark.kraken]

I mean, kinda is, it's taken generations to get to the point of people (like myself) not wanting TVs. For a lot of people their #1 hobby is watching TV and being completely passive which isn't helpful in a small community

[@broccoliface4501]

It kinda ruined Bhutan's society. Crimes went through the roof once TV was deployed throughout the country in the early 2000s. As did domestic violence and drug use. Though the calibre of shows accessible back then may have been less of a corrupting influence. And it wouldn't have been quite the same level of culture shock for a British audience.

[@folksurvival]

It was.

[@clavichord]

Well, it was fairly life changing for the average citizen in the 1930s-1960s, a bit like the introduction of internet was in the 1990s for the next generation....

[@peterj5106]

This was 19 year's after the end of WW2. Many of the people partaking in this great moral dilemma of watching the television would have had 1'st hand experience of involvement in the War, wether it be fighting on the continent, Royal or Merchant Navy, even the home guard, etc. My Grandmother was shot at by a German plane in Shetland when she was 9/10 year old. I'm pretty sure they would be able to handle most television programmes of the time without going on a massive crime spree.

[@johnq4951]

I had no idea Cathal O’Shannon worked for the BBC

[@peterd788]

He was a roving reporter for the BBC Tonight Show.

[@markiliff]

3:03 They'll never be short of firewood

[@wisteela]

Wait until they get the Internet and smartphones.

[@plonchyvideos7456]

At this same time, America already had colour tv for about ten years.

[@75midge]

You're right in that color television in the US technically came about by the '50s, but in practice most shows were still filmed or recorded in B&W in 1964. NBC officially launched color programing in 1959 with "Bonanza" I believe but it was still few & far between for years. In comparison, CBS didn't even have color programing on their schedule until the fall of '65.

[@Pymmeh]

Yeah this is Shetland, they are a bit more rural. Over in London at the time we had VR headsets, ipads and 7BONGFLIX.

[@pyeltd.5457]

@@Pymmeh isle of wight had TikTok 20 years before that.

[@what-uc]

Shetland is comparible with Nantucket

[@mikemartin2957]

But was the US NSTC system inferior to the PAL set up the BBC & ITV were using after 1969? I have read that some of the larger ITV regions like Thames & Yorkshire were making colour programmes a few years before 1969 for the US market.

[@Calum_S]

They'd have been horrified by the idea of the internet.

[@atmakali9599]

Yes.

[@what-uc]

1. Can anyone explain what is rendered in the captions as "ultimatouille"? 2. Not a lot of point buying a dual standard TV for Shetland, UHF didn't start until 1976/77 3. Shetland is 200 miles from John O'Groats but 50 miles from Orkney? It's more like 130 and 110. 4. Shetland got FM radio at the same time, before that it was MW and LW from Burghead, 200 miles away... ah maybe that's where the reporter got the 200 miles.

[@markiliff]

1. Ultima Thule, ancient Greek & Latin for an island north of Britain 2. -no submission- 3. -no submission- 4. -no submission-

[@what-uc]

@@markiliff Thanks, I think I've heard of it before but didn't know how to spell it

[@stickytapenrust6869]

Dual-standard TVs were all that was being made by 1964.

[@TheRasteri]

well it ruined life everywhere else...

[@bartlemy]

Television ruined everything

[@VestaJ17]

agreed

[@michaelroberts7374]

20 minutes in front of the TV induces a trance like state that is one of the necessary prerequisites for brainwashing

[@estusflask982]

This video is the definition of hysteria

[@folksurvival]

No.

[@Ryno2094]

Huh what dya know, tv ruined the whole of england. We went from educational BBC to everything being reality tv then evereyone got thick overnight

[@tcpnetworks]

It's amazing how, for any innovation, there are naysayers who don't want it and warn about it. It's the human condition - complain, moan, move on.

[@folksurvival]

Well in many cases they are correct, including this one.

[@montyyy08]

I agree. It’s in the same vain as “oh no; these new horseless carriages will completely decimate the island’s long-established horse industry!”

[@ShainIva]

Me - judging by the mood of history novels, they must be started to play music together to suppress excessive outbursts of violence among men. - Another fairytale gentleman fixing his tie.

[@romandeprez]

2:02 - 2:13 , 2:48 - 2:59

[@joelfildes5544]

Never mind Shetland,what about the mainland…!

[@pyeltd.5457]

Mainland had TikTok 20 years before.

[@VestaJ17]

They were right, i bet that brass band, drama club, fiddle group are all non existent now

[@Huggernator]

All still exist.

[@unp4tch3d]

Commercial television was and remains a mistake... God bless the Irish and Scottish Isles

[@pyeltd.5457]

Scotland Invented the concept on TV with the failed mechanical TV

[@kamandi1362]

Yes.