ITN News & Anglia Weather - 1986

[@jamesnicholson2503]

80s best decade ever.

[@rajnirvan3336]

Loved these retro ITN themes

[@sashaboo72]

The news theme tune was always serious and scary for a kid😱

[@mshroye2]

The only reason she’s against sanctions is because her husband had business interests in South Africa

[@sashaboo72]

Remember that joke? What’s brown and rusty? Terry waites pushbike😖

[@Sarahw1971]

The watercress girl looks thrilling!😆

[@sarjim4381]

I'm a Yank, and I'm still trying to figure out British television. I have two questions I;m hoping of my British cousins can answer. The first it the clocks. It seems like all the channels used some variation of the analogue clock with the ticking second hand to show the the time for the news and various other programs. Why were they used? Was it actually something to help people set their clocks, just a tradition, or was there some other reason? The announcer could have just said the time without a clock being shown. It's the kind of thing rarely ever used in the US. The second is what time news programs were shown. US news programs tend to be either five or six o'clock for evening news and ten or eleven o'clock for late news, with the time varying by local time zone. It seems British news started at almost random times, like this one starting at twenty-one and a half minutes past ten. How did people know when the news was going to be on? I've seen times ranging from a few minutes before nine o'clock to as late as eleven-fifteen. How was news scheduled and why were such odd times picked?

[@topcat1541]

I think the clocks are just for show, depicting the time the announcer says, not sure if there is more to it than that. These days our news schedule times are pretty much as how you describe yours - 5/6pm evening news, 10/11 late news (depending on channel) . No idea why for like in this clip the news starts at 10:21 etc. Sorry I could only answer basically.

[@sarjim4381]

@@topcat1541 Thanks for the reply. It seems like those clocks must have served a more practical purpose at one time but, by the 70's and 80's, it seems like they were more of a styling thing. I kind of like them but it's just not something I've seen here. The times for the news seemed odd on both the BBC and independent channels and I don't understand why. It's almost like they got squeezed in when there was an empty ten minute slot. The weather shows are really surprising. Weather shows here are usually five to ten minute long segments of regular news, and the presentations are very detailed compared to the British shows. They always used satellite, radar and surface map graphics with a national summary, regional summary, and the detailed forecasts for the major cities in the viewing area. We have many newscast that are the most popular in their area because of the quality of the on-air meteorologists and the quality of the data. A forecast like "Generally bright over the East with some showery periods, and some of those showers could be heavy" just wouldn't fly here.

[@JJVernig]

There where normal time scheduled news programmes, but those are less likely to be recorded. This wound up on a VHS-tape because of a live socces-match after this, which I suspect why this was recorded. On a broader note, European TV in wider sense was less likely run by the clock and in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany overran regular, especially at live-shows, and late news where regularly later than advertised. People knew that and planned the video-recorder accordingly. Later, systems which helped video-recorders knew the real moment programmes started and stopped where developed, combined with codes in the TV-guide. I can remember a programme on Belgian BRTN tv-1 which alway made a mess of schedules, and thats why they needed announcers. ;-)

[@sarjim4381]

@@JJVernig Thanks for that insight. There was obviously a more "relaxed" attitude toward TV schedules in the UK and Europe than across the pond. People here expect a program will be shown when scheduled unless something like a city wide power failure or a big weather problem that knocked the transmitter off the air occured. I certainly don't recall programs or even whole channels going dark because of a strike. something that seemed to be a regular occurance in the UK during the 70's and 80's. I don't know if that same kind of thing happened on the continent. To my American mind, it seems really odd to use a VCR to time when the news would come on, something that seems like it wouldn't help if you were trying to catch it live. Of course none of this matters as much as it used to as people just don't get as much news from network TV. People will still watch the local news for stories about what's happening in their area, but national media have lost a lot od viewership. Part of it is just the constant left wing bias and part is because it's a lot easier to get news on the internet. I'm 73, and I've found that people like Walter Cronkite weren't always truthful during the Vietnam era, and I wouldn't know that if not from being able to see many different perspectives of the same events. The ability to be able to rapidly fact check any story now allows the average person to be better informed than they ever were back in the Cronkite era. The idea of some of these being recorded after a big soccer match makes sense. However, I've now watched probably 25 newscasts (I'm retired, and this kind of thing keeps my mind engaged) and about half the regular 20-30 minute news programs also started at strange times. Maybe they were displaced by a soccer match too. I really appreciate being able to watch these, plus the ads and continuity videos. It gives me a much better insight into how things were in the UK during the last three decades of the 20th century than just reading about it.

[@JJVernig]

@@sarjim4381 Indeed strikes and other occurrences happened, and made people videotape that. If I was suggesting that people used the news as a starting point, I wasn't clear, I meant, to be sure the programme or match was recorded people made very large allowances, and so this programme wound up on tape (I think). I'm not completely with you on the wide possibility of fact-checking on the internet. There is a enormous bulk of information and finding the truth is in my view impossible. I trust the, in your view left-biased (and my view rather right-wing, especially US), mass-media more.