TV continuity clips from 17th November 1969 - Take three Girls and more..

Home recording clips of BBC continuity and clips of programmes. All in Black & White as the VTR used was only capable of B&W recording unfortunately. Sorry for the poor quality VHS copy source.

[@MarkSeibold]

The open music to the TV show Take Three Girls, at 2:35 on the time bar, is the famous folk group The Pentangle. You can see them doing the number live here is the third track on this half hour live session from the BBC in 1970. The track starts I believe at 11 minutes and 35 seconds on the time bar of this link. They are highly admired for their early folk classical blues jazz style starting in the late 1960s with their 1968 album Sweet Child, which I bought the double vinyl import album from England in 1974 I still have it today, and this original vinyl is highly collectible. But there is a newer CD release of it now with extra bonus tracks. Watch the group performing the in this excellent BBC studio recording in 1970. The opening track with Bert chance singing is historically valuable. I saw him perform here in the last year of his life in my hometown of Portland Oregon and recorded him in this sellout over packed Mississippi studios in the north side of the city here in 2012. But this video I'm linking is the groups earlier days in 1970 the two founding members Bert Jansch and John Renborn have since then passed away in the last few years. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qoXYdmdroc98fsU

[@halfbakedproductions7887]

"Take Three Girls" was actually really good. Sadly, not all the episodes survived, but the ones I saw I really did enjoy. Even by modern standards it would probably get favourable reviews. The show was reprised in 1982 as "Take Three Women" - you see them all more grown up and the newborn baby from the original 1969 series is now a young teenager in secondary school. It was iconic and many years later there was even a Heartbeat episode called "Take Three Girls". I heard a rumour that there was talk about doing another reprise, either in 2009 for the 40th anniversary or 2019 for the 50th. It would have featured modern young women in modern London and likely cameod the original characters in some way.

[@nicholasm5465]

Sad that the Apollo 12 TV coverage failed minutes after deploying the camera, when it was inadvertently pointed at the sun and disabled ...

[@trevordance5181]

An old couple across the road had a colour tv and I remember popping round to watch colour programmes on BBC2 for a couple of years before watching bits of the first night of colour tv on both BBC1 and ITV on, as I've since looked up, the 15th November 1969. I was 14 years old then and it would be another 4 and a half years before my family got a colour tv on my 19th birthday.

[@andrewswift8139]

My family wouldn't have seen these programmes in colour even if they could afford a colour set as the Newcastle upon Tyne area didn't get BBC 1 in colour from Pontop Pike tx until 13th June 1970. Just in time for the West Germans to get revenge for the 1966 World Cup Final win

[@trevordance5181]

@@andrewswift8139 I lived in the coverage area of the Crystal Palace transmitter which as it served the largest population in the UK meant that it was always at the forefront of new technology being rolled out. The poor old Channel Islands never got colour, or even BBC2, from their local transmitter until 1976.

[@glpilpi6209]

The first person to have a colour TV in our road was in 1969 , they had it stolen two weeks after they bought it during a break in.

[@angelacooper2661]

@@andrewswift8139 Andrew. Just in time for me to experience my first four days of life as well (1970 World Cup). I am only eight months older than decimalisation!

[@angelacooper2661]

You were 14 in November 1969, Trevor; I would have been minus seven months, as my mother was expecting me the following summer. I never knew black and white TV, being too young to remember that era!

[@jahno7154]

Now that takes me back THIS PROGRAMME IS IN BLACK AND WHITE wonderful memories

[@MarkSeibold]

I started a research of time spans famous music on American TV shows when I saw a video on Facebook a while ago of Joe cocker performing the number Feeling Alright. many youth in America tried to guess the date as being somewhere in the 70s but I said that it was probably between 1968 and 1972 and appeared to come from a famous comedy variety show called Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. so what I want to search for the video I saw that it was actually from The Ed Sullivan show in America in 1969. So I guessed in early right on time stamping it. but then I went further because I wanted to inform some of these younger people that this musical sound can be found in different factions through British TV shows as I was already listening to the BBC on a short way radio as an 11 year old kid here in Portland Oregon. I have been building Crystal radios since age 10. But what really influenced me was when I saw the original avengers TV show with Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee. I lost all interest in American television at that point. I turn to listen to the radio more and specially the shortwave and tuned in to the BBC in London cuz I found the journalism and the information much more progressive than the banal and ridiculous primetime evening television programming on local American television. I've been suggested to this younger group watching the Joe cocker video that they should also look at something like the group The pentangle in England which changed my life by age 20 when I heard them on a local FM adult contemporary station in Portland Oregon where I grew up. I was so pleased to find the BBC recordings of the pentangle in the BBC studio I believe in 1968 with the group performing and their female singer Jacqui McShea singing. I'm having trouble finding that particular video now although I can see others from the same sessions at the BBC. Many here watching this video above will hear the group singing with the woman in the take three girls opening that's actually the Pentangle groups' number. But I'm looking for the number titled basket of light with a great vocal collaboration between Bert Jansch and Jacqui McShea of the Pentangle, cuz I thought it was available in Vimeo videos because I know I've watched it many times. Vimeo has a long series of the BBC recordings of the group in 1968 and they're beautifully reproduced with very good video and audio sound quality. Thanks for posting this with accurate information of dated time of performance on April 27th 1969. On the Ed Sullivan Show there are other sites across the Internet posting this lately with thousands of comments and nobody seems to know the exact original filming time of it. So I guessed it as somewhere between 1968 and 1972 and thought it was from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, because one of the original lady dancers in the background appears very much like Judy Carn, from that famous late '60s TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Many younger people assumed it was from the BBC because they're probably confusing it with later movies say of Mike Myers performing the Austin Powers character imitating a broadcast from the BBC. they're not aware that Myers was imitating the scenes from the Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in, in about 1968 through '69. But there were also beautiful broadcasts then from the BBC say around 1968 through 1970 showing the famous group The Pentangle with a similar kind of polka dot background through a beautifully-lit studio at the BBC. [Search this through KZbin or Vimeo videos a number titled Basket of Light, but the highly admired folk-blues-classical-jazz group, the Pentangle, filmed in the BBC studios as it is a great monitor of the time of what took over eventually in America. You'll see this as a much more sophisticated presentation with a female vocalist and you can see the influences that this might have had on the original Jefferson airplane. Here's what I originally wrote in another site circulating through Facebook with so many people misunderstanding the time frame: It has the appearance of, say, the Rowan & Martins Laugh-In TV show between 1968 to 1972. It could also be something from the BBC. While I cannot figure out with thousands of comments, is that nobody asks about exactly what year it was and the video has no label on it indicating that. I think there ought to be a law that says if you're going to post a video you've got to determined the source information, to indicate exactly when the video was taken. You think there would be something more said about who knows exactly when it was made but only a few people seem to be asking. I saw videos like this on early evening primetime television say starting around 1968, [as a 14-year-old ending the 8th grade in early 1968,] and up through about 1972, [my graduation year from high school.] So I believe it's somewhere in that time frame. I'm trying to research it but I can't find anything about it being dated. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIWZeZqrp658rNU kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKerYYelmMx_fLc

[@Scatscar1985]

A few weeks before I was born! Also, "Music Director: Mike Post" (during "The Andy Williams Show") - future TV music legend... and who knew "The High Chapparal" would still be repeated on the BBC in the 1990s!

[@trevordance5181]

Ah, the High Chaparral, Big John Canon, Victoria, Uncle Buck, Manolito Montoya, and Blue. Great series. The Virginian was also on BBC tv around the same time. In fact there were loads of westerns, of varying quality, on tv back in the day. Not many on now though.

[@darganx]

Mike Post.. Hill Street Blues, The A Team.. as for The High Chaparral, they still show it on cable!

[@goodiesguy]

This does exist in colour somewhere, as the BBC used the bit at 6:17 in the 1991 Sounds of the Sixties Series right before segwaying into a Pink Floyd clip.

[@billyh88uk]

I think that was electronically coloured by the Sounds of the Sixties editors - in the wrong colours (a white globe on a light blue background, rather than a blue globe on a black background)

[@mannysanguena7900]

Thank you for this glimpse. No worry about the quality as it is so rare.

[@scottblack9213]

Very rare .. love late 60's continuity.. seems much more "sexier" than the early 70's continuity which in contrast seems more "showbiz"

[@foxee36]

It’s a pity that take three girls,the first bbc drama in colour,wasn’t kept in it’s entirety

[@hebneh]

Color television in the USA started in 1953, as I remember, but virtually nobody had a color TV at the time, nor did most of the hundreds of stations in the country have the equipment to broadcast it. This continued for years - not many shows in color and not many color TVs. Only one of the three networks was committed to color, and to emphasize to viewers what they were missing, NBC used a standard announcement of an abstract peacock opening its tail feathers with this voiceover: “The following program is brought to you in living color - on NBC”. The full prime time schedule didn’t go fully color for all three networks till the fall of 1966.

[@foxee36]

The Channel Islands didn’t get colour til mid 70’s

[@fuccasound3897]

i seem to remember the Andy Williams show that featured the 'cookie bear' that Andy treated so badly! Also VTR's were pretty unusual and expensive in '69, you must have been 'posh' to have one!

[@PhilReynoldsLondonGeek]

Lynda La Plante, under her usual acting name, Lynda Marchal, was in The Doctors, as shown in this recording .

[@DBIVUK]

This was the first weeknight on which BBC-1 was in colour, which is why the announcers are going on about it all the time. Incidentally those colour TV pictures from the moon didn't last long - astronaut Alan Bean pointed the camera directly at the sun, burning out the tube.

[@RetroGUY77]

Yes, this is from 17th of November 1969

[@dunebasher1971]

This isn't a "home recording". It's a VHS dub of the BBC's own 16mm film recording of its early colour continuity. They had no spare colour VTRs to devote to recording it, so B&W film was considered better than nothing.

[@JHollowayNetwork]

what about the Ampex VR-3000 recorder?

[@MsSteve70]

@@JHollowayNetwork All the VTR's at BBC Television Centre would have been booked up so a film recorder has been used. Also, it's only for internal non-broadcast reference. Video tape would have been far too expensive to use for this purpose in 1969.

[@TheGramophoneGirl]

So if they still hold the 16mm b&w film, then it could be possible it contains chromadots? I imagine it's not worth converting it, though it would be fascinating if they did.

[@glpilpi6209]

I remember all these clips ! . And Waggoner's Walk on BBC radio !.

[@trevordance5181]

Waggoners Walk... Didn't that replace Mrs. Dale's Diary ???

[@mjclark641]

How come the kids in Ask the Family looked so middle aged? 😂

[@DVDandFilmBloke]

I can only imagine if you were one of the millionaires who was able to afford a colour television back in 1969 it would have been a bit of a waste considering half the programmes are in black and white (and the ITV colour strike happened between 1970 and 1971). Also it is dead interesting seeing this knowing that pretty much all the programmes shown in this were most likely wiped by the BBC, I know that only 10 of the original 24 episodes of Take Three Girls survive in the BBC archives.

[@Derry_Aire]

My grandad was a bin lorry driver and had a colour telly in 1969.

[@DVDandFilmBloke]

@@Derry_Aire I stand kind of corrected (I say kind of since most people still only had a black and white TV set at the time).

[@foxee36]

@@DVDandFilmBloke apparently colour TV’s only sold more than black and white from mid 70’s

[@DVDandFilmBloke]

@@foxee36 Yeah, 1976 was the first year colour licences out sold black and white.

[@footynutguy]

That's a great find. Thanks for this.

[@w1lf1ewoo]

can you believe that last intro "Tokyo , possibly the ugliest city in the world". ... anyway thanks for this , fantastic time capsule!

[@MrWidmerpool99]

Pretty impressive to get the names of two of the three actresses wrong.

[@cerneuffington2656]

Is it possible that this was originally a b&w telerecording, made at the BBC, and then at some point, transferred to a domestic video tape?

[@aidanlunn7441]

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

[@davidwhittaker2826]

Wonderful. I am 9 again. I haven't checked all the comments, but do we know how well the NTSC Andy Williams Show was converted for 625 PAL? I remember watching in 625 but b&w that the picture was rather misty, with some time lag smearing? We, well my mum were fans of the Galloping Gourmet. I remember flipping on our dual standard set between the new BBC1 625 signal and 405. Not a lot of difference.

[@Westy1971]

Does anyone know when Z Cars went colour, as there was a YT site with old episodes from 1969 / 1970, including the full version of the one shown here, but all episodes were in black & white!

[@angelacooper2661]

This would have been seven months before I was born, including Z Cars. Too young to remember Ask the Family original tune as well.

[@sarahlouise7163]

i have vague memories of my dad making me and my brother watch the moon landing or rocket launch? we didn’t understand, i was only 4, my brother 2 i had no idea they had groovy sitar music for Ask The Family. they must have changed it by the time i was old enough to watch it.

[@darganx]

Look how young 'Eliza' Goddard looks... the Pentangle theme tune peels back the years! I believe Julia Smith made her break at the BBC on this show, went on to create EastEnders? Correct me if wrong..

[@jbtv7955]

So this is a black and Withe tv broadcast on Monday 17.11.1969

[@PeterAinsworth-zf8kj]

Kate was played by Louise Jamieson

[@robmortimer4150]

"Biggest and possibly ugliest city in the world." !! Also a shame that some episodes of Take Three Girls are missing presumed gone, the ones I've seen were all good.

[@AnthonyMonaghan]

Boss tunes all round.

[@AntonFanify]

I believe that John Glover was doing the announcing that evening.

[@billyh88uk]

What's being announced at 7:32 ? I'm presuming it's the death of Joseph Kennedy, but that happened the day after this unless I'm getting my timezones mixed up.

[@duncanpriestley964]

According to Wikipedia, you're absolutely right. So is the date of this broadcast a day out?

[@briggsfartblender788]

Kenneth Kendall gives me the horn

[@Foebane72]

Whaaaaat? The BBC openly calls Tokyo UGLY??? They'd NEVER get away with that THESE days!

[@peterfreeman6677]

It could have been worse. At least no-one called it Ugry.

[@nguyendailam6703]

Love it.

[@paulmason8352]

There is a daytime BBC1 series called guess what?.......The Doctors

[@darganx]

And it's situated in Pebble Mill, Birmingham.. and goes out at 1pm!

[@TheGramophoneGirl]

08:20 Interesting that the temperatures are quoted in celcius first and then fahrenheit.

[@aidanlunn7441]

*BBC1 COLOUR globe* "Now Ask the Family. This programme is in black and white". I've seen they had a B&W version of that globe with just "BBC1" underneath it for such programmes. Why not use that?

[@clarissamcpigeon7857]

+Aidan Lunn (Ferguson Videostar) They splattered the word COLOUR over everything as a form of advertising, to tempt people into upgrading their sets. The COLOUR was removed circa 1975 because most people had got a colour set by then.

[@aidanlunn7441]

+Clarissa McPigeon But only for those few people who could afford to rent or buy such sets, pay the licence, pay for the new aerial (if they hadn't got BBC2 already) and make sure they lived within the range of the *4* (yes, just 4) transmitters that were transmitting BBC1 and ITV (Thames/LWT, ATV, Granada and Yorkshire regions) in colour. So for the poor sods down in the Westcountry or in East Anglia or Northern Ireland etc, being told that BBC1 was in colour but they couldn't yet receive it would have been like the carrot on a stick treatment.

[@mbvideoselection]

Clarissa McPigeon but that's not an answer to the question. The blue on black globe had two versions... One with "COLOUR" and one without. So why use the COLOUR one for a non-colour programme? I understand the need to advertise the colour service, but it's not a good advertisement for times when the programmes shown are still B&W.

[@dunebasher1971]

Because it was the first week of colour. It was still something to shout about. They introduced the separate globe for use before B&W programmes later.

[@philward2538]

All programmes and BBC ident was in colour...the tapes have been junked but the BBCs most important change in its history has been considered only worth keep on black and white film transfer

[@aidanlunn7441]

Because recording it in colour using expensive colour videotape recorders on expensive Ultra High-grade Quad videotape wasn't considered a priority for the BBC when such equipment would be much better used making and transmitting programmes rather than televisual fluff like continuity. Also, there may not have been a spare videotape recorder available to record the continuity, as the VT suites were still being refurbished for colour so some of them were out of action.

[@dunebasher1971]

That's exactly it. There were no spare colour VTRs available to record. We're lucky that the BBC chose to film-record *any* of the continuity - ITV didn't bother for its own first night of colour.

[@JHollowayNetwork]

+dunebasher1971 but then there was Ampex which was the only colour videotape home recorder at the time.

[@favorittvromania5964]

BBC 2 Weather 4 October 1971

[@favorittvromania5964]

BBC 2 Weather 19 June 1972

[@kataka64]

Brilliant. Thank you.

[@Amyz87]

Who is the Announcer on this Clip?

[@helioshaul3924]

Brilliant . What was itrecorded on.

[@dunebasher1971]

16mm B&W film, later transferred to VHS.

[@favorittvromania5964]

BBC 2 16 June 1972

[@richardsharpe2966]

Could someone help me with a question please is Susan Jaimison married to James Bolam would like to know please

[@PhilReynoldsLondonGeek]

Susan Jameson is indeed married to James Bolam

[@aidanlunn7441]

It seems Richard knows how to type a comment on KZbin but not how to use Google to find out who James Bolam's or Susan Jameson's spouse is.

[@richardsharpe2966]

+Ferguson Videostar I have a message for you I did Google it up some months ago it was to double check everything so let me tell you I can use Google

[@atlantic1952]

I think it was recorded on a CV2000

[@CrowTRobot-ni7zu]

atlantic1952 The quality looks much too good to be CV-2000. I'm thinking Type-A VTR.

[@mbvideoselection]

Crow T. Robot no it was a film recording (telerecording). This just happens to be a 2nd generation VHS copy of that telerecording.

[@gervasefen]

Absolutely fascinating. Thanks to the BBC Genome Project there's now a link to the schedule here : genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1969-11-17

[@tyffani9931]

2:36

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 17 Nov 1969

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 27 mai 2018

[@favorittvromania5964]

17 Nov 1969

[@solojinglesradio1]

Shut up dude

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 8 mai 2018

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 6 mar 2017

[@royjeffries7934]

I don't like colour t.v I have it on black and white now

[@MrThrib]

Easy to forget how rubbish TV used to be.

[@steffanhoffmann8937]

Still is.

[@footynutguy]

That's a great find. Thanks for this.

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 17 Nov 1969

[@favorittvromania5964]

Publicat pe 17 mar 2017