Come On In To THE VIEWING ROOM

Introduction

When I was a boy, I was fascinated by television. I suppose I must have been part of the first generation to be raised on TV. That air of magic about the very process of bringing pictures and sounds to our living room was still strong.

And magic it was. Even today, if I actually think about how it all happens, it still causes my old mind to boggle. Worse yet, I can't now fall back on the old innocence which led me, as a child of about six, to believe that it happened by someone rolling up the pictures at the other end and shoving them down the aerial cable to our rented-from-Telehire black & white set.

Those old 405-line monochrome beasts had a certain presence, too. I mean, they were big, heavy things, which gave off that beguiling smell which, I now realise, was just hot dust on the valves.

They had a very distinctive sound too, in the form of that pitched-just-at-the-top-of-the-hearing-range whistle from the line output.

As for the programmes themselves, well I won't go off at a tangent on those just here. But the bits between were equally attractive, sometimes even more so than the programmes themselves. This was especially true in the case of Independent Television (ITV) which in its Golden Years (which to me are from about 1966 to about 1983), was still loyal to its federal structure and its commitment (however superficial it might have appeared at times) to local programming.

This meant that in addition to one's own region (more than one if you were living in the right place) and its programme provider - to which you felt a kind of loyalty which could be quite determined and fierce at times - you could see programmes made by other companies in the network, companies which were based many miles beyond the capabilities of your aerial to receive.

There was no bashfulness or reluctance to tell you which company was providing a particular programme. It was announced right at the start of each one by way of something called, variously, a 'frontcap' or an 'ident' (purists argue over the precise term to this very day). Depending on the company, this could be either an animated image allied to a brief but memorable snatch of music or, more boringly, a static caption simply giving you the name of the company.

Some of these idents/frontcaps became associated with memories of particular programmes: the soothing compass of Southern TV was always likely to be the precursor to rather good children's programming; the mirrored riverscape of Thames meant Benny Hill, Kenny Everett or The Tomorrow People; ATV's blaring fanfare and animated 'eye' meant the imminent start of the original (Midlands-only) Tiswas.

(Browse the TV Ark site for examples of what I mean)

Rather like short-wave radio enthusiasts though, those of us who were TV 'geeks' (the term wasn't used in such a context at that time, but it would be now) would scour the pages of the latest edition of the TV Times looking for rarities. Some companies in the ITV network provided very few programmes for the network. What they did make was often used as fillers in out-of-the-way slots in the schedule, such as weekday afternoons. These were the only opportunity we would get to 'bag' a rare ident. So the sight of something billed as a "Westward Television production", for example, would set the pulse racing somewhat. The contracting company for south-western England rarely got anything shown beyond its own purlieu, so this would be a prize catch. Unfortunately, I was usually at school when these tasty little morsels aired, thus making them more coveted still.

The Golden Age tarnished during the 1980s, and was melted down after the 1990 Broadcasting Act into dud coinage for huge, aggressive, agglomerating corporations and other pirates and charlatans to plunder.

For many years, I gave up hope of ever recapturing The Good Times™, but I finally got online in June 2001, and within a few weeks I had discovered to my delight that I was not alone. Indeed, there were many sites out there dedicated to rescuing and making available these triggers of nostalgia.

More than that, there was also a means for contemporary imagination to play with the images and concepts of that earlier time. I happened one evening upon a site called Afternoon Programmes Follow Shortly (APFS). Here the site's owner Mark McMillan had created galleries of images dedicated to one of the most beguiling of imaginative games: the 'what if' scenario. 'What if', for example, ATV had not been relieved of its franchise in 1981, but had gone on through that decade and the next? What would its on-screen image look like? Again, 'what if' completely different companies had been awarded the franchises for particular regions? How would they have gone about showing their face to the network and its viewers?

It wasn't just Mark McMillan, though: his bold thought had attracted others of like mind, who sent him their own creations, so that dozens of galleries sprung up based on these original speculations. In the early part of 2002, I trepidantly submitted my first gallery to APFS. As the years went on, I contributed eight galleries in all, some of which I'm more proud of or happier with than others. I later went back and amended or updated a couple of them in the light of new ideas or a better mastery of the techniques of producing 'mocks' (as they have come to be known).

Mark McMillan has now moved on to other things in his life, and APFS finally closed at the end of April 2006. In gratitude and tribute to him and to my fellow 'mockers' for their efforts and their helpful suggestions and critical comments on my own attempts to create alternative history, I have salvaged my galleries from APFS, and present them in the following pages (click on the test card below to go to the Index).