THE DAY TELEVISION EXPLODED INTO GLORIOUS COLOUR

Fifty years ago BBC2 broadcast the first colour programme in Britain – and changed television for ever. But how did it happen? What were we watching? And why did Joan Bakewell cause a stir? By Christopher Stevens

The arrival of colour telly exactly 50 years ago next Saturday turned even the most urbane adults into awestruck children. Britain’s smartest intellectuals were goggling at the screen like children drooling over jars of multicoloured treats in a sweetshop.

Novelist Anthony Burgess was one of the guests on a trial broadcast for TV executives of the BBC2 arts show Late Night Line- Up a few weeks before the official launch of colour transmissions in July 1967. He reported that he and his fellow thinkers, the writer Angus Wilson and critic Jonathan Miller, and host Joan Bakewell, couldn’t sit still in their seats. They kept bobbing up to peer at the monitors and see themselves in living colour.

The rest of the country caught up at 2pm on Saturday 1 July, 1967. BBC2, which had been broadcasting from Henley Regatta in black and white, switched to pictures from the day’s play at Wimbledon, and zoomed in on presenter Peter West. He was fending off the sunshine with a green umbrella, surrounded by bright flowerpots. The effect was as dramatic as removing a blindfold.

These mesmeric pictures seemed to hypnotise everyone who saw them – that day there were just 1,500 homes with colour sets in the UK compared to 15 million black-and-white tellies. One disgruntled Londoner complained to the BBC that he spotted this first colour broadcast on a set in a shop window next to his bus stop. The picture was being beamed from Wimbledon’s Centre Court and he couldn’t stop staring. ‘The grass was so green!’ he exclaimed. But when he peeled himself away from the window, he realised he’d missed his bus.

Yet colour TV was, strictly speaking, nothing new. It had first been demonstrated on 3 July 1928, just three years after the first public showing of black-and-white pictures – the inventor John Logie Baird gathered his staff around him at his lab in Long Acre, London, and, with an apparatus involving spinning wheels and mirrors, showed them a colour projection of a basket of strawberries.

A true visionary, Baird was never satisfied with black-and-white technology, and much of his research dur-

ing the 1930s was devoted to developing a colour system. The outbreak of World War II was a blow to his hopes – the BBC suspended TV broadcasts and Logie Baird’s company went out of business.

Refusing to be defeated, he sank his life savings into the colour project, even cashing in his life insurance policy. His dedication paid off: in August 1944, he demonstrated a cathrode-ray tube with a screen that displayed pictures in colour. But exhausted by his work, Logie Baird was dead within two years.

BBC television came back on air in 1946, and the Corporation was not opposed to colour TV in principle. It had even experimented with shooting outside broadcasts on colour cine film in the late 30s, including one from 1938 that survives today. It features presenter Leslie Mitchell at Alexandra Palace, talking to wardens of the newly founded ARP (Air Raid Precautions) about their training.

But although the technology existed, it was exper imental . Logie Bai rd’s screen was too complex and far too expensive for mass production. And since it used 600 lines to make up the picture instead of the conventional (and decidedly low-resolution) 405 lines, it would require British broadcasters to reinvent their cameras and transmitters.

The Americans were more ambi- tious. By the early 50s, RCA (Radio Corporation of America) was able to transmit colour signals with 405 lines, using the NTSC method – an acronym for National Television System Commit tee – though the results were so poor that cynical engineers joked it really stood for ‘never twice the same colour’.

Naturally, the BBC wanted to experiment with this technology. In 1953 they secretly invested in a 405-line colour receiver made by a firm in Southend, and installed it in a back room at London’s Lime Grove studios. The Queen was invited to inspect it and, for the royal visit, a live show was staged elsewhere in the complex. Colour pictures were beamed to this one-and- only colour TV set, watched by Her Majesty and a handful of proud executives. It was never used again.

But the Americans persevered. Standards of living in the States were higher than in Britain, and colour TVs were soon so common that, by 1956, the main networks were embracing the new technology. Crooner Perry Como was the first to benefit, with his weekly variety show going out in vivid colour. Brightly hued cartoon series such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons were created in the early 60s to take full advantage of the switch.

We lagged behind in the UK, where the only colour shows – such as ATV’s The Adventures Of Sir

‘The Queen went to see the BBC’s only colour TV set’

Lancelot, starring William Russell – were being made for export to America. When screened in Britain, they were shown in black and white. But ATV had also discovered a quirk of the monochrome sets that they called ‘subjective colour’. By sending a slightly out- of-sync signal, the engineers could trick black- and-white screens into glowing faintly green (though, oddly, some viewers perceived it as pink). The excited TV bosses tried to persuade advertisers to pay extra for this. Not surprisingly, the trial run failed, although a ‘subjective colour’ ad for Oxo cubes was broadcast at the start of the 60s.

Only the wealthiest British viewers could think of investing in a proper colour set. From 1960, ‘dual-facility’ televisions were available, with a switch to shift between 405- line

black-and-white and 625-line colour capability, but even then the expensive set could not be used until a technician had visited to tune it in.

Finally, in 1966, the Labour govern-

ment’s Postmaster General Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the politician in charge of telecommunications, announced in the Commons that Britain was to begin regular colour

services, making it the first country in Europe to pledge this. Benn was doubtless aware that the Germans were working on it, and in Moscow independent British technicians had

been working with the Soviet state broadcaster to set up a colour channel. It was planned for this to be up and running by November 1967, to show

events marking the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It was important for our national pride that Britain delivered first.

But there was a hitch. European leaders had still not yet decided which technology to embrace. After a meeting in Oslo, Norway, in summer 1966, most western European countries opted for the Phase Alternating Line or PAL system. It was so much better than America’s NTSC that engineers joked PAL stood for ‘perfection at last’. Under BBC2 controller David Attenborough, the goahead was given to convert two studios, which would have to be completely rewired.

Once BBC2, which had been broadcasting since 1964, was on air in full colour, another problem struck the executives. They simply couldn’t produce enough colour material fast enough to fill the schedules. At first just five hours of BBC2 shows each week were broadcast in colour. But by the end of 1967, about 80 per cent of the output was in colour. This meant frequent repeats for items that were only ever intended as stopgaps, such as a business information film called Prospects For Plastics, and a documentary about London Transport’s bus maintenance depot at Aldenham, which featured lots of footage of bright red double-deckers. Another perennial was The Major, about a year in the life of an oak tree on a village green. It had been made four years earlier.

These programmes were not wellliked, with good reason: a colour TV licence cost £10, twice that of a blackand-white one – a high price to pay for repeats. The monthly rental for a largescreen (about 23in) colour receiver was £8 – around £130 in today’s money. To buy a colour set cost about £250-£300, or £ 4,000-£ 4,800 today. As a comparison, a new Ford Zephyr car cost about £900 (£14,400).

For performers, colour created other

headaches. The BBC’s head of light entertainment, Tom Sloan, warned that the new pictures highlighted all the blemishes in a face. Colour TV was particularly ruthless with red noses and bloodshot eyes – two telltale signs of the heavy drinker – that had been invisible in monochrome. Come-

‘Dick Emery was disgusted with his own yellow teeth’

dian Dick Emery was so disgusted by the appearance of his own yellow teeth that he had a set of brilliant white plastic crowns made to cover them. On Late Night Line-Up however, presenter Joan Bakewell’s chestnut brown eyes caused much comment.

Sports events provided the best

opportunities for colour that really told a story. The former Daily Mail editor William Hardcastle, by now a BBC presenter, commented that he understood what TV could now do when he tuned in to the US Open golf and saw ‘the full, plump face of Jack Nicklaus, furiously contemplat-

ing a putt, between the brightly trousered legs of a caddie’.

A new show for f ishermen, Anglers’ Corner, was another unexpected success. Colour pictures could convey the dappling of light upon water and the flight of a trout line. And gardening programmes

got a new lease of life: the indoor studio flowerbeds looked lifeless in colour, so presenter Percy Thrower invited the Gardeners’ World cameras to the gardens at his home, Magnolias near Shrewsbury, and started a craze. Sightseers came from all over Britain to see Magno-

lias for themselves, even though the gardens were not open to the public.

For BBC1 and ITV, a joint launch of colour broadcasts was agreed for Saturday 15 November 1969. An exhibition was staged at London’s Euston Station called Colour Comes To Town, to demonstrate the quality

of the pictures. It had been touring around the country for two years, partly to help counter the widespread belief at the time that radiation from colour television sets could affect male fertility.

That weekend’s colour highlights included Dixon Of Dock Green,

The Har ry Secombe Show and Match Of The Day on the Saturday, and the following day the Royal Variety Performance, when comedian Ronnie Corbett discovered another disadvantage of the vivid new pictures... he had walked into a door and was sporting a lurid pur- ple shiner. Colour was here to stay. But you can’t please everyone. The switchboards at BBC and ITV were choked that weekend with callers complaining that their tellies were still black- and-white. To their horror, they were told, ‘Sorry! You’ll have to buy a colour set.’

Late Night Line-Up, with Joan Bakewell, was used in trial colour broadcasts