Do Not Adjust Your Set

When I was growing up during the 1960s, we had two TV channels – BBC and ITV. BBC 2 came along in 1964, although the scheduled opening night of 20th April was disrupted by a power failure, and the first programme, Play School, was broadcast on the following morning. Not everyone could receive BBC 2 however, it depended on where you lived and how up to date your TV was.

 

We didn’t get a fourth channel – the imaginatively titled Channel 4 – until November 1982, and had to wait until March 1997 before the equally imaginatively named Channel 5 came on line. With the advent of satellite and cable TV there was an explosion in the number of channels available, but as Bruce Springsteen said, there were "57 Channels (And Nothin' On).”

Back in the 1960s and with just two channels, there were times when there was literally nothing on; midweek afternoons were a particular desert with hours passing and nothing but the test card to see if you turned on the TV set. 

The BBC continued with afternoon shut downs until 1986, although ITV removed them in 1972. Switching the TV on five minutes before the show you wanted to watch to allow the set to warm up was a given, as was the picture that vanished to a little white dot when you turned it off. At some time between 11pm and midnight, the channels closed down completely.

 

As well as the limited choice, Britain’s TV viewing public had to content with many technical issues during the 1960s, either from the broadcasters or their TV sets. Many programmes would be interrupted with the news that there was a technical problem with an announcer telling viewers not to adjust their set. 

Often though, we did have to adjust our sets, either by fiddling with the horizontal or vertical holds, or simply by slapping the top of the set, which worked by temporarily fixing minor issues as it jostled loose connections or components.

 

Frequently our screens went blank because a tube had blown, which meant calling out an engineer to replace the faulty part, resulting in a few days of staring forlornly at the now useless box in the corner of the room. This was a fairly common occurrence in our household as the TV set we had was old, second hand, and unreliable. At some point we started renting a set (who can imagine doing that today?) that was more reliable. It was still a black and white job though – watching sport could be a trial with two football teams wearing almost indistinguishable shades of grey, for instance, while snooker was particularly difficult to follow – "For those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green," as commentator Ted Lowe once famously remarked. We didn’t get a colour set until some time during the 1980s – Star Trek was the first show we watched in colour, which meant that the member of the landing party unlikely to survive was easier to spot because we could tell that they were wearing a red shirt.

 

The advent of video recorders was a sea change in the way we watched TV. We were no longer tied to the schedules, although the cost of the machines was eyewatering in the early days. In 1982, when the average weekly wage in the UK was £136, a video recorder could set you back £600 and even the tapes were expensive, typically £25 for a blank tape and up to £80 for pre-recorded ones, hence the sudden growth of video rental stores like Blockbuster. By the time I bought my last VCR (as opposed to a DVR) they were about fifty quid and blank tapes were almost being given away.

 

TV sets are now much more reliable, there are more channels than it is possible to count, and most significantly, the way we watch TV has changed immeasurably. Linear TV isn’t dead yet, but it is estimated that 95% of UK households will have the capacity to watch TV over the Internet by 2040. Frankly I’m surprised it is expected to take that long. There has been some talk about Freeview being demised and although its broadcasts are protected by government policy until at least 2034, by the time we get to 2040 with only 5% of the viewing public expected to be unable to access TV online, its days are likely to be numbered.

 

What about the old folk? is usually the cry when such changes are mooted. Well, I suppose I’m one of the old folk now (I was recently described as ‘elderly’ in a telephone conversation with a particularly obnoxious estate agent), and I’m happy to move with the times and embrace new technology: I’m sure that I am not untypical of people in my age group (I now tick the Over 65 box on websites when asked my age).

 

As I have recounted in previous blogs, Val and I cancelled our Vigin Media subscription last year when we realised that we were paying to watch Freeview and that a significant proportion of our viewing was on catch up TV or streaming services. During our sojourn in Eastbourne, we didn’t even have a television; all the TV we consumed was online through a laptop or iPad. That continued once we moved into our new home, but we recently decided that for the sake of convenience if nothing else, we would buy a new TV, our old one deemed too large (it currently languishes, swaddled in bubble wrap, in the shed) for our living room and how we want it set up.

 

Our new set has not been plugged into the aerial socket and is unlikely to ever be connected, partly because of how the living room is configured, but mainly because there’s not really a need. Although without an aerial we don’t get Freeview, all of the channels we want to watch are available through the internet.

 

Streaming services have made VCRs, DVRs, and DVD players redundant, but the downside to that are subscriptions; there’s Apple TV, Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount+, to name but five and with the content you want to watch spread out over multiple platforms, that could cost a tidy sum each month unless you are careful.

 

With the way we watch TV having changed so much in the last 60 years it’s impossible to predict how different it will be by 2040, but one thing is unlikely to change, we’ll still be lamenting that “there’s nothing on.”