Yes, Liberace had a series for ATV in the 1950s as well as making appearances in other shows, and Wood Green is the likely location for recording them.

Hi there Keith,
I think it was around 1972/4, I was stunned when I was told.
I was lucky enough to actually sit with him one evening at ATV Birmingham while he did his continuity piece live to camera – I was absolutely thrilled. He was a really lovely man – a gentleman.
I have a huge mounted colour photo of him that was on the walk ways in ATV I’ve kept it all these years 🙂

It’s a dreadful thought, isn’t it? Elsewhere in the ATV Newsheet, they boast about the new HQ on Gt Cumberland Place in London, which has been wired to have Muzak in every room. I think I’d sooner stick pins in my eyes.

“benefit of Muzak”?!?

I’m afraid we’ve got no personnel records here (and would not be allowed to release details from them if we had). You best bet would be to try The Stage newspaper – https://www.thestage.co.uk/ – either directly (there is no guarantee that they can spare the time to research an answer) or via a letter for publication or a small ad.

Surely better to privately tell them if he thought they were going to far (or maybe he had and his advice had fallen on deaf ears).

I still remember Trevor Lucas our main man in the ATV London hot seat at weekends. He disappeared from ATV London in July 1968 to take up a role at ATV Midlands. I was 10 at the time. Please could you tell me roughly what year he passed away?

The increase was very tiny – an extra half hour of programming per day permitted. Meaning the weekday increase from 7 hours to 7.5 hours per day, and on Saturdays/Sundays the increase from 7.5 hours to 8 hours per day.

Not much, but it was a start. The next increase came around 1971 when BBC and ITV were given 8 hours per day, seven days a week as their allowance.

Thankfully, the Edward Heath conservative government, elected in June 1970 to everyone’s shock and surprise (including Harold Wilson who called the election for June 1970, thinking he would win) led to Heath actually doing one good thing, lifting all broadcasting restrictions on television hours, with the announcement given in the House of Commons on January 19th 1972, with the then minister Christopher Chataway announcing the complete lifting of all restrictions on broadcasting hours for both television and radio with “immediate effect” according to the Hansard report on the announcement in the Commons.

Finally by October 1972, a full codified, linked daytime schedule was running on ITV, who from the spring of 1972 used the lifting of the restrictions to gradually increase their daytime output month by month, leading up to the Monday 16th October 1972 relaunch.

Even the financial trodden BBC offered a near linked daytime service, with the launch of Pebble Mill at One for example.

Well said Arthur! I agree about Han Cooper’s remarkable contribution to TBS!!
Kif Bowden-Smith. Founder. TBS.

Maybe I could borrow H E Cooper’s time machine and, after I have done that, go, armed with a video recorder and some converter device that would convert the old 405-line signals to 625-line ones, then record several days of telly from when it first started to now, then get that bloke who has spent a lifetime colouring in Jon Pertwee Doctor Who episodes and Dad’s Army episodes that were made in colour, but the colour was lost, and record stuff that, originally, was never recorded – that way, there’s a record of what happened – all those plays and one-off dramas believed lost or wiped are now not only found, due to a time machine c/o H E Cooper, the time travelling exploits of Arthur Leslie Vasey and that bloke with the VidFIRE machine – are now available in full colour – not remounted with modern actors, not animated, not shown as a combination of Tele-Snaps, existing footage of the original episode and animation or puppets – might seem strange to people who saw it first time round – maybe even record the news, both local and national and give it all to Transdiffusion, so it can be told more accurately!

If only I could!

I’m afraid you need to travel back to 1969 and take that up with the typesetters of the original report.

The new ATV was an amalgamation of its previous Midland and London operations.
From London:
The ‘startup’ changed to the London arrangement – The Midlands had always used the ‘distorted’ ‘Associated Television Ltd’ zoom (with the words missed off from 1966), with the announcer giving his name as part of the Authority Announcement at the end of the music (at 4:45pm) – very friendly!.
On Monday 29th July 1968, the Authority Announcement moved to follow the tone at the start of the music (now devoid of the announcer’s name and ‘Monday to Friday’, but gaining channel’6’) Predictably, the ‘ATV MIDLANDS’ zoom now appeared with the region name zooming in synchronised with the 3 bongs, and then switching to the clock (on most days).

From the autumn, the ATV/ITC film series were moved from weekdays to weekends – e.g. ‘The Saint’ to 7:25pm on Sundays, and ‘Joe 90’ on Sunday afternoons. (Interestingly, LWT was not averse to taking these, although Yorkshire often didn’t or moved them to off peak times.)

‘Star Soccer’ (with generic ‘ATV PRESENTS’ symbol at the start) with Hugh Johns replaced ABC’s ‘World of Soccer’ with Barry Davies – now with Midlands teams each week. – ABC had understandably given priority to the big northern teams.

‘Golden Shot’ was also famously moved to Aston – remember Anne Aston?

From the Midlands:
Regional programmes continued from Tinghar and Tucker, through the regional news to Crossroads, and also some late evening programmes. – This left the evening clear for entertainment, of course.

The identity including the ATV MIDLANDS zoom. – The announcer always added ’THE’ before ‘Midlands’. The clock continued to be in the bottom half of the ATV symbol. (London had top half.)

Its 3 announcers of Mike Prince (who opened up on the 29th), Pat Astley, and Joan Palmer continued and worked weekends as well (with only the occasional ‘relief’).

Oddity:
On 29th July, the ITA changed the test card and Picasso to carrying the company names (except London on the 30th – I assume!). I saw this for Yorkshire (on Emley Moor) and Anglia (on Sandy Heath).
However, for Lichfield, the test card continued as ‘ITA Lichfield Ch8.Membury Ch12’, and the Picasso stayed as ‘ITA MIDLANDS’ – well into 1969!!! One Saturday, there was ‘ITA ATV Network’ on the test card, but by Monday all wording was removed from it. It took a month or so for ‘ITA ATV’ to appear on both, and so it stayed.
Any ideas?