It is 70 years since the launch of ITV. It began as a series of regional companies and roll out was staged across the UK.
The first broadcasts were on 22nd September 1955. The BBC’s The Archers (then on the Home programme, RP pronunciation on request) staged a dramatic episode where Grace Archer was killed in a stables fire. 20 million listeners tuned in. The Archers is still broadcast with an audience of 4-5m.
Until that day the only TV station available was the BBC. BBC2 and colour came in 1965. Before the launch of ITV the majority of licences were for radio only (no radio only licence is required in 2025) but that situation rapidly changed.
The above statistics are from Asa Briggs History of the BBC, quoted in Peter Hennessy’s, Having It so good, Britain in the Fifties.
Hennessey quoting the cultural historian Richard Hoggart notes that early ITV shows like Hughie Green’s Double Your Money (prize £1,000) promoted TV as entertainment over other more serious educational and political possibilities.
It was as Hennessey notes the start of the consumer society (ITV of course had advertising) and with it the first of many reassessments of what British people were after Labour lost the 1959 election followed by the Penguin Special, Must Labour Lose (Mark Abrams & Richard Rose, 1960)
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