Thursday 27 July 2017

On this Day - Children TV from the Past

Digging about the internet earlier, I came across an interesting article about kids and their summer holidays and TV, which got me thinking and set me on a blog task for the day.

What as a 10-year-old, would I be watching during my summer holidays back in 1970 on this day?

Well on this day there was no provision for us kids on our six week summer holidays unless you count ‘Playschool’ on BBC2 at 11 o clock and Watch with Mother on BBC1 at 1:30pm my favourite was ‘Tales of the Riverbank’ with Hammy and his crew. So we had to go out and play and enjoy the outside unlike the kids today who can sit in front of the square box all day.


There were only three channels! Not much competition and we only got about 1hour 30minutes of viewing time dedicated to kids from around 4:30pm to 6pm on each of BBC1 and ITV. My research as shown on ITV the schedule would kick off at 4:35pm with a couple of cartoons and follow with a dose of ‘Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons’ were Spectrum and Scarlet would battle it out to foil the Mysterons and Captain Black in their attempts of world domination.


Over the other side on BBC1 the offering was ‘Playschool’ and ‘Jackanory’ where a TV star of the day would read a story then at 4:55pm, ‘Wacky Races’ where my favourites were The Ant Hill Mob but one thing for sure was Dick Dastardly and Muttley never won but I liked Muttley, who didn’t. According to the Radio Time archives, next up was ‘Blue Peter flies the World’ a repeat of last year’s summer exhibitions followed by an Abbott and Costello cartoon before the news.

Over on ITV ‘Flipper’ was up against the ‘Wacky Races’ and then a rarity a show on ITV I liked ‘How’. What was the TV programme ‘How’ all about you may ask. It was an educational children's television science programme it was Tomorrows World for kids. Topics commonly covered included science, history, mathematics, and simple puzzles. The formula proved so successful that it was soon broadcast to the whole ITV network and given two slots per week.

Each episode began with the presenters all raising one hand and saying "How" simultaneously (mimicking the stereotypical Native American greeting).

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