The ShadowMusic Web Community

When checking out some Google returns on the history of UK broadcasting (occasioned by another thread here which mentioned Sir Arthur Bliss), I came across this URL:

http://www.testcardcircle.org.uk/ITVDISCO3.HTML#one

The Test Card Circle (a group I've known about for about twenty years) is as anorakish about the history of television test cards and the music played out with them as we are about The Shadows - and more power to their elbows!

I was particularly drawn to their list(s) of commercial LPs played out over the test card during the 1960s. A half-forgotten memory reminded me that I often heard The Shadows during the ITA's test-card transmissions on weekday afternoons the summer of 1964 (when I had just acquired my first reel-to-reel tape-recorder...). And sure enough, there is "The Shadows' Greatest Hits - Columbia 33SX 1522" listed as having been played (effectively five times a week, both sides) between March and September 1964.

Where do people get this data from?

JN

JimN wrote:Where do people get this data from?

JN

Hi Jim

That's easy - they hang on to things. A quick look in my cellar and here's the script for All Your Own (April 8th 1956) when the 'Maths Puppet Show' devised by my class at school was invited to Lime Grove Studio E to demonstrate our early attempt to interest children in maths by introducing a showbiz element! The script (in foolscap, of course, of a yellow ochre shade) has the creases where I had obviously folded it in four to get it into my blazer pocket for the journey home on the tube.

Incidentally, for those who remember Cy Grant (who died recently), the script includes the transmission schedule for Children's Television, which started with Cy at 5.01, followed at 5.10 by Children's International Newsreel and then All Your Own from 5.20 until 6.00.

You'd be amazed what people hang on to!

Ray