Industry, ownership, scheduling, regulation and funding in the 1960's.

Industry
Ownership, scheduling, regulation and funding in the 1960's.

The BBC began in 1936
ITV began in 1955 as direct competition to the BBC.

• TV during the mid 1960's only had 3 channels available: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.
• Televisions were small, expensive and only available in black and white.
• Programmes were limited and only available during certain times of the day.  When nothing was being broadcast, the national anthem played.
• Channel surfing didn't exist like it does today- flicking through different channels. 
• BBC had complete monopoly- one company is the only player in the industry, the tv industry. This means that BBC's unique broadcast had complete ownership over the industry and therefore faced zero competition.
• When ITV began , it was the first time products were advertised and quickly grew in popularity.

Funding

How were ITV funded?
ITV were funded by advertisements as well as funding from america and small companies.

What issues did ITV face with there commercial Tv funding? 
The issues ITV faced were sticking to the ITA rules, for example not being able to sponsor programmes, and television advertising was a brand new concept so took a while to become popular, but when it did it became incredibly poplar. 

How did the popularity of the avengers impact its production values?
After the first 3 successful series, the Americans decided to fund the production values, therefore they had high quality film, bigger sets and bigger story lines, bigger casts and a much higher budget.

Regulation

• British television production was protected by the rules of public service broadcasting that limited the proportion of foreign content. This was different to world television who were dominated by American programmes.
• Due to ITV being the 'channel of the moment' it faced no competition for advertisements, which meant the commercial television channel could be highly regulated. Of course the ASA, advertising standards authority, standards and society have changed since then.

ITV opened its channel at 4:20pm with a daytime soap and then showed a range of children's shows, Adult shows then followed this.In 1964, the watershed was introduced at 9pm. This allowed for more adult programming, such as the avengers. ITV shut down at about midnight, by which time i was assumed the audience would be in bed.

What is the watershed?
Watershed was the cut off time for all children and family shows and introduced more adult shows with more adult content, at 9 o'clock.

Why was the watershed introduced in 1960?
Because these shows contained more adult themes and was seen as promiscuous, which was inappropriate for younger children to watch.

How might watershed have impacted the themes and content within the avengers?
It contained more adult themes and violent imagery meaning it would not affect the younger children and there tv time.

Scheduling and figures

• The avengers was scheduled at 9:05pm on Saturday on ITV. This was prime-time. By the fourth series it had attracted over 7 million homes and episodes often appeared in the top of 10 television programmes.
• The invention of remote controls weren't yet created, so viewers had to get up and change the channel not he Tv set, imagine that!

Why did the time slot for The Avengers impact the large viewing figures?
It's on prime-time on a Saturday during the watershed, the kids would be asleep and there would be no work the next morning, swell as that it was on its 4th series and so remained very popular.