This week, the National Library of Scotland will celebrate 100 years of Scottish broadcasting with an event in the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, entitled
Broadcast conversations: The evolution of Scottish news.
A glance through the week's TV schedules will confirm the past is always with us. Documentaries, heavily dependent on library footage, have been a mainstay of the broadcasters' output for more than half a century. Beginning with the arrival of the self-serving duopoly – BBC and ITV – which dominated domestic TV screens for much of the latter half of the last century, people were slow to recogise the importance of everyday events to future generations of programme makers.
In its hey-day, ITV was represented by 14 separate companies, located in major centres of population across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; plus the Channel Islands. News, nationally, was the responsibility of Independent Television News (ITN), which launched at 10pm on Thursday 22 September 1955 and caused an early sensation with its robust, personality-based presentation, so different from the normally staid BBC.
Editorially independent of the franchise holders (who owned it) ITN was wholly mandated by the authority and operated from transmission slots no-one dare touch. Local news, on the other hand, required strong company support to flourish, as well as wide public interest.
The original ITV franchises had been granted for a limited period and, as the incumbents were never allowed to forget, subject to change: during the network's early years, there were times when the spectre of 'franchise-renewal time' could reduce hardened management types to jelly. Sir Robert Fraser, the formidable Australian, who created the network and remained in charge until 1970, was a former journalist, and known to be strongly in favour of local news.
Apart from winning 'brownie points' from the ever-watchful DG, companies quickly discovered that programmes made with local audiences in mind were popular with JICTAR (the Joint Industry Committee for Television Audience Research) which measured viewer numbers. Still, many people in high places were apparenty surprised to find that a wide and varied audience outside London responded favourably to the idea of events far from the capital attracting serious attention on television.
STV was among the first of the new ITV companies to follow this trend. With Esmond Wright occupying the presenter's chair,
Here and Now began transmission, in a half-hour slot, starting at 6.40pm on Friday 26 September 1958. I joined the programme as a reporter-interviewer in 1962. STV publicity promised 'a new and exciting report of happenings in Scotland, with the accent always on the significant, the unusual and the future'.
Following a change of presenters, it moved briskly to two nights a week, followed by three, before becoming what the company claimed was 'the first continuous nightly news magazine on British television'.
Hosted by Bill Tennant, and allocated the coveted six o'clock slot, it continued for most of the following decade, and, in a straight fight with the BBC, was rarely out of the top 10 in JICTAR ratings; filming interviews with 'the famous and the soon-to-be-famous' as well as 'stories and adventures from the wide open spaces of the Highlands and Lowlands'.
John Grierson (credited with coining the word 'documentary') was a regular visitor to the station's Cowcaddens headquarters during most of that time. His programme
It's a Wonderful World (which, for quality and impact, wouldn't be out of place in the present-day schedules) provided STV with a much-prized place on the wider ITV network.
Grierson believed that everything filmed by programmes such as
Here and Now would be used by future generations on programmes not much different from his own. Except, in accordance with the times, film content was normally obtained, edited and transmitted using irreplaceable 16mm negative stock in its original form. Afterwards, along with any trims which might exist, it was consigned to the programme library where it could be openly plundered to provide visuals for other programmes made at a later date; until, in an extreme case, for all practical purposes, the original material ceased to exist.
There was clearly an urgent need for change, assisted in 1976 with the arrival of Janet McBain at the newly-established Scottish Film Archive; introduced as part of the Labour Government's Job Creation Scheme. Some 30 years later, in 2006, McBain's pioneering work was rewarded with a Scottish BAFTA for Outstanding Achievement in Film. Nowadays what she helped to create is part of the National Library of Scotland and known as the Moving Image Archive.
Many of today's programme makers, whose experience doesn't extend beyond the heady comfort of the digital age, will find it difficult to connect with a distant television age. All anyone can ask of them is this: Be careful of your heritage.
You need to preserve a lasting record of the way people live now. Who knows, future generations might be forever grateful.
Russell Galbraith was Head of News, Current Affairs and Sport at Scottish Television from 1972 to 1982. He has been a working journalist for more than 70 years
