ITV in Wales through the Decades

ITV in Wales through the Decades

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By Hywel Wiliam and Tim Hartley,
Saturday, 28th November 2015
National Screen and Sound Archive, Aberystwyth, 20 November 2015.

"You won't receive a TV signal in Aberystwyth," claimed a local electrical retailer in the late 1950s.  But he was proved wrong by a physics lecturer, a story which inspired David Lloyd (above), who was born in Aberystwyth, to enter the industry in the early 60s.  David’s first break in TV was as an Assistant Floor Manager with the BBC in Cardiff.  He later moved to Anglia Television and then Grampian, before eventually becoming a Director and Head of Features at HTV, now ITV Cymru Wales.

During his presentation, David showed clips from the ITV archive spanning fifty seven years of independent television in Wales.  The films, which are now kept at the National Library of Wales, included programmes from all the former ITV companies: WWN, TWW and HTV Wales.  More recently, archive programming from the West of England has been added to the collection.

RTS members and local buffs watched some of the greats of commercial television in Wales: opera singer Sir Geraint Evans, famous for his Falstaff, and documentaries by Wynford Vaughan Thomas, as well as John Morgan’s Valley Dreams of Glory, which profiled the first superstar rugby player, Barry John.  HTV Wales' Welsh language programmes were also shown, including Tweli Griffiths' interview with Colonel Gaddafi on Y Byd ar Bedwar, the long running current affairs series on S4C.  There was a massive OB for the Papal visit to Wales in 1982, and a young Catherine Zeta Jones was also seen treading the boards in West End Girls, a documentary produced by Alan Rustad.

David Lloyd has recently produced a book about his television career, "Start The Clock and Cue The Band", A Life in Television.

Browse a selection of clips from the archive.
 

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