I read last week that there are 34,700 people in the UK with a licence for black and white televisions. For younger readers, yes, there is such a thing as a television which shows black and white pictures only. Okay, there are 25 million colour licence holders. And this begs the question - why are there a number of people that would fill Hearts Tynecastle Stadium twice over still watching in monochrome?
Now I don't want this to turn into a 'when I was a lad' rant. But, when I was a lad...growing up in the early 1970s we had - as most people did then - a black and white television. In fact it was a portable television and there were three channels - BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. But given the reception where we lived we could not receive BBC2. So it was BBC1 and ITV - far removed from the multiple channel choice we have now in the digital age. The choice in 1970 was take it or leave it.
If truth be told we didn't know any different so it wasn't a big deal. True, when the football was on I did wish I could see the mighty Heart of Midlothian resplendent in maroon and white rather than black with white cuffs. And watching the snooker programme that was Pot Black - when we eventually did receive BBC2 - was a challenge. But we knew nothing else and thirty plus years ago the BBC showed a spinning globe as its ident and closed down just before midnight to the strains of God Save the Queen (when I lived in Aberdeen I was impressed by the fact that commercial station Grampian TV at least showed grainy old film of the Queen on a horse before closing for the night)
The first time I watched colour television seriously - as opposed to gaping through the window of Radio Rentals (ask your Mum and Dad, younger readers) - was when I went round to one of my pals on a Saturday afternoon in May 1975 to watch the England-Scotland football game live from Wembley. My pal's Dad was an archetypal 1970s husband - under the thumb - and had been dragged out to do the weekly shop by his wife when the Scotland game was on his newly acquired colour telly. So, at the tender age of 13 I combined my first experience of colour television with my first experience of alcohol. A can of Tennents Lager was consumed and I soon felt like Scotland's hapless goalkeeper Stewart Kennedy - all over the place. Scotland lost 5-1 and I wondered if this was some kind of punishment. But watching television was never going to be the same again and three years later my dear mother succumbed to my nagging and rented a colour television. The cost of the rental and the huge increase in the fee for the television licence nearly bankrupt her but there was no going back.
So, it's somewhat reassuring to hear that there are still thousands of people who remain faithful to their black and white set. I suspect there may be a number of the 34,700 who have a colour set but think that buying a licence for a black and white one will save them money. It will until the authorities catch up with them. But I'm of the old school who harks back to the 1970s as the golden age of television. In 2008 we have hundreds of channels and very little worth watching on any of them. In 1978 there were just three channels but there seemed to be so much more quality to watch.
Especially if you had one of those new fangled colour tellies....!
2 comments:
So we weren't the only family without a good TV reception then?! When I lived in the Grampians our TV was more like a radio with a fuzzy picture attached. Sound was usually good but the picture was often awful. Colour TV with a clear picture was an absolute treat when we visited family in Edinburgh!
Ah the joys of Pot Black on a black and white television. That was when snooker commentary was in its heyday. It was a major event in our house when we finally got a black and white telly in the early 70s.
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