Template:60Years 1964

 ~ 1964 ~ Margaret Morris's year-long term as producer ended with Episode 356 on 11th May, with Coronation Street's original producer Stuart Latham returning for a three-week stint between February and March. Morris's replacement was 29-year-old ex-journalist Tim Aspinall. Though only in charge of the programme for four months, Aspinall made massive cast changes, terminating the contracts of five actors in total. The first to leave was Lynne Carol, whose character Martha Longhurst died of heart attack in the Rovers snug in Aspinall's inaugural episode. One of the trio of pensioners who inhabited the snug along with Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell, Martha was extremely popular with viewers, and Carol's sacking went down particularly badly with the cast; Violet Carson threatened to resign, changing her mind only after Carol persuaded her to stay, and when the episode was being recorded Peter Adamson hesitated before delivering Len Fairclough's line, "she's dead", so that his words could easily be cut. The killing of Martha has since been heavily criticised, with H.V. Kershaw describing it as one of the worst decisions in Coronation Street history. Aspinall's purge reduced Coronation Street to a main cast of 15 actors. For the next few years, due to a tight casting budget the programme featured fewer main characters than before.  ''To celebrate 60 years of Coronation Street on television, we're going through the programme's entire history a year at a time. The full version of this article can be found here. Check back on 5th February for 1965!''