Colour Television

History
The development of Colour Television went hand-in-hand with the development of television itself with ideas for such technology being proposed as far back as the late Nineteenth Century. John Logie Baird demonstrated the first colour transmission in 1928 with the first regular broadcasts (using a different system to Baird’s) being made by CBS in the USA in 1950. The colour system used in that country to this day (NTSC) was launched by both NBC and CBS in 1953 and the amount of colour programming increased until 1968 when full colour programming was the norm.

United Kingdom
In Europe, the BBC was the first to launch a partial colour service (aside from test transmissions) on Saturday 1st July 1967 with coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament on BBC2. Initially only one or two hours a night of colour programmes were transmitted. This was due to the high cost of studio and transmitter conversions from the old 405-line VHF system (which BBC1 and all the ITV companies used) to the 625-line PAL UHF system which the British Government had decided would be the UK standard as it was technically superior to the NTSC system and others proposed to them. BBC2 began a full colour service on 2nd December 1967 as the number of colour studios at the corporation began to increase. The ITV companies were equally keen to move into colour seeing an opportunity for increased advertisement and programme sales revenue and the Postmaster General agreed in May 1969 that BBC1 and ITV could launch their colour service on Saturday 15th November 1969. All the ITV companies faced the high costs of conversion to colour (which eventually ran into several million pounds) and this factor alone meant that the launch of colour across the country was staggered.

Launch dates of ITV in colour
The table below details the launch of colour in each of the ITV regions which then existed and the first episode of Coronation Street to be broadcast in colour in those regions. (It should be noted that the date for each region is the date that the first transmitter in that region was switched on. Within a region, there could be a large gap of time between the first and last transmitter or relay station being switched over to colour).


 * Note: Thames Television held the weekday franchise for London and London Weekend Television held the franchise for programming in the region from Friday evening to Sunday night. It was therefore this latter company that launched the full colour service there on 15th November. Due to the days of the week that London Weekend broadcast, the first episode of Coronation Street that they transmitted was Episode 2981 on 20th October 1989.

It should also be noted that ownership of colour television sets in the UK was not widespread in the late 1960s or early 1970s. JICTAR (who handled viewing figure collation for ITV) estimated that on 1st July 1969 there were just 155,000 sets, rising to 183,000 by 1st Octover. They expected 235,000 sets by the end of 1969 which equates to just over 1% of homes. Half a million sets were estimated to be in existance by end June 1970 but by October 1971 still only 6.1% of homes with ITV had colour sets. It was 1976 before ownership of colour sets exceeded black and white sets (some sources say 1977) but whatever the date it is true to say that the majority of viewers in the 1970s saw the majority of Coronation Street episodes in black and white.

Coronation Street in colour
There is some confusion surrounding the start of Coronation Street in colour. Various sources have stated that Executive Producer H.V. Kershaw intended Episode 923 to be the first episode made in colour but it was also always intended for that episode to be made on film on location and also to be transmitted on 29th October 1969 – several weeks before the launch of the colour service. In the end colour film stock supposedly couldn’t be found for the cameras (despite the fact that Granada had already been in colour production for other programmes for several months) and so normal black and white stock was used. The following episode, videotaped in studio, was in colour (but with the credits and film inserts in black and white) and shows notable differences in scenery (particularly the shades used on walls of the Rovers Return Inn set and character make-up) from episodes made and shown just a few weeks later. It is therefore probable that several episodes were videotaped in colour – and transmitted before 15th November in black and white – to allow designers and technicians to see how sets and costumes appeared when recorded in colour.

Television cameras for many years were erratic pieces of equipment and skilled hands were needed to ensure that the picture that the viewer saw was of a suitably high standard. Even in black and white certain shades and hues needed to be avoided if the picture was to be stable. Normal white shades would cause a flare on black and white television and these were avoided by set, make-up and costume designers (for instance, the "white" coats worn by the doctors in Emergency Ward Ten were in fact yellow). Different problems faced television production staff when colour started, especially with the older valve cameras and extra recording time was necessary to re-set cameras which became misaligned during shooting. For this reason Coronation Street, which had previously been in studio just on the Friday of each week was now recorded on both Thursday and Friday with videotape editing, previously a rarity, becoming the norm.

ITV Colour Strike
With one notable exception Coronation Street has remained in colour since 1969. The exception is the period of the ITV Colour Strike which came about because of a dispute between the ACTT union and the ITV companies over a pay rise for technical staff working in colour. It had previously been agreed between the two sides that if no agreement had been reached by the time that the colour service was one year old then staff would revert to working in black and white (and this included not just the recording but the transmission, even of colour material). On Friday 13th November 1970 ITV returned to being broadcast in black and white and the dispute was only called off on Monday 2nd February 1971 although it took until 8th February for colour transmissions to resume again and even then material recorded in black and white during the dispute would have to be transmitted in that format afterwards.