Who can forget the TV viewing on a Saturday morning when they were kids. To most this was what the week was made for. A long week at school with very early mornings, but come Saturday morning we were up at the crack of dawn to tune into the morning's TV shows that was popular at the time.
This was essential viewing as the "magazine" format ticked all the boxes - live music, interviews, competitions, cartoons plus much more.
However it all started in 1976, when the BBC launched SWAP SHOP. Originally planned for six shows, it aired for 6 years!!! It paved the way for other shows (and channels) to revamp the trusted format and make it their own. Making their hosts (Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin, John Craven & Maggie Philbin) household names, whilst introducing new stars in the making from the World of TV, film and music.
After SWAP SHOP finished the BBC upgraded the show and SATURDAY SUPERSTORE was born. The format was the same, but the BBC altered the format slightly by dropping the SWAPPING element.
Again this show was a huge success for the BBC with millions of school children tuning in each week. The BBC had a wining formula and continued to dominate the Saturday morning TV slot.
During the last season of SATURDAY SUPERSTORE a new host was introduced, Phillip Schofield. It was during this season that the BBC decided to revamp the format of the show and in 1987 introduced GOING LIVE! The show ran for 176 programmes and ended in 1993.
Not to be outdone by the BBC, ITV (and it's regional channels) also had a number of Saturday morning TV shows that proved as popular.
ITV's most popular show was TISWAS. The show was first shown in the 70s on a variety of channels before finding it's home on ITV. The show ended in 1982, but is still consider to be a classic and many have called for the show to re-introduced to the TV screens.
However, ITV came up with other formats for the Saturday morning viewing. The channel introduced GET FRESH!, NUMBER 73, TX : READY FOR TRANSMISSION to name a few. ITV were considered to be more OTT shows that were thinking outside of the box.
Whatever show or channel you supported, we as "kids" of the 80s had some great shows to view on a Saturday morning. We were very lucky and also spoilt for choice (considering we were limited to 4 channels). Look out for further blog entries on the individual shows in the future!
Was saddened to hear the news about the recent passing of Ian McNaught-Davis this week and decided to do a write up on him (as I was going to feature the BBC Micro Computer in a future feature).
As a child who was brought in the 80s and the introduction of "modern technology" and computing into the family home, I was somewhat of a geek and was fascinated with Computers (in fact I spent most of my adult life within an IT profession). The BBC was very important to me, as we used them in school and I was nominated the IT prefect in my primary school (I had to go in early to set up the computers and load the daily programs).
My father introduced me to the show, The Computer Programme, as he was starting to use computers in the workplace and found the programme to be very interesting and well presented.
However, whilst I recall watching this programme, I didn't have enough detail for this entry. Therefore thanks to the internet and google (how times have changed), I found this great article about Ian and the programme and I cannot think of a better way to do a write up. The article was written by Rory Cellan-Jones.
Please enjoy!
The article can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26278902, but I have cut and pasted the text below...
How do you make the subject of computing accessible to a wide audience?
A very topical question, with arguments raging about the Year of Code. But maybe we need to go back and look at the work of a man who was a brilliant communicator about computers, without ever talking down to his audience.
I'm talking about Ian McNaught-Davis, the computing expert, broadcaster, and mountaineer whose death was announced this week. For many who first got to grips with computers in the 1980s it was the BBC's The Computer Programme which was the inspiration.
McNaught-Davis, or "Mac", as he was known, was the co-presenter of the programme which was part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project. At its heart was the specially commissioned BBC Micro, one of the most successful and influential computers Britain has produced.
Week by week, Mac and fellow presenter Chris Serle took viewers through the basics of computing, presenting more and more complex topics in an entertaining and accessible manner. It is hard to remember now, but in 1982 a computer was for many a large, expensive and frightening machine kept in a laboratory, and only to be approached by someone wearing a white coat.
So The Computer Programme and the BBC Micro arrived at the dawn of the personal computing era. They helped create a generation of bedroom programmers who went on to work in the IT industry - and some of them have been in touch with me this week via Twitter to express their gratitude to Ian McNaught-Davis.
The Computer Programme, with Ian McNaught-Davis and Chris Serle (left)
"He gave a generation of fledging programmers a credible programme and voice at a time when video games were the main headline. No exaggeration to say he was instrumental in me studying a computer science degree, working start-ups and now to teaching kids," says Dan Bridge.
Russell Davis tweets, "Although i'd been into computers before it was prog & Mac... that got me into it as a career & also into the hacker culture."
And David Clifford writes to me at length to express his gratitude to The Computer Programme and its star. He tells me he was a "spotty geeky teenager" in the 1980s, but one who was delighted at last to find some television aimed at him.
"There was this guy with funny hair and big glasses talking about stuff that I liked, information that was targeted at me, on topics that interested me and subjects I was learning about and could understand. This was unusual in the days when there were only three channels on TV and most of the output was directed at others - sport, variety, drama etc. Here was something for me and Ian McNaught-Davis will always be that man who brought it to me."
But it is to McNaught-Davis's co-presenter that I turn for an intimate portrait of the man. "He had immense charm and bonhomie," says Chris Serle, recalling their first meeting. "A big bloke, and a great big grin and an embracing smile all over his face. You just knew immediately you were going to be in comfortable company.
Mac, he explained, learned his broadcasting skills as a mountaineer: "What made him ideal for this work was that he had done pioneering work as an outside broadcast commentator on his climbs."
His career in computing had included working for a US firm selling space on mainframe computers. "But even he was fishing around when it came to this new phenomenon which had been brought about by the invention of the microchip and the discovery that you could make computers much smaller, you could get a whole computer on a desk."
Chris Serle admits that he himself was "in the enviable position of knowing absolutely nothing" and so was entitled to ask "all the stupid questions on behalf of our audience". Then Mac would work his magic:
"He did have this extraordinary gift for putting dense material into easily understood terms. He could always find a little analogy or twist of language to make you understand things that in those days were completely alien to people... Nobody knew about inputs and outputs, and binary code. This was all amazingly radically new."
Nowadays, of course, most of us are carrying tiny computers with many times the processing power of the BBC Micro - they are called smartphones. But do we have any better understanding of computing than the audiences who switched on to watch Ian McNaught-Davis in the 1980s? I somehow doubt it.
