An 'endcap' is the caption displayed
at the end of a programme to inform the viewer of the
maker of the programme and usually its year of
production / transmission.
ATV used some different styles, and
here come some of them, hopefully in chronological
order, now:
Here's an ATV Outside Broadcast
slide, used for programmes such as Sunday Night at the London
Palladium. |
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This is from an episode of Sunday Night at the
London Palladium from 1963.
This is a two-part epic endcap! They showed this
one first...
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....then this one. |
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Bernard Delfont was a famous 1950s/60s impresario,
and as part of the deal allowing his artists to perform, he
got his name on the endcap.
He had closer ties to ATV than this caption gives
away - He was Lew Grade's brother.
Here's another fact: Lew Grade's other brother
Leslie was Michael Grade's father.
(Thanks to Tony Llewellyn)
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The run-of the-mill black-and-white endcap, this
one from 1964. |
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Here's one that at first glance looks the same
as the previous one - but not quite!
The word 'production' is lower down, and this
caption is probably a colour caption that has the word 'colour'
blanked out.
Is this one possibly from the ITV colour strike
of 1970? It came from a Bob Monkhouse fronted Golden Shot.
Compare it with the colour version below.
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The same endcap as above - but
sometimes it was used as a negative. |
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This is an early colour endcap, the same as the
monochrome one except in colour and it says "colour" :-)
There's still no datestamp.
This is available as wallpaper from the ATV
Fun Stuff page.
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ATV were chroma keying endcaps onto the end of programmes from
quite early on, as this endcap from the 1973 programme James
Paul McCartney shows.
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I'm guessing that this endcap is
from some point in 1973, as, like the previous ones, it has no
date on it.
Robert Greenway asks: "I'm sure that, in the seventies
(I think 1973), whilst I was at school, we had an English programme
called You're Telling Me. This ended with the ATV in a
box end cap, but had "An" above it. I wonder if anyone else remembers
this?"
Can anyone verify?
The different shades of blue on these two endcaps
could be a combination of three things:
- A physcially different coloured background;
- Colour balance of the telecine machine;
- The top endcap is from VHS, and in turn probably came from
a format such as N1700, so the different video formats may have
altered the colours.
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This endcap is from 1973. The proportions of the
logo and text are different than in later endcaps, but similar
to the one above.
The text that says, "COPYRIGHT ATV NETWORK..." is in a similar
(could well be the same) font as the "AN ATV COLOUR PRODUCTION"
endcap above, and is bolder than the font used later.
This is the earliest known example of a dated colour endcap.
(Thanks to Steve Yates for this image) |
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6th April 2005
It's indistict here, but this one's from 1974.
Notice how the copyright message is in mixed case rather than
all in capitals. |
Here's a nice black one from 1975.
The endcaps did not change style after this was introduced - although
the colours and backlgrounds did.... |
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They used to do some weird stuff
with the ident occasionally, like this example from a 1978 edition
of music show Revolver.
Revolver was presented by Peter Cook, who
played a dance hall owner who had to hire punk bands to stay open.
Co-presenter was BRMB DJ Les Ross, who had a barbecue and fed
burgers to kids. So-called because the stage revolved.
Arthur Vasey remembers that Revolver went out at
around tea-time, but was moved to a post-watershed slot because
of the content of some of the songs!
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This is your bog-standard ATV endcap, with blue
background and yellow text and graphic.
From 1980.
This is available as wallpaper from the ATV
Fun Stuff page.
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Here's a special endcap used for Tiswas in 1980.
A lovely brown colour!
Whilst we're on the subject of ATV doing strange
things with their endcaps, Andrew Wiseman says "Additionally,
ATV used an animated version of the boxed-symbol endcap where
the top eye would look up and then down before returning to
look at you. The Colour Production/Presentation letters would
then slide in from the sides. I only remember seeing this once
or twice." Can anyone
remember this, or better yet, have a copy?
Robert Greenway adds: "Yes - I remember this.
The top solid part would flip over and over and the stripes
of the bottom half would shoot up and over. I don't think the
ATV symbol ended up in its box though. This would be about 1977
and wasn't used for long."
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This one, from 1981, appears
to have different shades of blue and yellow....
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...than this one. The date at the bottom is 1981.
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This is another chroma-keyed endcap, this time
from 1981. It's come from the end of an episode of Crossroads
when Meg Mortimer leaves on the QE2, the ship pictured at Southampton
harbour.
This episode, being quite important, was bound
to have been played out with the Paul McCartney and Wings' version
of the Crossroads theme!
The superimposed endcaps are quite striking.
(With thanks to David Edwards, Richard Bell
and 'Ed')
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This is a special Christmas endcap, from 1981
- just before Central took over.
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