ATV Endcaps

Here's an ATV Outside Broadcast slide, used for programmes such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

This is from an episode of Sunday Night at the London Palladium from 1963.

This is a two-part epic endcap! They showed the first one (top), then this second one (bottom).

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)

The run-of the-mill black-and-white endcap, this one from 1964.

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.

The same endcap as above - but sometimes it was used as a negative.

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.

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.

I'm guessing the first endcap (top) 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 (top and bottom) could be a combination of three things:

1. A physcially different coloured background;
2. Colour balance of the telecine machine;
3. 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.

The bottom 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 the image)

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....

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!

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.

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?

Here are two 1981 endcaps. The first (top) appears to have different shades of blue and yellow compared to the second one (bottom). The date at the bottom is 1981.

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')

This is a special Christmas endcap, from 1981 - just before Central took over.

On to 'presentation' slides now. Presentation slides were used when the preceding programme was a film or an import.

This one is from 1964.

This is a black and white presentation slide from the colour era.

Andrew Wiseman confirms that this particular one was used at the end of black and white films.

I think they also had a yellow-on-blue one as well (which said Colour Presentation).