Chronicle

Television

The first public television broadcast took place on the 26th August, 1936. This service was only available to people living in the London area, and was interrupted by the outbreak of the 1939-45 war. People in Caerphilly had to wait until after the war before they could receive the television service.

'BBC Wales' television debuted on 1 February 1964 to much fanfare: "Wales gets its very own TV service in 1964!" Before 1964, the BBC had no dedicated television production centre in Wales, although television was broadcast there.

Television Wales and the West (TWW) was the independent television channel for South Wales and the West Country, and started transmissions on January 14, 1958. In January 1964, TWW was required to take over the franchise of its neighbour, Teledu Cymru - Wales (West and North) (WWN), when that company became the only ITV company to ever fail financially.

Although TWW did not produce many programmes for the ITV network, its local programmes were well-regarded, so it came as a great shock when TWW lost its franchise in the 1967 franchise review, in favour of the Harlech Consortium. TWW gave up it’s franchise early, so following the intervention of the ITA, a temporary service was set up - Independent Television Service for Wales and the West, broadcasting from the old TWW Pontcanna studios in Cardiff and staffed by ex-TWW staff until Harlech (soon renamed "HTV") was ready to take over its franchise, on 20 May 1968.

Since 28 October 2002, the 'ITV1 Wales' logo has been shown before all independent programmes. ITV1 Wales continued to have its own team of announcers until 16 January 2006, when the English ITV1 announcer team handled all broadcasts. Nevertheless, the channel continues to be visually identified as 'ITV1 Wales'.

The HTV name has not disappeared completely. It continues to be seen on programmes made for S4C. Some off-air branding also remains HTV. Initially, the HTV name was also kept for news programming, but this was dropped in favour of ITV on 2 February 2004.

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