Colour revolution which left Shropshire TV viewers cold
Fifty years ago this month the first colour television licences were introduced in Britain – and Shropshire didn't care.
Nor did hardly anybody else. The reason was simple. Nobody had colour television sets because they cost the earth and, in any event, there were hardly any colour programmes to watch even if you were in an area which could get a colour signal.
Nobody knew just how big a deal colour TV was going to be. No idea then how high there would eventually be a scramble for people to get their colour sets ahead of big events like royal weddings or World Cups. Nor how high definition would turn programmes like the Blue Planet into a national sensation.
Back in 1968 the take-up of colour sets – and many people would rent them rather than buy – was painfully slow. People stuck with their black and white televisions.
So the introduction of the colour television licence on January 1, 1968, was irrelevant for Salopians. Technically it was a £5 "colour supplement" taking the cost to £10, double the price of the black and white licence.
As an indication of how rare colour televisions were at the time, when a 25 inch colour set was stolen from a dealer in Lanesfield, Wolverhampton, that month, the boss Alan Hodgetts commented: "I don't suppose there are more than a dozen or so of these sets in private houses in the West Midlands.
"There are only a few dealers who have got them - this set will be red hot."
The price of this stolen set was put at around £315, which was a fortune (equivalent to perhaps £5,000 today) compared to the £80 price put on the black and white sets stolen in the same raid.
BBC 2 was the only channel broadcasting in colour, having launched its service with the Wimbledon tennis championships the previous July. The two remaining channels, BBC 1 and ITV, launched their colour service on November 15, 1969.
Shropshire didn't care much about that, either. As the big day approached, dealers in the county reported that only a small percentage of their customers had either bought or rented colour sets. In Wellington, they said there was only marginal interest in colour sets. One said that reception was patchy, and in some parts the colour was poor.
Throughout the British Isles, there were by this time somewhere between 130,000 and 160,000 colour sets compared to an estimated 8.5 million black and white sets.
In a city as large as Birmingham, only 4,176 households had colour television licences. In Wolverhampton there were 843, and in Kidderminster, 216.
The transmitter serving Shropshire was at Sutton Coldfield - the Wrekin transmitter did not become operational until December 5, 1975.
The cheapest colour set by this time was a 19 inch Sony costing £208 19s, far beyond the price range of most folk. Renting a set was about 25 shillings a week.
The only weekly colour programme being produced by the BBC Midlands team – albeit shown nationally on BBC 2 – was Gardeners' World, compered by Shropshire's own Percy Thrower.
For virtually everybody there eventually came that magic moment of having their first colour television. For most it came in the 1970s, because it was not until 1976 that colour television sets outnumbered black and white sets.
Colour took a long time to catch on, mainly due to the expense which made it a luxury only available to the wealthy.
But as costs came down, and ordinary viewers at last got to enjoy the vivid experience and the realism colour offered, there was no going back.
