History of Regional Television in the South West

Westward Television beamed its first images into the south west of England on 29 April 1961 as part of the new national commercial television service. As a result over half a million new homes prepared to enjoy commercial television for the first time. After a shaky start, television was now proving to be the future of leisure in the post-war world. At last, the population of the south west would be able to receive an second channel, an alternative to the BBC.

The new channel was the latest contractor to become part of Independent Television, commonly known as ITV. The commercially funded ITV had been created by the Conservative government in 1955, and very reluctantly so. The new medium was not at the forefront of most politician’s minds in the immediate post war years. Many other issues were deservedly attracting the attention of the Great and Good. Regardless of this, radio was still seen as the most important medium in terms of audience reach. It had also been well used within the Second World War, generally rallying the country’s morale, and carrying important speeches and messages from those at the top. However, the success of the televisation of Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953 had vastly increased television’s audience, and it was at last beginning to look as if the medium might have a successful future as more than an expensive version of radio with pictures.

Little of this concerned most politicians, but the position of the existing state broadcaster, the BBC, did provide much irritation particularly amongst the ranks of the backbench MP. For the last thirty years, the BBC had held a much-protected monopoly on broadcasting in Britain. The Corporation had been created in the mid-twenties as a private concern (the “British Broadcasting Company”) and had been designed to boost sales within the fledgling radio set market. The government was persuaded to take the company into its own hands in 1926, and it had taken on radio’s younger sibling in 1936, providing the world with its first regular high definition television service.

The service had been built on strict values of education and intellectual expansion. As a result, the Corporation was seen by many as an arrogant monolith which had failed to move with the times and was determined to give viewers, and listeners for that matter, programming that the Corporation thought was worthy, rather than necessarily what the audience wanted to see.
The Conservatives were, as a party, naturally sympathetic to competitive industries, and, as a result, equally lacking in sympathy with those they considered to be monopolies. To them, the BBC was staid, over-paternalistic and completely out of touch with post-war Britain. It took the moral high-ground and acted as if it were a law unto itself. The lack of competition could be said to have stilted creativity (although this was debatable), and produced a patronising service created by an elite gentleman’s club. The Conservative Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had a particular dislike of the BBC stemming from the Corporation’s fiercely guarded desire to be independent. Churchill believed that the broadcaster should support the government in difficult times, and was apoplectic at the way the BBC would attempt to block the government from using the airwaves to run overt propaganda.

A pressure group was set up in 1951, mainly composed of backbench Conservative MP’s, and led by a former director of television at the BBC, Norman Collins. Collins had resigned from the Corporation the previous year in protest at what he saw as the minor importance the BBC had been placing on television broadcasting. The group set about mustering public and, particularly, political support for a second channel to break the monopoly of the state-owned broadcaster, as, despite the many pro-competition arguments that could be forwarded, there was also an equivalent distrust within the political world for an all-out commercially funded channel.

The USA, for example, had long since funded their channels using a combination of spot advertising and program sponsorship. From a British perspective, the result was a vulgar concoction of game shows and populist programming, which was always seeking the lowest common denominator in order to get the audience figures that the providers made their money from. It was inevitable that any second channel would have to be funded by some sort of advertising, as it would have been politically unwise to extend the licence fee used to fund the BBC to cover the second service. The question was, how would the quality of British broadcasting be maintained if it was exposed to commercial influences and pressures?

This quandary resulted in the eventual implementation of a typically British compromise. It was decided that a new commercially funded network of television stations would be created. The United Kingdom would be broken up into fourteen regions, and each would be served by at least one contractor. This method ensured that no company was large enough to create huge profits, and was designed to promote competition between regional contractors as well as between contractors in the same area. Note that the original idea was to have more than one independent television company serving each area. The more astute viewer will have realised that this situation never happened, and in the end each regional company ended up with a monopoly within their region. In addition, the new network would be regulated by strict rules designed to minimise Britain’s exposure to lowest denominator programming and to ensure that quality of service was as important to the contractor as profit.

So it can be seen that the regional nature of Independent Television came about as a side effect of the wish to kerb the size and power of each of the new contractors. This accident was to become one of the most important characteristics and selling points of the commercial network for the next thirty-five years.

When the new channel finally debuted in September 1955, it was exclusively to a small area of London. Two contractors, Associated Rediffusion and ATV, had been chosen to share the area, AR broadcasting throughout the week and ATV during the weekends. This splitting of an area into two time zones was again designed to limit the potential profit and impact that a company could make, and was a distinction of the early regional set ups. By the late 1960’s, only London would still be split. Gradually the ITV map expanded to cover the most profitable and populist areas first. Within the first year, the Midlands and the North of England joined London in receiving their fix of Independent Television. Within five years, the vast majority of Britain could receive a regionally based commercial alternative to the BBC. By the end of the 1950’s, however, the South West was still a one channel area.

Regions like the South West and the Channel Islands obviously could not provide the revenue of London and the South East, and this meant that the area was never likely to have been one of the first regions covered. However, by the late fifties, the initial rollout to the big population areas was complete, and the Independent Television Authority (ITV’s regulatory governing body) was attempting to plug the holes in its service. The franchise for the South West, was in reality, the last area to be advertised that was likely to stand on its own two feet, or at least make a fairly significant profit. According to the Daily Express, the franchise represented ‘the last big plum in the present commercial television set-up’. The early years of uncertainty within ITV had passed and been replaced with an almost sure fire guarantee of big profits. So regardless of the size of the area and the franchise, it looked likely that the quantity and quality of the entrants would be extremely high.

The ITA officially issued the invitation to applicants for the South West ITV franchise on the 14th October 1959. Permission to use the two sites designated to house the transmitters, located at Stockland Hill in the east and Caradon Hill in the west, had only been granted in the summer of that year. Applicants were warned that the start up date for the franchise was unlikely to be during 1960, and possibly much later.

The ‘last big plum’ drew no less than twelve new applications, in addition to three from ITV stalwarts, Southern, TWW and Associated Redifusion ( The existing contractors for the South of England, the South of Wales and for London Weekdays). Interviews with the ITA in December of that year allowed the Authority to cut the shortlist down to a final five.

The award of the franchise to Westward Television headed by Peter Cadbury was a unanimous decision, on the understanding that it would co-operate with any Channel Island service that may be advertised in the future.

Westward won due to astute and dedicated planning by its driving force, Peter Cadbury. Born into the family known for its chocolate production, Cadbury had been interested in Independent Television since its inception. His first involvement had been with Tyne Tees, the North East contractor which first aired in January 1959. The Cadbury family was heavily involved in the Daily News which was a shareholder in Tyne Tees and Peter Cadbury was the newspaper’s presence on the board. His interest, however, was already with the yet to be advertised South West franchise, and this is the region he proposed to target for his own company. The ITA prescribed that any involvement with a winning applicant for the South West Region would mean Cadbury having to give up his seat on the Tyne Tees board. Such was his determination to win the south west franchise, that Cadbury resigned from Tyne Tees in January 1959, just five days after the Newcastle based company had gone to air.

Cadbury had done his homework, recruiting the financial support of nearly 200 local dignitaries. It was largely due to the impressive local support that he had gathered that Westward won the contest. By managing to ensure the support of local county councils, union groups and institutions such as the St John Ambulance Brigade, Cadbury had positioned Westward as a truly regional company, with few aspirations of network success, but with a dedication to serving its community. Over the following twenty years, it was to build up a strong regional backing which would characterise its service.

Once the franchise was won, Cadbury and his company were eager to get on-air. As Westward was a commercial station like all the ITV companies, the starting date was crucial for maximising advertising revenue. This was particularly true for a company like Westward, that was totally new and depended wholly on its franchise for survival. For this reason, Cadbury’s preferred starting date was November 1960. This would give the company a reasonable run up to Christmas when advertising interest was at its peak. Cadbury informed the ITA in good time that Westward was ready to go from that date. He was to be bitterly disappointed.

His ambition was thwarted by the Post Office, which at that time which oversaw the communications infrastructure of the ITV network (and were responsible for broadcasting in general). They maintained that the links to the rest of the ITV network could only be supplied by August 1961, although the transmitters themselves would be ready by February of that year. The companies making up ITV were interdependent. No contractor could hope to produce all the programmes it needed to fill its airtime. As a result, it relied on other companies, in particular the original four ITV contractors, to supply it with programs to fill its core schedule. Regional companies, such as Westward, particularly relied on this. With no links to the other companies, only a purely regional schedule could be produced, and the big advertising-friendly ‘network’ programmed would be unavailable. Taking this first defeat on the chin, Cadbury organised his team so that they would be ready to transmit by March 1961. Staff were recruited based on the idea that Westward would be broadcasting by the middle of that month. ABC, the network company that Westward had affiliated itself to, had managed to persuade Cadbury of the advantages of starting in early spring to avoid crashing straight into the natural advertising slump of the summer months. Cadbury’s constant voicing of this opinion led the Postmaster General to concede the possibility of a start date of the first of March. The company worked extremely hard to ensure that the £500,000 purpose-built studios in the centre of Plymouth were completed, a full complement of staff was on standby and the advertising rate cards were available to make sure hat Westward would be ready to broadcast on the 1st March.

It was not to be. For the second time the Post Office let Westward down. Cadbury was told in August 1960 that the March 1st start date had to be postponed until at least late April. The links with the network were still not going to be ready on time. Not surprisingly, Cadbury was considerably annoyed. Late April traditionally saw the start of the annual ratings slump, when viewers tended to take advantage of the longer summer days instead of watching the television set. With the viewers customarily went the advertisers who saw no reason to display their wares to the few people who were left watching. This left Westward starting at the worst time of the year to get the money which it needed to ensure its survival.

Cadbury was still determined to start transmission as soon as possible, and if this was the earliest date possible, then the company would have to work with that. He used the delay to his advantage by suggesting that, if Westward couldn’t start by March, it would be more economically sound for it not to broadcast until September when advertising revenue would naturally pick up. The ITA took the point and in order to make sure that Westward broadcast during the Summer months, allowed the company to defer the first four months of its rental until the licence period ended. Characteristically, Cadbury suggested that a waiver of the fee would be more appropriate, but all the same accepted the concession.

Cadbury decided that, to be successful, Westward would need to be extensively promoted. The BBC had gained a lot of loyalty from its westcountry subjects, which was going to be difficult to drag away. To this end, Cadbury arranged a thirty thousand-pound mobile exhibition extolling the virtues of the new service. This travelled to twenty-three local towns and cities throughout the area, pulled by the veteran locomotive, the ‘City of Truro. This was the first of many examples of Westward seeking to cement links with its local residents.

Westward finally transmitted its first evening of programmes on the 29th April, 1961. No fanfares greeted the new service. In fact, no regional programmes were shown at all until 11pm that night when viewers were invited to take a brief tour around the new Derry’s Cross studios in Plymouth. Peter Cadbury made an impassioned plea to the region’s viewers to “tell us what you like, and what you don’t like; And don’t restrict your comments to what you don’t like”. It was the start of one of the friendliest and most locally focussed television companies in Britain.

Despite the advanced planning made by Cadbury and his staff, Westward’s early years were not plain sailing. Although technically it made a small £0.1 million operating profit in its first year, Westward’s debt had increased to almost double that. These may sound small figures but were significant in a company the size of Westward. This put the company in a tricky position in regard to its shareholders, and made it virtually impossible to award any dividend at all to them.

To improve the financial situation, Westward decided to reduce its workforce, concentrating on its technical staff, which were reduced by a quarter. The rather more militant environment of the sixties was always likely to provoke the unions to call strike action. Inevitably the staff were called out. It was only the ITVA, by managing to locate jobs for the staff at other companies within the network, that avoided a potentially damaging nation-wide strike from occurring.

Symbolised on-screen by a handsomely silver model of the ‘Golden Hind’ (purportedly still kept by Peter Cadbury until his death), Westward’s programming consisted mainly of consumer, gardening and farming shows. The “Golden Hind” was the most famous of Sir Francis Drake’s ships. Drake was born in Plymouth, the city where Westward was based, and had long been associated with the area. Drake’s biggest claim to fame was to allegedly continue with his game of bowls on Plymouth’s Hoe while the Spanish Armada was.

The company survived through two decades, not by producing the best service in the South West, but by appearing to be the least distanced. BBC South West had operated a hands-off policy for many years, with continuity provided by off-screen voices overlaying a simple picture of the BBC clock or globe. Despite many years of BBC regional service, even the most avid viewer would only be able to name one or two of its more high-profile presenters. It was an anonymous service, but one that, nonetheless, was regarded well within its catchment area. In terms of familiarity, Westward was quite the opposite. It reasoned that, for many rural areas in the westcountry, television was treated as an important source of company. What made ITV distinctive was its regionalism, and Westward exploited that to the full. All of its presenters were household names to the locals. Most were more recognisable to Westward’s viewers than the network’s self-styled superstars.

No presenter was more associated with Westward than Kenneth McLeod, affectionately known as ‘Mr Westward’. Ken had been involved at the very start of ITV, working for the first ITV station, Associated Rediffusion based in London. Born of theatrical parents and brought up in Broadstairs, Kent, Ken had always had a yearning to follow his parents on the stage. His childhood was spent watching bands, circus processions and anything that could be called entertainment. His first personal performance was a rendition of ‘Let’s have a Basinful of Briney’ at a children’s talent show, which he won. Shortly after leaving school, Ken was lucky enough to join a quality Repertory group, ‘The White Rose Players’, based in Harrogate. He replaced Brian Rix, now best known for his stage farces, and his years experience stood him well in his later career. Drafted into the army during the last stages of the war, he was invited to apply to become one of the ‘Stars in Battledress’, the Army’s ‘Central Pool of Artists’. While there, Ken was involved in five productions including ‘White Cargo’, a revue called ‘Happy Weekend’ starring Benny Hill and a comedy called ‘Yes and No’.

Although he regularly appeared on the BBC’s television service in the late forties, including a small part in a production of ‘Othello’, he did not largely make a television impact until 1955. In June that year, he was offered a contract with the newly appointed London Weekday ITV contractor, Associated Redifusion, a few months before the station was due to go on air. He very quickly became known as the ‘the golden boy of Redifusion’ and stayed for several years, as well as working for Granada, the Northern England contractor for ITV.

Kenneth had quite a versatile role at Redifusion, hosting programmes ranging from operas to quiz shows, and light entertainment. ITV companies, and their advertisers, were keen to appeal to housewives during the day. Ken found himself anchoring morning shows for Redifusion, which attracted many household names, such as Fanny Craddock and Dickie Henderson, who were keen to exploit the exposure that television gave them, even though the appearance fees were in the region of £12 for a whole morning. The late fifties were adventurous times for commercial television stations, and Ken met many innovators of the medium, including the former BBC presenter, Leslie Mitchell, and Clive Gunnell, who would be later both a friend and colleague at Westward Television.

In 1961, Alan Gibson, one of the original presenters of Westward Diary, suggested that Kenneth would be an ideal anchor for the evening news show. Initially the Diary was shown three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with different anchors all doing a week each. Ken shared the role with Reginald Bosenquet, later to become famous as the face of ITN’s ‘News At Ten’, and Barry Westwood. The presenters each had other work, (Reginald and Ken both still worked for Redifusion at this point), and it was another year before Ken became the permanent presenter of the Diary. Until then, he would make the five and a half hour journey from the South East to Plymouth. Even after he settled in Devon, commuting was a way of life for Ken, due to his remaining commitments to Redifusion.

Apart form a short spell when John Pett took over Westward Diary, Ken presented the programme until Westward lost its franchise in 1981, transferring, initially to a similar position for its successor, TSW.

Ken was a much loved character within the south west, never missing an opportunity to mix with his many fans in any location. Underused by TSW, and totally ignored by Westcountry, he nevertheless continued working after his television retirement, lecturing in his unique way. Ken died on the 31st January 2003, aged 75. His passing seemed to underline the deterioration of ITV and of regional television in general. Who these days would mourn the death of a Westcountry Live anchor? Yet, ironically, Ken’s death was reported on the magazine show, twelve years on from his last TSW appearance on the programme it replaced, Today South West.

Westward Diary was the station’s tea-time magazine and was the most visible part of its output. Usually hosted by Kenneth, it was a strange mix of local news stories and related features. It was strongly focused on the south west, and relied heavily on the strong characters of its reporters.

Every evening's edition concluded with a ‘Picture Postcard’. This was a quiz whereby viewers had to guess the location pictured on screen. The locations were different every night, and a prize was given to the “first card pulled out of the bag”. This simple game was actually a masterstroke, as it gave everybody a chance to say “that’s where I live” every year or so. This may sound naive in the media-centred world we have come to know. However, during the sixties and seventies appearing on television was rare, and television itself was still considered to hold its own air of mystery.

It was Westward who gave a waiting world the angling wisdom of Ted ‘Tight-Lines’ Tuckerman and his astounding woollen jumpers, not to mention the green fingered antics of its gardening expert, Topline Broadhurst. For a small area, the westcountry has given the nation more than its fair share of loveable eccentrics. Judi Spiers, Sally Meen, Angela Rippon, Jennifer Cluelo and Fern Britton all spent valuable time learning the ropes on south-west regional television.

Twenty years on from its first transmission, however, Westward Television was one of the sure-fire bets to lose its franchise. On screen, it had performed relatively successfully. Programming was adequate, if slightly amateurish - a point that was enforced by a survey in the 1970’s which gained Westward the title of the most amateur ITV licence holder (but also the most friendly). Westward’s strong regional roots also gave the impression that all their programmes were rurally-based. This was an assertion backed up by critic Victor Lewis Smith’s finding that “all their programmes had pigs in them”. In addition, the South West region was always going to be a profitable area as long as the licensee’s ambitions were not set too high. As the franchise review approached in 1981, Westward had a problem that had very little to do with how it portrayed itself to its viewers. The difficulty was Peter Cadbury. Originally its founding father, Westward now found Cadbury to be its biggest liability.

Cadbury had headed Westward with idiosyncratic flair. As the major shareholder retaining sixty per cent of the shares, it was a luxury that he could well afford. The IBA, the medium’s governing body began to find Cadbury to be a fairly stubborn-minded adversary. He seemed to have very little regard for the authority’s rules and even less for the many unspoken arrangements which prevented ITV from falling apart. He had already antagonised the broadcasting authority by using some of Westward’s profits to set up and run a small, short-lived, air-transport company named Air Westward. This was strictly against authority guidelines which opposed using profits for diversification.

He had also continuously lobbied for an expansion of Westward’s transmission area into Southern’s transmission area, as well as having aspirations north of the Severn. An early war with the first Welsh ITV broadcaster, TWW, led to direct intervention by the ITA. TWW’s catchment area significantly overlapped with the east of Westward’s. TWW’s predatory instinct was to tout for business within Westward’s region. Westward hit back by labelling TWW as a Welsh company will no right to viewers in the westcountry. Arguments followed with TWW’s replacement, Harlech. The unmistakably Welsh name fuelled Westward’s opposition. However, Westward was actually gaining an audience from the overlap, as viewers in South West attempted to flee from Harlech’s enforced Welsh language programmes.

There were also public arguments with the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police force, and with the leader of Plymouth City Council. However, the biggest, and most public blow to Westward’s chances was the boardroom row Cadbury had with Lord Harris of Greenwich shortly before the franchise review. Harris was a former Broadcasting Minister who became a director with Westward. Arguing that Cadbury was becoming too much of a risk to the company, particularly with the licence review approaching, he decided that action had to be taken against the company’s founder. He found that secretly many of the other board members had similar feelings towards Cadbury, but were maintaining a show of loyalty. Harris realised that this situation could not be allowed to continue. He canvassed the remaining board members and managed to rally enough supporters around him to persuade the board as a whole to ask Cadbury to resign.

By the time that the second review was due in 1980, Peter Cadbury had virtually ruined any chance that Westward had of retaining its licence. Despite his undoubted popularity amongst the staff ( Harry Turner, later to become managing director of Westward’s successor, TSW, had led his sales department in signing a petition demanding that Peter Cadbury be re-instated)and his sixty per cent controlling share in the company, Harris’s action against Cadbury succeeded and he was removed from the board. Calls for the founder’s reinstatement were blocked by the IBA, as it seized the opportunity to remove one of its most constant irritations.