This Is Scotland!

Kevin Geddes looks at the plans put into place for commercial television north of the border

- By Kevin Geddes

It was a Saturday night in Scotland to remember: 31 August 1957. Scottish living rooms flickered to life just after 6pm, with something brand new; Independent Television. The first spectacular night began with an opening ceremony and then a lavish extravaganza, designed to grab audiences from the rival BBC, broadcast live from the heart of the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, the new service's studios for the first 17 years. Scottish Television came with a patriotic logo combining the recognisable Scottish imagery of the illustrious lion rampant with the magnificent thistle - Independent Television had arrived in Scottish homes.

The journey began two years earlier, in May 1955, with a glitzy announcement at Edinburgh's impressive North British Hotel (now The Balmoral) where Scots were told to expect their own Independent Television service by 1957. Those two years weren't wasted. There were public exhibitions, promotions, previews, demonstrations and plenty of buzz to get advertisers, and shops selling and renting television sets, excited. After all, BBC Television had only reached Scottish screens in 1952, so the idea of having a choice was still a novelty.

What a choice it promised to be. American imports such as popular comedy I Love Lucy, big-money quiz shows including The $64,000 Question, and homegrown variety performances such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium, were all on the cards. Unmade homegrown productions, assured to be somewhere between 10-20% of the total programming output, were touted and teased far and wide across Scotland. Well, central Scotland at least. The new independent television company would be broadcast there, with the north of Scotland covered by Grampian Television, and the south of Scotland by boundary crossing Border Television, both of which began in 1961.