They had no power and no techie people to do anything

@@rareads No power? Why?

The technicians went on strike and the electricians would not cross the picket lines. The most militant of all unions within ITV (up until the 80s) were the electricians because, if you forgive the pun, they had the power to stop studios from operating. They simply pulled the plugs. Whilst it is one thing to get secretaries and middle management to operate cameras, it is another to get them to operate the electrics - there are legal requirements, health and safety needs and I suspect the various companies’ insurers would be none too impressed either at having untrained people in charge of the power supply. By the mid 80s the electricians union had changed in the light (another pun) of Thatcherite policies and even quit the TUC so instructed their members to keep working at Tv-am. It was that which really crushed the TV unions - once the electricians broke away, it was much harder to keep stations off the air.

@@yellowbelly06 Hence why strikes like this are less common now.

@@yellowbelly06 Operating videotape machines to run a TV service isn't hard to do and it doesn't need specialised knowledge to lace up and run the programmes.

Channel Television (CTV) had to run an emergency service because if they hadn't, the station would probably have hit the buffers and gone bust.

They couldn’t. The Post Office technicians who were responsible for linking the ITV stations to their transmitters were also ACTT members and if management ran a service, they could cut off the links to the transmitters and walk out on strike in sympathy. Many of those same technicians operated telephone service equipment in major exchanges as well, so could stop the telephone infrastructure. ITV management wouldn’t want to be at the root of causing that!

@@stickytapenrust6869 So how come in 1968 a national emergency schedule was aired during that strike? And during the 1984 Thames strike, a management run service remained on air for two weeks?

@@johnking5174 There were different agreements with Post Office workers in 1968 and 1984. And different managers who had different opinions on things like taking risks like running management-led services. Also, this is 1979 we’re talking about. What relevance have 1968 and 1984 to it? Rules change. Also IIRC the 1984 strike didn’t matter to the newly-created BT technicians as the Thames strike meant it was only one union branch agreeing to strike, not all of them!

All because ITV was run by the fifteen regional companies compared to the two BBC national television channels.

because itv had 101+ million regions while the bbc didn't 😒 -Myina xx

And of how militant the ACTT was compared to the ABS.

and his Ol' Uncle Lew Grade.

The three day week was under the Tories.

Agreed.

No it wouldn’t because a Labour Government hasn’t existed since 1979. Kinnock, Smoth and Bliar have changed the party to just be a slightly redder shade of Tory. What we had between 1997 and 2010 is in no way even a vague resemblance to what we had between 1974 to 79 and before.