© ITVplc/ASSOCIATED TELEVISION 1981

Dirty ILR slides, British TV's first electronic clock and that laughably AWFUL rendition of the national anthem on a cathedral organ! Yes, it can only be an ATV closedown!

When I started doing this hobby properly 14 years ago on my first channel, I never, ever, in a million years thought I'd come across continuity footage from one of the pre1982 ITV franchises that hadn't already been uploaded elsewhere. Now, 6,000 subscribers, 5 channels and 14 years later, I've got closedowns from Southern and ATV. Now I only need some unpublished footage from Westward to complete the set!

Oh, and in case you didn't know, the electronic clock that was keyed over the "ATV COLOUR" slide was generated from a timecode generator as part of an Ampex AVR2 edit suite, which was introduced by Ampex in 1974, so this clock might have been in use as far back as then but without concrete evidence I'm reluctant to guess when it was introduced. There's evidence elsewhere on YouTube that it was in use at least as far back as February 1980, making it the first electronicallygenerated clock on British TV! BBC2 is often credited with having the first electronic clock, but theirs was introduced on 6th September 1980, at the very least some months after! Theirs is the first clock with a fully electronicallygenerated image, though. This ATV clock was an electronicallygenerated timepiece keyed over an optical slide.

Another factoid: the organ rendition of the national anthem was recorded in St. Chad's Roman Catholic Church in Birmingham, NOT Birmingham Cathedral as is often wrongly claimed. As with most cities, there are two cathedrals in Birmingham. One is Roman Catholic, and the other one is Protestant! The St. Chad's organ was replaced in 1990 so don't go "sightseeing" there, as the organ that was used for this is long gone!

End of Something Different (ATV Birmingham)
ATV slide: Weather forecast read by announcer Avril Carson
Generic ILR slide
BRMB frequency slide
Beacon Radio frequency slide
Radio Trent frequency slide
ATV clock (optical slide with electronic clock) (00:45am): closing announcement and organ rendition of national anthem
Black and unplug TV set warning
Black and silence