Welcome to About the BritSet Archive.

 

In this section we take a look at why the site was created, what was about before, and a little bit about our vision for the future.

THE BEGINNINGS

From a young age I had an interest in TV, not just the programmes but those bits around it, like the presentation and the adverts.

As a child I would only come across a limited amount of TV but I was fascinated by the spinning idents, and things like the mysterious BBC Broom Cupboard.

One of the big events that spiked my interest was the changes within ITV in the early 1990s, and the ITV franchise awards (ITV was at the time made up of a network of regional companies, who provided programmes for their region, and some the national network for a set period of time). So what happened was, the regulator of ITV had been changed by the then government, a new body was formed, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), and their first task was the appointment of new ITV franchises, to start at the beginning of 1993. Many areas would not be hugely affected, but things were a little different on the south coast of England.

In the south, our local station was TVS Television, and they were one of the companies which would loose their ITV franchise (it was an franchsie auction, however they deemed to have bid too high to be able to substain their programme promises, much in the same way that their neighbours Television South West had done) and would go off the air. TVS had lost out to Meridian Broadcasting.

 

This was bad enough but one of the other, bigger stories, was that TV-am, who provided the breakfast service, had also lost out (unlike TVS they had bid too low and lost out to what was, at that point, called the Sunrise Consortium) . We had TV-am on our telly pretty much every morning so I knew TV-am well.

 

Whilst many would not notice a lot of difference on screen, in 1993 it was going to be all change for viewers in the South.

 

 

Thursday 31st December 1992 came, and the last edition of TV-am's "Good Morning Britain" was transmitted. I can remember that morning vividly, there was a lot of sadness, running into the kitchen feeling very sad that it was coming to an end (especially after them showing a montatge of staff members over Simply the Best in their final moments).

 

That morning I drew the TV-am logo and later that of TVS who came who came on the air for their final day shortly after the demise of TV-am. I tried to stay awake until the end of TVS but fell asleep so never got to say goodbye to them like I had TV-am .

The following morning everything had changed, with TV-am having been replaced by GMTV (previously called Sunrise Consortium, until a legal challenge by Sky TV who used the name Sunrise for their morning news programme). Once GMTV had finished their first day it was the turn of Meridian's first morning, although they had already started their franchise period some hours previously, replacing TVS on the stroke of Midnight.

 

I drew the logos of the new companies that had taken over. GMTV simple enough to draw but Meridian was a bit more difficult (although still easier than the flower thing of TVS).

 

 

 

The logos, and the feel of TV in the South, were very different to what had been on screen the previous day. 1993 was a time for huge change for me, as I was leaving my middle school, and joining secondary school later in the year. It was a time of uncertainty and upheaval, the changes in the TV I was watching, reflected what I was going through personally.

 

I kept the paper with the logos on, this would be the very first item of the BritSet Archive, all those years later. 

 

THE WEBSITE ERA

Around 1997 we first got the internet, not long after I purchased my first PC. I thought I would try and look up to see if there was any information to jog my memory and expected to be disappointed.

There were some very interesting sites however like Meldrum Home Page (MHP), the information site Transdiffusion and Andrew Wiseman's 625 Television Room along with some like TV World, Sean Hughes Logo Pages and others which are sadly no longer available online.

Back in the late 1990s, the internet was still developing, the download speed was slow with dial up internet (restricted to the weekend with Freeserve as it was 1p per minute), video clips were small and in Real Video format. There were plenty of VHS tapes at home at this point, and I felt that maybe these might be of some interest to others. I set about creating a little site of my own, some material would be the same as other sites and some may not have been available elsewhere.

 

BEFORE THE BRITSET

These were some of the sites I created before The BritSet Archive was developed:

 

The AMBET Media Group UKTV Today

Best of British (BOB) TV TV Waffle

 

 

THE BRITSET IS BORN

Sites came and went as did our own, priorities were different and time pressures made working on the sites difficult.

 

By 2014 I had started thinking about creating yet another new website. Although work had stopped on the websites, my collecting had not, I had been getting tapes where I could, bits off eBay and even managed to get hold of some bits from BBC Television Centre when it closed in 2013 (a nightmare negotiating the London Underground and train back to Poole with very heavy and bulky broadcasting equipment).

On the 1st January 2015 the BritSet Archive went on the air and our logo looked a bit like this...

 

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

By 2018 the site was relaunched with an altered look. I started thinking on a fresh approach to the site bringing in not only a new look but more content and a better user experience.

Planning took place for a huge rethink, and revamp, during the COVID lockdown in 2020 and the old site would be removed in 2021, since then we have started to rebuild the site from the base up, the new site will be bigger and better than ever with lots more content and features.

We have invested heavily in technology to be able to bring more content to you. This has inclued new design software for building the site and creating better quality clips. We have also invested in old technology so we are able to process more different obsolete formats than ever before, finding more potentially lost material.

The site is currently considerably smaller than it once was, however we will continue to create new (old) content, and restore many of the previous sections, with many more clips and a more indepth look at all aspects of British television, past and present.

 

Thanks you for your support of the site over the years as we strive to be the UK's Home of TV History.

 

Keep em peeled for more future updates on our What's New section as we have pleanty more to come.

 

Thanks for Watching

The BritSet Archive