Child Of The 1980's

Today most of us have access to a vast number of TV channels, whether that be through satellite TV, cable of even Freeview. This means that most kids are already accustomed to having entire channels devoted to kids television running all day, every day. Things were different in the Eighties.

For part of the decade we only had three channels to choose from, and as kids we had to share these channels with all the other programmes intended for every other possible age group and interest. During term time this meant a couple of programmes for the very young around lunch time, and then a block of a couple of hours in the mid to late afternoon.

In the school holidays however, we considered ourselves lucky as both BBC1 and ITV would devote the entire morning to kids TV from around 9am onwards. This was a time when we would be treated to reruns of old cartoons, long running serials and the odd new show if we were really lucky.

Today then, I present to you my memories of watching TV in the mornings during the school holidays. Think of it as a very out of date page of the Radio Times or TV Times from the late Seventies and early Eighties.

9:00 TV-am: Roland Rat would start my day. Yeeeaaahhh!

9:30 BBC: An old black and white serial – I’m thinking of something like the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serials, or the equally cool King of the Rocketmen! If it was Champion the Wonder Horse though I would perhaps watch whatever ITV might have on instead though.

10:00 ITV: Normally a cartoon show of some sort, maybe the Smurfs or Wacky Races or something of that ilk.

10:30 BBC: Back to the Beeb for Why Don’t You. A great little show with kids as the presenters. Something for everyone – jokes, recipes, things to make and those reports on other kids hobbies.

11:00 BBC or ITV: Really depended what was on. Normally this would be around the time that the BBC would air one of those long running live action serials. The classic example here would be Heidi, but there was also Silas and Robinson Crusoe. If I didn’t fancy that then ITV might have something good on, but if ITV failed to intrigue then the TV would probably go off now.

11:30 Sorry, couldn’t tell you. The TV had usually gone off in the previous half hour so I really can’t remember what sort of shows would have been on here. There might have been a cartoon but I have a feeling things started to revert back to normal lunchtime/early afternoon TV fodder.

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This entry is filed under Memories, TV - Kids and was posted on August 3rd, 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.