Two views of Liverpool

John Timbers

No Tram to Lime Street, with its celebrating sailors and a brief but warmly realistic love affair between one of them, Jack Hedley and the girl he picked up, Billie Whitelaw, drew some protests from local papers that the play gave a distorted view of Liverpool

But the other side of the picture was seen across the ITV Network when ABC’s Outside Broadcast Unit took TV cameras into Liverpool Cathedral for the first time to televise Holy Communion.

A recording of the service was later presented to the Cathedral

Bedford Studios

Television on wheels

Church services and sporting events are only two of the subjects covered by the most mobile outside broadcast division in ITV.

Under the direction of ABC’s Chief of Outside Broadcasts, David Southwood, and his assistant, Andy Gullen, the Company’s camera teams range the North and Midlands every weekend to bring an astonishingly wide variety of local activity into ITV homes throughout the country

One of the advantages of televised sport is that it can give viewers a close view of the players which the ordinary spectator must do without.

Above is the normal view of the Yorkshire v Lancashire cricket match at Leeds, and right the ABC camera team which brought it at close quarters into ITV homes. Director Andy Gullen stands by the camera and commentator George Duckworth sits beside the cameraman

An ABC camera catches Marston Gregory as his Cooper-Maserati comes out of Woodcote Corner on three wheels in the International Tourist Trophy race at Silverstone

All-in wrestling has proved the most popular of all sports on ITV

ABC telecasts have greatly increased the popularity of motor cycle scrambles, notably through visits to the famous Bentley Springs course in Yorkshire

Willoughby Gullachsen

The celebrated Black Arrows, their squadron now disbanded, were televised by ABC at the Coventry Air Pageant

TV for the farmer

The Other Man’s Farm, established by ABC three years ago under the direction of Andy Gullen with Geoffrey Gilbert as editor, was the world’s first live outside broadcast farming series.

The programme, not seen in London, visits farms throughout the North and Midlands on Sunday afternoons and has been widely praised by farmers for the high degree of technical information it imparts.

Farming expert Jim Hall and programme host Franklin Engelmann are seen here by their mobile control room

Mobile feeding units take grain and water to the poultry on this Leicestershire farm

Controlled grazing for sheep is practised on this Northampton farm by use of a movable fence

This Landrace sow on a Yorkshire farm was part of an experiment in washing sows before their litters arrive, to increase hygiene and productivity in pig-farming

Franklin Engelmann discusses a grain extractor and mixer which speeds up the loading of mobile feeding units

A new type of potato-lifting machine is demonstrated for Geoffrey Gilbert extreme right, editor of The Other Man’s Farm

These huge silos were imported from the USA by a Yorkshire farmer to store fresh mown grass

Summer at the seaside

Summer time at ABC means Holiday Town Parade. This popular annual show takes David Southwood and his Outside Broadcast team every summer round the seaside resorts on the East and West coasts of the North and Midlands, building up a fund of local goodwill through the interest aroused by its contests for the TV Bathing Beauty Queen, the TV Fashion Queen and the TV Adonis of Great Britain.

Errol Flynn, Boris Karloff and John Gregson have helped to crown the Beauty Queen, while Pierre Balmain and Norman Hartnell are among those who have bestowed the Fashion accolade.

McDonald Hobley is the programme’s host, and Joe Loss and his Orchestra were a popular backbone of the show until they were claimed by the Hammersmith Palais

Bedford Studios

▼ Summer for ABC’s Drama Department meant Armchair Mystery Theatre, whose resident host was one of Britain’s busiest actors, Donal Pleasence, taking time off to make his introduction and to star in one of the plays, Machinal, between performances of Harold Pinter’s stage success, The Caretaker

John Timbers

Diana Wynyard gave a remarkable performance as a paralysed woman, using only her eyes and recorded thoughts, in the opening play, Eye Witness, specially written by Leslie Sands and directed by Charles Jarrott

John Timbers

John Gregson was another star visitor to the series, mocking the traditional Secret Service man in Flight from Treason, a spy thriller by schoolmaster James Mitchell, directed by Dennis Vance

1960 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION