I wanted to get into production and as there was a studio at Chelsea I applied and got a job there which started in the mailroom and shortly afterwards I went as callboy which obviously involved all the shows that were put on there. And there were lots of them. Such as? Massive productions. Well…
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Mike Beckham reflects on Granada’s legacy
Well, I think it’s important that interviews like this try and keep it alive, because it was a remarkable company in that ratings weren’t the be all and end all. It was very important that there were good ratings, of course, but it was set up by Sidney and Cecil Bernstein. Cecil did the light…
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Steve Morrison discusses the changing nature of TV in the 1990s
There were basically two things that happened in the late 80s which were very, very important. The first thing was that when I was at the controllers’ group, there was a great deal of rivalry between what was called the seven-day companies, which were those that had franchises across the whole week, and the London…
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David Highet on how he came to be employed at Granada
It was 1979 and I was 38 and I was Assistant Editor of the Liverpool Echo which was at that time probably the biggest regional evening newspaper and I was getting a little restive. I’d spent 20 years in local newspapers, local journalism, and I felt it was time for a move but I wasn’t…
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Jon Woods on working on World In Action in Belfast
I assisted on quite a few World In Action’s. It was a very busy weekly show, high turnaround of ideas and projects, and one that I smile at a lot was a World In Action we were shooting with Stuart Prebble, producer, about the IRA, and we were filming in Belfast and Dublin, and it’s…
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Steve Leahy describes his move to being a researcher
Got into Granada, arrived very green, as a trainee assistant transmission controller, which was a nine-month training programme. And I did it in three months, which is astonishing because it was mind over matter, I can’t push buttons and do things, I really can’t, I had to just learn it. I was determined to learn…
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Michael Ryan biography
Michael Ryan began his television career in 1963 as a BBC2 trainee, working on Panorama as a studio director. However a chance meeting in 1966 with Michael Parkinson in his father’s London pub, led to him joining Granada as a Researcher. In 1967 he worked on Cinema which, at the time, boasted an audience of…
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David Liddiment on moving from promotions to being a researche
I decided, having been there a brief while, the thing I wanted to do was direct, you know, sat in the back of the gallery producing a promo session – we used to run the trails through the gallery and we used to put the captions on with a manned camera crew on the studio…
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Barry Bowmer describes his first job at Granada in London
Well, I had various jobs where I lived in the south. My father who was a tool-maker at the BMI could see that going downhill so he persuaded me not to go into engineering and there were various jobs at London Airport (or Heathrow as it’s now known) and eventually my uncle, who used to…
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Steve Morrison talks about leaving Granada – and its legacy
I left in 2002. So I was at Granada for 27 and a half years, 21 in Manchester and the rest in London, and my reflection on all of this is that Granada went through two golden eras. The first golden era was up to 1987, when it had guaranteed programmes of a relatively small…
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David Highet on Granada’s rationale for opening a Liverpool office
At the time the long-standing antipathy between Liverpool and Manchester focussed – even more greatly than usual – on the lack of a television station in Liverpool while Manchester had the TV centre in Quay Street in all its glory and different organisations began to form. One of them was led by a Professor of…
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Jon Woods on filming the Toxteth riots in 1981
One of the big shocks of my life was having to work on the Toxteth riots for ITN. Shooting on film, spending nearly a week in Toxteth, not getting home for nearly a week, and being close to very serious danger, and being almost injured quite badly a few ties, with petrol bombs and flagstones…
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Steve Leahy’s pride in working at Granada
I was born at Granada and you grow up the Granada way, don’t you? I think I learned a lot for future life through Granada. I loved the way the Stables worked, and before that, Film Exchange. While I was an assistant transmission controller I was talking to Peter Eckersley in the evenings and really…
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David Liddiment on working on local programmes
So what was your experience of working on regional programmes? I did everything on regional programmes. How did you find it? I loved it. Because one, Granada regional programmes was a very vibrant place, it was led by Steve Morrison, it was the first time I got to work with Steve, Steven Morrison… you know,…
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Michael Ryan recalls how he first came to work for Granada TV
What were you doing before you joined Granada Television? Working for the BBC as a studio director. I was headhunted, or something, for the BBC2 start up. Technically I was a BBC2 trainee from Oxford in 1963, and I spent about nine months on Panorama as a sort of tea boy/researcher. Then I went into…
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Barry Bowmer on Granada’s early days in Golden Square
Was Golden Square at that point the headquarters for the entire Granada Group? Yeah I’m sure it was 4 storeys and a basement and then whilst I was working there they built another 2 storeys on top but it was taken up wholly by Granada, you know for television etc. Another place that we used…
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David Highet on Granada’s first premises in Liverpool at Exchange Flags
The premises had been found in what turned out to be the most unsuitable location. The studio centre was in Exchange Flags, which is a set of very fine office buildings set on a piazza, the other side of which is completed by Liverpool Town Hall and the centre of which is dominated by what…
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Jon Woods on the technological challenges in the 70’s and 80’s
There’s a lot of responsibility on the camera operators in those early days before video assist and video record and replay. Literally, it was film… if you imagine, during Jewel in the Crown, we were in India for six months, and I think we were there for nearly three months before we saw one foot…
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Jon Woods on the changes in kit and its impact on quality
We’re going to talk about kit. What was it like in the old days and what’s it like today? It couldn’t be more chalk and cheese – talk about steam-generated television! In the era of film, everything was bigger, heavier, more awkward to use. A typical film cameraman’s kit would be a camera body –…
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Steve Leahy on the success of Busman’s Holiday
One of the best moments for me was, we’d done a pilot of Busman’s Holiday, and it was accepted by Granada, by Mike Scott and co., to go to series. And in those days they would dictate and tell the network, “We’ve got a new series for you.” It wasn’t a question of going…
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David Liddiment on working in drama-docs
Then I got a big break because David Boulton phoned me up one day out of the blue and said, “David Plowright has asked me and Leslie Woodhead to set up a drama documentary unit to develop some of the skills and things that Leslie in particular has been doing on World in Action –…
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Michael Ryan recalls working on World In Action
I went to World in Action as a producer/director in the autumn of 1968 and basically I stayed there for ten years and I didn’t do anything else, with the exceptions of oddities like election programmes. But to all intents and purposes I was on World in Action as a producer…. I had the long…
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Barry Bowmer remembers travelling in style with the Bernsteins!
You got to know the Bernsteins in Golden Square. Did you keep contact with them later on at all? Did you come across them? No. I got to know them. We knew each other but we weren’t that close, myself being a mail boy, callboy. It was just through frequency of working with them and…
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Jon Woods on his move to being a director
Did you go back to being a cameraman after that? (after an accident when he broke his neck) I did, for about a month. I went back into work I think in September. it happened in January/February, 1989, so I came back in February, I had February ‘til about September recovering, I had a neck…
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David Highet remembers Granada’s first broadcast from Exchange Flags
June 1980, it took few months to get all the bits and pieces put together and have a few dry runs. I remember Roger Blyth presenting the first news programme from Liverpool which was very exciting and it was made rather, even more interesting because the shot of the presenter looked out across the studio…
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Jon Woods describes his dream job – directing Coronation Street
As a Salfordian, working on Coronation Street, shooting the film inserts, either on the street itself, on the lot, or round and about in Manchester as location work, was great for me. It was like the fulfilment of a boyhood dream. A programme pretty much based in my home town, and being a Salfordian myself,…
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Steve Leahy on the creation of The Krypton Factor
Which other shows did you create? Well, the first one I was ever involved in creating was Krypton Factor, which was Jeremy Fox’s idea. This was while we were on regional programmes, but Mastermind had started, and ITV wanted to counteract that. It was deemed that the right calibre show would play as adult education…
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David Liddiment talks about moving into management
For someone of your background as a promotions scriptwriter and a researcher and director and producer, you had done a lot of making, but you ended up a suit. Yes. How did you feel about that? I loved it. I loved it. I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to have my eyes…
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Michael Ryan describes one of his most memorable WIA’s
From a personal point of view, the stand-out success of the seventies was the film I made in Longnor in Derbyshire in 1971, where I persuaded the village to give up smoking for a week. This was at a time, of course, when 75% of the male population was still smoking. It was timed to…
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Barry Bowmer describes his role in Film Ops in Manchester
And you moved up to Manchester to become…? I went into Film Ops. Film Operations, which was under Bill Lloyd and did various parts of jobs there initially. Some film library, again messages to the labs. Humphries Laboratories which used to process film which was quarter of a mile away, used to go backwards and…
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