It was such a big deal, the Beatles being there. (in 1963) You did feel, you really did feel at the time that the North and the North West was on its way and Granada was all part of that. Did you see Granada as being important to the North West? Yes, you saw that…
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Brian Blake talks about the working atmosphere on ‘World In Action’
What about women who worked on the programme (‘World In Action’)? There weren’t many at all, especially the early days. Most of them were single, tough in that sense because they had to be, it was an incredibly male society. It was funny it was different, they were very sensitive filmmakers, very good at emotional…
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Janice Finch talks about Sidney Bernstein
I had to work on preparing the obituary of Sidney Bernstein at one stage, when I was working at Granada, when he was not well. Immediately we were asked to go and interview people who had been key in his life. I had to read up a great deal about him and how the company…
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Janice Finch remembers working on the Channel 4 programme ‘Union World’ made by Granada TV
‘Union World’ was a very good grounding if you wanted to work in current affairs. Obviously it was at a time when trade union politics were very important in Britain. In fact I’d barely started working at Granada when the miners’ strike began. That kind of dominated the time I worked on ‘Union World’, which…
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Janice Finch remembers the Granada canteen
I remember standing in the queue at the canteen behind this short bloke and thinking ‘I know you from somewhere’ and as he turned to pay I recognised it was Roger Daltrey. I thought ‘My god, what is he doing here?’ It was the kind of place where you’d be sitting there having your fish…
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Janice Finch talks about being a woman working in television
I guess I’ve never ever considered whether or not my gender would hold me back. It never entered into it. Television, compared with other walks of life, has never felt to me like an area in which women couldn’t get ahead. In the time I worked there we had a director of programmes, Andrea Wonfor,…
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Brian Blake talks about working on the ‘World In Action’ programme that covered the first British Gay Pride rally in London in 1972
It was the first gay rights civil march in London, to Hyde Park on a Saturday. We had two crews out, one followed a group of gay rights people from Liverpool and I went down to London and filmed the equivalent London group of people who were marching to Hyde Park. So it was filmed…
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Brian Blake on how Granada was run as a company
And there was an ability in those early days, was there not, to be able to come up with an idea one minute and by the afternoon be actually making the programme? It was exactly the same as I was saying earlier about picking people on a flair; ideas were the same. There were no…
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Brian Blake remembers Denis Forman
When I came to Manchester, I had never been to Manchester before apart from playing football in university days, but I had never been to Granada. I went to the desk and asked “Can I see Denis Forman?” They looked at me, “Is he expecting you?” I said “Yes he is.” I didn’t realise he was…
Read MoreThe Bernsteins, Denis Forman and David Plowright
Sidney Bernstein (1899-1993) was undoubtedly the inspiration and driving force behind Granada Television. Before the Second World War he created the London Film Society and was responsible for bringing all the Eisenstein classics to the UK for the first time. He formed a close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock and at the end of the war…
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Brian Blake remembers Sidney Bernstein and his film about the Belsen concentration camp
I had just finished the ‘History of Television’ and Steve Morrison rang me up and said “Sidney wants this film made.” I said “Oh yes” In the Second World War Sidney was one of the first people to go into Belsen concentration camp. He was a major in the army and he decided when he…
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Brian Blake on trade unions
Let’s talk a little bit about the trade unions, at that time in commercial television, whether you thought there were certain rules which inhibited programme making or made life difficult. Whether they were they justified or not. I think the one that irritated me was you had to have a card to become a director.…
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Brian Blake talks about the politics of Granada TV
Somebody said to me that Granada was an unashamedly left wing company. Would you agree with that? I know somebody who did, that was Ken Clarke. Again we were doing an interview with Ken Clarke in London, I think he was Home Secretary. He said to me, “I don’t know why I’m bothering doing this…
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Brian Blake talks about Granada as an employer
You talked about the Granada ethos, what kind of company was Granada, would you like to expand on that? It’s difficult not to be clichéd about it. It had a genuine interest in all the people, in the early days certainly. Some moved from London to Manchester, you’ve still got the same thing now with…
Read MoreWorld in Action
World In Action first aired in January 1963 and continued until December 7th 1998. During that time it raised a multitude of major issues and became known as one of the finest investigative documentary programmes ever produced. One of it strengths was that it rarely used a presenter with all questions being asked off camera.…
Read MoreJoining Granada
People joined Granada from many unexpected backgrounds. Sandy Ross was a solicitor in Edinburgh, Denis Mooney was a social worker while Brian Blake was an academic. The interviewing process for researchers was something of a daunting experience where you could find yourself facing half a dozen of the company’s leading executives who would give you…
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Sandy Ross talks about the 1980 ITV licence renewal and the studio in Liverpool
We were coming close now to 1980, Granada was up for licence renewal. David Plowright was masterminding the renewal of the licence process. There was always this issue between Liverpool and Manchester and the fact that the television station was based in Manchester. There was a newsroom in Liverpool but there was always this tension…
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Sandy Ross recalls how Granada responded to the launch of Channel 4
I can remember one around that time which was all about this new channel called Channel 4. ITV had been lobbying quite hard for a second channel which they wanted to be ITV 2, essentially what BBC Two was to BBC One so that they would have two channels and could sell twice the amount…
Read MoreStructural changes in British TV
The first major structural change to Granada came in the first franchise renewal in 1968 when Granada lost part of its region with Yorkshire, the Borders and the North East being hived off. To that date Granada had operated only on weekdays to the entire north of England. In return however Granada was allowed to…
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Sandy Ross remembers Tony Wilson
I got assigned to work with Tony Wilson on a segment on Thursday evening which was called What’s On. It was just saying to the North West ‘this is what is on in the region over the next week or so’; films, books, magazines, plays, bands and all the rest of it. In hindsight now…
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June Buchan talks about working on the programme ‘So It Goes’
Well then it got quite interesting because I went onto So It Goes which was a music programme with Tony Wilson and it was very, very demanding. It was very high tech, the first series. I don’t know what happened with the second series but I remember we had something like, I don’t know, two…
Read MoreTony Wilson
Tony Wilson, later calling himself Anthony Wilson and then Anthony H Wilson, was a much loved presenter at Granada. He joined the company in the early 1970s after graduating from Cambridge. He was Salford born and was a dynamic supporter of everything to do with both Salford and Manchester. He could be exasperating as a…
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Sandy Ross talks about producing the Granada regional programme ‘Live From Two’
I think the first thing I was asked to produce was a live afternoon show. These were before the days of all day television, but it was beginning to happen. So they needed programmes. What they decided, I’m not sure who decided, Mike Scott, David Plowright, Denis Forman, whoever, decided they wanted to have an…
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Sandy Ross remembers working on the Granada regional daily news programme ‘Granada Reports’
I joined as a researcher and was put straight into the newsroom where the evening programme at that time was called ‘Granada Reports’. It was presented by a rota of four people; Tony Wilson, Trevor Hyett, Gordon Burns and Bob Greaves. There was a woman called Ruth who would do it occasionally. With hindsight now…
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Sandy Ross talks about producing the children’s programme ‘The Mersey Pirate’
The other thing that we did was a kids’ Saturday morning programme called the Mersey Pirate, which we broadcast from the Royal Iris. Steve Leahy again joined me later on as a co-producer of that, but I was given the job under Chris Pye of putting together this kids’ Saturday morning programme from a boat…
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Sandy Ross talks about the TV drama ‘Scully’, written by Alan Bleasdale and his involvement in its production
Sandy talks first about the Scully section on the Granada children’s programme ‘The Mersey Pirate’. I’d met and got quite friendly with Alan Bleasdale. I thought the Scully books were absolutely fantastic so I managed to convince Alan that Scully and Mooey, his mate, should be the stowaways on the ship. Alan used to write…
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June Buchan talks about Granada as a company
Can we talk about Granada as a company. I mean what kind of company do you have it, how do you see it as a company… Then I saw it as a family firm. I thought they looked after their staff incredibly well, the Bernsteins were still there. It did feel like one great big…
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Sandy Ross talks about his impressions of Granada TV as a company
Just talk a little bit about what kind of a company was Granada. Granada was, not their words, the best television station in the world. Granada knew they were good. They had weaknesses, don’t get me wrong, but they knew they produced good programmes and all the rest of it. Every year there used to…
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Granada as a company and employer
Granada had a reputation of being a paternalisitc company, in the style of other employers such as Cadburys and Unilever and took great pride in looking after its employees. There was a canteen which was open all day and half the night, a nurse who was on site and if necessary the company could quickly…
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June Buchan talks about the importance of the Granada canteen
The Canteen was a kind of a melting pot of ideas and conversations, and in those days you could smoke in the canteen. I remember they had these horrible tinny little ashtrays, they were sort of, what’s the word, shiny orange, turquoise or green and I think they had the same ones in the Granada…
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