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…
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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…
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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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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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June Buchan on trade unions at Granada TV
What about the unions, trade unions and various problems? Yes I do remember quite a bit about that. I was a member I can’t remember whether we had to be members or not? Did we – right? I remember a lot of union meetings in a big room up on the 2nd floor I think.…
Read MoreSandy Ross on trade unions at Granada
Let’s just finally talk a little bit if we could about the trade unions because you were active on the shop stewards’ committee I’ve always thought the problem in the early years with trade unions was quite a big one. Granada was a post entry closed shop in these days. So what that meant was…
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June Buchan on Granada’s links with the region
What about Granada’s position within Manchester? How important was it to the region? Oh I think hugely important, I really do. Granada Reports, very important programme. I think people identified with it, I think people identified with people like Bob Greaves and Tony, Trevor Hyett and who was that lovely man, erm, he had been…
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June Buchan talks about working on the programme ‘Coronation Street’
Tell me about your time on Coronation Street. I loved it, I absolutely loved it but I found it quite difficult because I got on quite well with local filming, documentary filming but drama was something else, particularly filming I found difficult because I never quite grasped ‘crossing the line’, I never quite understood what…
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David Boulton remembers his final years at Granada and how the company changed
The late ’80s things really began to change in Granada. I suppose the biggest manifestation of the change was that for all the years I had been working there I’d been vaguely aware that up on the top floor there was a whole lot of accountants you occasionally saw coming through the door in their…
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