Sandy Ross – Granadaland

Sandy Ross biography

Sandy Ross joined Granada Television in 1976 after working as a solicitor in Edinburgh. He worked initially as a Researcher on regional programmes and in particular Granada Reports before working with Tony Wilson on What’s On. He later became a Producer producing local and networked programmes such as the Mersey Pirate which presented more than…

Sandy Ross on how he was first employed by Granada

How did you actually come to work for Granada, because I know that Granada didn’t always take people who were obvious like journalists? It’s quite difficult to try and understand but I think I was part of the working class phase because you’re absolutely right, they had quite an eclectic hiring policy. Sometimes they would…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Sandy 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…