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Putting You In The Picture - A History of Regional Television in Yorkshire

A family in 1950's enjoying the new medium

It all began on the 12th October 1951 when Regional Television first came to Yorkshire via the BBC Northern regional operation in Manchester and the opening of the Holme Moss Transmitter.

In early 2004 YFA was awarded a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to research, preserve and make accessible a previously neglected aspect of our regional moving image heritage: the history of regional television in Yorkshire.

The completion of the project was marked with an event held at the National Museum of Photography Film & Television (now the National Media Museum) in January 2005, where many of the television programmes are now permanently accessible in the TV Heaven Gallery.

'We would like to record our thanks to Mike Best, who researched and managed the project, to the BBC and to ITV Yorkshire, who agreed to open their archives to us to support this project. We should also thank the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television for incorporating this material into their permanent exhibitions, and of course to the Heritage Lottery Fund for making 'Putting You in the Picture' possible.'

     - Sue Howard, Director, Yorkshire Film Archive

Richard Whiteley interviews Margaret Thatcher 1987 for Calendar on YTV

In 1968 regional television proper came to Yorkshire: in March of that year the first live news programme broadcast from the region came from the BBC in Leeds and just a couple of months later, on July 29th, the new commercial station, Yorkshire Television came on air.

Since those early days of television both the BBC and Yorkshire Television have produced thousands of hours of programming. Networked programmes such as Heartbeat, Brideshead Revisited, Emmerdale, have all become international 'household' names. But as well as network programmes, there have been a wealth of programmes produced in the region, about the region and for the people of the region. It is these programmes that 'Putting You in the Picture – a History of Regional Television in Yorkshire' reminds us about.

Programmes such as award winning documentaries, Beneath the Pennines, and It's No Joke Living In Barnsley, the regional news programmes of Look North and Calendar, topical entertainment programmes such as Saville's Yorkshire Travels and Dales Diary all build into a rich collection documenting our region. Many of these programmes originated on now obsolete formats. 'Putting You in the Picture' has provided the YFA with an opportunity to make new digital copies so that the material can be seen and enjoyed once again.

Opening of Holme Moss Transmitter, October 1951

All these programmes are now available for public research at the Yorkshire Film Archive in York. Some of them have already been seen as part of a programme of screenings touring the region as part of our 'Framing the Past' screenings. In addition, a compilation of the programmes are permanently accessible in the TV Heaven Gallery at the National Media Museum.