''Engineering Announcements for the Radio and Television Trade'', sometimes abbreviated to ''Engineering Announcements'', was a weekly television program of news and information intended for technicians and salespeople in the United Kingdom, produced and transmitted by the

Independent Television Authority The Independent Television Authority (ITA) was an agency created by the Television Act 1954 ( 2 & 3 Eliz. 2. c. 55) to supervise the creation of " Independent Television" (ITV), the first commercial television network in the United Kingdom. The ...

(and later the

Independent Broadcasting Authority The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television ( ITV and Channel 4 and limited satellite television regulation – cable television was the responsibility of the Cable Author ...

) from 23 November 1970 until 31 July 1990, coming off air five months before the IBA was disbanded. Engineering Announcements began because the ITA had been getting so many queries about delays to the launch of local relays. The ITA felt that the trade should be kept informed about when stations were to open and that the best way to do this was via a television programme and as time progressed, the broadcast expanded to cover technical advances in the industry, such as the launch of satellite television and

NICAM Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex (NICAM) is an early form of lossy compression for digital audio. It was originally developed in the early 1970s for point-to-point links within broadcasting networks.Croll, M.G., Osborne, D.W. and Spi ...

stereo, along with details of new transmitters and the scheduling of transmitter downtime. ''Engineering Announcements'', and the BBC's similar ''

Service Information ''Service Information'' was a weekday broadcast on BBC Two, BBC2 of engineering information for the radio and television trade. These announcements were made by the BBC continuity announcers of the time and were read over basic in-vision caption ...

'', are examples of regularly scheduled "ghost programmes," so called because they were never advertised in on-air schedules, in newspaper TV listings, the ''

TV Times ''TV Times'' is a British television listings magazine. From 1955 until 1991, it was the only source of seven-day listings for ITV and, from 1982, Channel 4 (as well as S4C in Wales in an enclosed local supplement titled '' Sbec''). The magaz ...

'' or on

teletext Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipped television sets. Teletext sends data in the broadcast signal, hidden in the invisible vertical blanking interval area at the to ...

Scheduling

''Engineering Announcements'' was originally scheduled directly after '' Monday's Newcomers'', another ghost programme which offered the advertising trade the opportunity to watch first runs of new adverts before they aired in prime time on ITV. It was shown at 9:45a.m. On 18 September 1972, ''Engineering Announcements'' moved to 9:10a.m. on Tuesdays, where it remained until 24 May 1983. The launch of

TV-am TV-am was a TV company that broadcast the ITV franchise for breakfast television in the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 until 31 December 1992. The station was the UK's first national operator of a commercial breakfast television franchise ...

meant that the ITV network would no longer be available to show the programme at that time although it was shown on ITV for the two months following the launch of TV-am, airing in the gap between the end of TV-am and the start of ITV – the gap was needed to allow for switching ITV from national transmission to the local ITV contractor, and for those two months the programme aired at 9.17am. When this process became automated, this gap was no longer required. TV-am's hours were extended until 9:25a.m. and consequently the slot used to transmit ''Engineering Announcements'' on ITV disappeared. and the programme was switched to

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

and

S4C S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speakin ...

from 24 May 1983. It continued to be shown at the same time (Tuesdays at 9:15a.m.) with a repeat broadcast at 12:15 p.m., although the lunchtime repeat was not shown on S4C. As broadcasting hours increased, ''Engineering Announcements'' was forced into increasingly earlier time slots. The 12:15p.m. repeat was lost in September 1987 when

ITV Schools ITV Schools (full name: Independent Television for Schools and Colleges) was the educational television service set up in 1957 by the Independent Television Authority, broadcasting learning programmes for children ages 5 to 18 across ITV-affi ...

was transferred to Channel 4/S4C. It then moved to 8:10a.m. at the start of 1989 and when Channel 4 launched its

breakfast television Breakfast television (Europe and Australia) or morning show (Canada and the United States) is a type of news broadcasting, news or infotainment television programme that broadcasts Live television, live in the morning (typically broadcast pro ...

service in April 1989, ''Engineering Announcements'' was moved to 5:45a.m., where it could be recorded by engineers for later viewing. It remained in that early morning slot until the programme's final edition on 31 July 1990.IBA Engineering Announcements final edition
/ref> Throughout its time on Channel 4, the theme tune to the programme was "Current Affairs" by

Francis Monkman Anthony Francis Keigwin Monkman (9 June 1949 – 12 May 2023) was an English rock, classical and film score composer, and a founding member of both the progressive rock band Curved Air and the classical/rock fusion band Sky. Life and career ...

. With the exception of the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are divided into two Crown Dependencies: the Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey, which is the largest of the islands; and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, ...

, ''Engineering Announcements'' was the only programme broadcast on ITV during the 1979 strike which saw ITV off the air for ten weeks from mid-August until 24 October.

References

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External links

Engineering Information

ITV (TV network) Broadcasting in the United Kingdom British non-fiction television series British television news shows 1970 British television series debuts 1990 British television series endings Radio in the United Kingdom 1970s British television series 1980s British television series 1990s British television series