November 1975 highlights Both BBC television channels had received new idents around the end of 1974; BBC1 had a new blue/yellow version of the rotating globe, while BBC2's '2' went stripy. The word 'colour' had now been dropped from both idents, although colour televisions were still in a minority in Britain; it took until 1977 for colour licences to exceed black-and-white. The start of 1975 had also brought cutbacks in both television and radio. Afternoon programmes on BBC1, which in late 1974 had included Aspel and Company, Top Score and Dig This!, had gone. On BBC2, rather than transmitting the test card throughout the daytime, transmitters would now close down altogether from around 11.30am to 4.00pm. Trade test transmissions would then be shown until the first programmes in the evening. Most days saw BBC1 and BBC2 close down around 11.30-11.40pm, although they were allowed to stay up beyond midnight at the weekend (indeed, an unusually late 1.12am on this day).  The cutbacks in radio were more severe - Radio 2 went from 21 to 18.5 hours a day, and Radio 1 from 14 to just 9 hours a day. This meant both networks now received the David Hamilton afternoon show, and the likes of John Peel and Anne Nightingale were shifted from 10.00pm to 5.15 in January 1975; by the autumn Peel had been given his first daily show, for an hour at 11.00 each weeknight.
Television highlights on this day included David McCallum starring as the Invisible Man, and Eric Sykes starring as, um, Eric Sykes (right). On BBC2 there was a programme called Newsnight - but not the one we know today, that began in 1980; in 1975 it was a 15-minute news round-up with Richard Whitmore. Closedown actually was a programme - a nightly five minute reading. And this particular week included the annual BBC Children in Need appeal. No, not a seven hour telethon - we didn't see those until the 1980s - but a five minute appeal with David Dimbleby, on Sunday teatime stuck between Anno Domini and Songs of Praise.
 And in Radio Times 22-28 November 1975 Price 10p
 Radio Times was sporting a slightly new look (well, new-look page headings - left) introduced in July. Once the logo was incorporated into the cover illustration, from the end of 1976 onwards, this classic RT look would stay in place virtually unchanged until well into the 1980s.
Featured on the cover was Julia Foster, starring in BBC2's adaptation of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. There was more period drama on BBC1, with the latest version of The Legend of Robin Hood, starring Martin Potter and Diane Keen (right). Only eleven films were being shown on BBC television this week; unlike today's film
section which goes on for pages, this week's reviews by Philip Jenkinson fitted
comfortably into half a page. 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Radio Times Covers | 
