A Cunning look back of 30 days which have changed
my life over the past 30 years
Day 1: December 31st 1992 - A night of change in the South East.
Evening all,
As a child you get to stay up late for only special events. When i was
young i was only allowed to stay up to watch various football matches involving
Liverpool FC and England at the world cup in 1990. I was heartbroken when
England lost to Germany on penalties at Italy 1990.
But also I was allowed to stay up late to celebrate the New Year. Seeing
all of the fireworks going off around my area was nice to see especially at the
beginning of a new year.
But on the night on the 31st of December 1992, it was a night
i could not wait for.
Ever since moving to the town of Sittingbourne in Kent in 1987, there was
one television programme in the evening which i was glued to and as a family we
would sit down and watch together every weeknight. It wasn’t a soap programme like
‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’. It
wasn’t even a game show like ‘The Krypton Factor’. It was none of these; it was
a local news programme.
Television South – or TVS for short – made a programme called ‘Coast to
Coast’, it showed off the local news from the Kent area every weeknight at 6pm.
You also got to know all of the familiar faces like Mike Debens, Liz Wickham
and legendary weather reporter Ron Lobeck.
It was a programme you had to watch if you heard something good or bad happening
in the area. The BBC coverage for the area was not as well covered by TVS as
they have to cover the London area as well.
But when i heard that Coast to Coast was to be taken off the air due to
a franchise change at ITV, i felt very sad because it was a programme which i
was an avid viewer and gave me a small inspiration to hopefully one day work
for them. I remember one lesson in my primary school, the teacher asking ‘what
do you want to be when you grow up?’ I
put my hand up and said, ‘I want to work on television working for Coast to
Coast’.
But at the same time i was exciting as there are not many franchise
changes at ITV. It was big news at the time. So on the flip side of the coin; I
was excited about the possible changes which could be made to the area.
So for the final time, i sat down and watched the last programme. It
nice to see all of the familiar faces returning for one night and also remember
all of the it was good to see all of the big stories that have had happened in
the region and i felt it was a nice way to end the show especially with the
band of the royal marines band from Deal ending the show.
The night continued with TVS’s final programme, Goodbye to all that, coming
from Southampton. It was really interesting to see other programmes made my TVS
and a general reflection on how this company made programmes not only for the
south by for the ITV network and beyond.
At the end of the night and on the strike of Big Ben which saw in the New
Year. The new company took over. It was called Meridian and although it seemed
that there a few changes on screen, i was really hopeful that they can keep the
excellent news coverage which Coast to Coast had over the area since 1982.
Looking back at the programme now, it is weird to see how many people from
the programme and TVS have gone onto bigger and better things. Alan Rook – who read
the headlines at the start of the programme – was at one point Head of News at
ITV Central. Philip Hornby – who was the producer of the final Coast to Coast –
is now the political reporter for ITV Meridian. Oddly though, working as the
technical co-ordinator for the news programme was a gentleman by the name of ‘John
Seager’ how weird is that????
Looking back now, and seeing how this has changed me, i still remember
this night like yesterday. I feel that if i did not watching the programmes or
take a keen interest over this evening, i will not be in the position where i
am today. And i feel that looking back over the coverage of news since 1992/1993;
i feel that Coast to Coast was part of the ‘golden age’ of local news coverage.
I just hope we get something like this kind of programme again soon.
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