According to the Kaleidoscope children's guide, there had been no archive representation of Magic Circle at all before these recordings were discovered.
5:47 - 1977: Unknown ATV announcer provides continuity by giving details of Midweek Racing results over a static slide after a children's television programme. 1987: Tommy Boyd, Marmalade Atkins, the cast of No. 73, or Rod Hull and Emu providing the continuity in a child-friendly studio after a children's television programme. I'll go for 1987. Amazing how children's television continuity changed in ten years.
5:40 It's interesting that as early as 1977, the HTV endcap did not have the words "colour production" on it, which to me feels ahead of its time - perhaps HTV was the first ITV company to remove that wording from its endcaps? LWT stopped doing that in 1986 when the "blinds" era was introduced - Granada stopped in around 1986 as well, and Thames was the last company to do so in early 1989. Just looked on TV Ark and they did use "colour production" at some point, but it was removed by MCMLXXVI (1976).
Westward and Scottish had also got rid of 'Colour Production' by about 1980, way before others. I think with HTV it may be more that they never had it in the first place? There is an undated slide knocking around with 'Colour Production' on it but it looks suspiciously like a mock.
Yes, I know that YTV stopped using the word "colour" on their end idents at the end of 1981 when ATV and Southern went off air, and YTV had a bigger and more yellower chevron logo, and no longer part of Trident TV. Tyne Tees had the word "colour" but not the word "production" - the same as Grampian, and to a lesser extent, Border. And of course, Granada either had both words on its ident or neither of them after 1986. I assume that Westward had stopped using the word "colour" a few months before the news that TSW was to replace them.
The Magic Circle was probably from 1977 but the Magpie clip was from 1974. I remember this one very clearly from that time as I was interested in TV special effrects. I remember at the end Susan Stranks who introduced that item, announced that the next show would be her last and I remember she left in 1974.
Haha and then she went on to present Paper play with itsy and bitsy the spiders! God looking back at that you never realised until you're older just how irritating the spiders' voices were!
I wasn't a huge Magpie watcher, but they must have shown repeats or compilations over the summer. The original broadcast could have been from April and the reference to the elections the 1977 local elections.
What about the actual content of the programme, would we see Dr Frankenstein getting hurled out of a window by the monster he cracked a chair over, smashed a bottle over and shot in modern children's TV?
