OTD in early British television: 20 August 1937
John Wyver writes: Somewhat distracted today, so only a very brief and late OTD. The afternoon of Friday 20 August 1937 saw a ‘local OB’ from Alexandra Park titled Sheepdog Trial. Billed as ‘a demonstration of canine intelligence’, the 20-minute broadcast produced by Moultrie Kelsall featured Percy Watson, his four dogs and ten sheep. Like all such ‘local OBs’ this was realised by taking one or more cabled Emitron cameras out of the studio and operating them in the nearby parkland.
Nearly 40 years later the popular One Man and His Dog, with Phil Drabble, started on BBC2, and ran from February 1976 until it became an annual edition of Countryfile in 2013. The header image is from the title sequence of the 1978 series. File under ‘nothing new’, ‘sun’, etc.
Incidentally, today’s distractions include the campaign against the service changes to access at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre in Caversham. For more on this, and for the chance to add your support to the open letter of concern, please go to https://tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign.
[OTD post no. 246; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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