Tea-V Time

Overview and content

The debut programme for Tea-V Time, called What You Will See, laid out the schedule for the strand starting the week of 26 September. Each day had a different audience. Monday’s Venture targeted boys aged 9 to 15. Tuesday’s Elizabethan Fanfare was for girls aged 9 to 15, with interviews, half-hour plays, behind-the-scenes looks at theatre and ballet, and a monthly disk-jockey show. Wednesday’s Telebox was for all ages, including parents, and featured a serial, cartoons, slapstick comedy, and musician Nat Temple. Thursday’s Flickwiz was for teenagers, showing Hopalong Cassidy episodes, a quiz, and a contest where children wrote a play’s ending that was later broadcast. Friday’s Bubble and Squeak was for children aged 5 to 9, with cartoons, plays, and occasional pet programmes. To set itself apart from the BBC, which called its audience “children,” Associated-Rediffusion used the term “boys and girls.” The press noted that the first programme seemed aimed at a more “adult” audience than the BBC’s rival strand, but also planned to involve children more actively, as seen in previews of Flickwiz and Bubble and Squeak. The strand later aired on Associated Television’s Midlands weekday service when it launched the following year. By April 1956, Bubble and Squeak had moved to Tuesdays, replacing Elizabethan Fanfare, and a new Friday strand called Friday Fare was added. Tea-V Time probably ended because of the 1956 ITV cash crisis, which mainly hit the Morning Magazine strand that included Small Time, causing ITV to focus on programming after 5pm. Finances improved soon after, leading to new children’s shows, but the Tea-V Time name was gone by June 1956.