Thousands of Scots still insist on watching black and white TV sets

Published on Thursday 12 November 2009 21:22

IN AN age of digital broadcasting, high-definition and plasma screens, many people would think that the humble black and white television had long been consigned to the technological scrapheap.

But, more than 40 years after the BBC's first colour broadcast, figures released yesterday show that nearly 2,000 Scots still shun glorious Technicolor to watch programmes on a monochrome set.

The report, released by inspectors TV Licensing, shows that 28,000 people in the UK still hold a black and white television licence, with 5,500 monochrome licences in London, 1,300 in Birmingham and 1,000 in Manchester.

Glasgow has the highest concentration in Scotland, with 500 black and white sets, followed by Edinburgh on 200, 80 in Dundee, 70 in Aberdeen, 30 in both Paisley and Perth, and 25 in Inverness.

The figures suggest that owners of black and white sets are largely from less wealthy socio-economic groups. Anecdotal evidence also indicates that students and caravan owners make up a large portion of black and white licence-holders.

Michael Bennett-Levy, 62, owned a number of antique televisions at his Musselburgh home before selling them earlier this year.

He said: "Recently, I managed to hook up a 1938 black and white set to a digital box just to prove it could still be done.

"In this day and age, watching modern broadcasts in black and white is a very odd thing to do.

"It's useless for watching snooker or Wimbledon, but most of the people who still own a monochrome set only watch the news."

Iain Logie Baird, curator of television at the National Media Museum in Bradford and a grandson of John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of the television, said he believed colour television had an enormous social impact in the UK.

"The arrival of mass colour television was a technological breakthrough," he said.

"As more viewers made the switch, it gradually altered the effect of television as a medium, changing programme styles and viewers' perceptions." But with detector vans unable to distinguish between monochrome and colour sets, Mr Baird suspects there may be some black and white licence-holders dodging the full colour licence cost of 142.50. A black and white licence costs 48.

"There are possibly a few people who are not being entirely honest by paying for a monochrome licence when they are watching a colour TV."

A spokeswoman for TV Licensing said: "We have prosecuted people for watching colour television when they only own a black and white licence.

"However, the vast majority of people are honest and, as there are just 28,000 black and white licences in force and this figure is declining, this is not something we often encounter."

The first colour TV broadcasts began in 1967 on BBC2 and in November 1969 on BBC1 and ITV. The sitcom Dad's Army was among the first programmes to be broadcast in colour and Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike in the series, recalled the first time he saw himself in the new medium.

He said: "I remember we bought our first colour television set to watch the third series of Dad's Army, which had been recorded in colour.

"I was also the first actor to be killed by a colour TV set on colour TV in Z Cars, when a robbery went wrong and the TV set was dropped on me from a great height by Nicholas Jones."