On this day 1952: First Scots TV show broadcast

ON THIS day in 1952, the first TV programme to be broadcast in Scotland showed the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society performing the Duke of Edinburgh Reel.

The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society perform. Picture: TSPL

This day would be beginning of television as we now know it in Scotland. The programme was broadcast from the Kirk o’Shotts transmitter, using the 405-line television system.

Full service began on the 17 August of the same year and remained black and white until colour broadcasting began in 1971 when then BBC Scotland’s studios were upgraded.

The programme itself was celebrating the opening of the Kirk o’ Shotts station in Lanarkshire and was filmed in Studio 1 of Edinburgh’s Broadcasting House.

Television control room at Kirk o'Shotts. Picture: TSPL

The voices that narrated the evening’s events to the viewers were Mary Malcolm and Alastair MacIntyre.

The programme must have been truly wondrous for those lucky enough to watch it.

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