In message , Brian Lawrence
writes
"Jim Burns" wrote:

From Robert Law, over at Yahoo Group's Inside_KSC,
), here's an interesting look at the history
of England's coverage of America's space program.... Jim Burns
____

During the Apollo Program hear in the UK we only had 2 TV stations BBC
and ITV both provided coverage

The BBC had two channels from 1964.

[snipped most of the inaccurate guff]

During the coverage of the
Apollo 8 mission in 1968 at the most critical moment when the astronauts
where about to fire the SPS for the journey home the BBC cut the program
to show Play School !

Since the TEI burn started at 06:10 GMT and AOS followed at 06:25 there would
have been no scheduled programs at that time - certainly not Play School,
which was usually aired at 13:00 on BBC 1 and at 16:20 on BBC 2. The event
happened on Christmas Day too, so schedules might have been different.
However, back then programs didn't usually start until later in the day -
there were no Breakfast shows.


The details may be incorrect, but something like that certainly happened
because I still recall my anger at the BBC switching from news coverage
to children's programmes.
And I can post a link to prove it :-) (did a search for Jackanory +
"Apollo 8"
http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/three_transcript_p4.html).
I still recall being annoyed by the BBC presenters scrawling over live
pictures from space with some sort of "light pen", and by the fact that
most of the coverage was apparently just an excuse for James Burke to
crawl inside various mock-ups.
OTOH, I recall being absolutely enthralled by coverage of one of the
returning LMs (perhaps Apollo 12 or 14, can't recall) as it grew from a
speck against the lunar landscape sweeping past to a real object with
visible astronauts inside. "2001" may well have still being playing in
cinemas - films had long runs then - but here it was live and real on
TV!
--
Boycott whale killers - Japan, Iceland, Norway
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