Updates

• You can also view a log of all changes to the site, but it's very boring. Much better to read the text below.

This site is updated sporadically!

Time and Tune guide begun

20th August 2010: A new page about the BBC school radio series Time and Tune, which has been running for almost 60 years with over 1,300 episodes. There is a complete term-by-term overview of the entire series, and more details about each term will be added later.

• 21st August 2010: Detailed guides to the Time and Tune units Hassebu, Flight and Over the Moon.
• 23rd August 2010: Guides to the Time and Tune units The Magic Music Shop and Sleeping Beauty.
• 28th August 2010: A guide to the Time and Tune unit Alvida and the Magician's Cape.
• 29th August 2010: Guides to Time and Tune's two adaptations of the same story: Scenes from The Wind in the Willows (1986) and The Wind in the Willows (2003).

Autumn 2010

9th August 2010: A preview of schools broadcasts next term, including (exclusively!) full broadcast dates, but few details about the actual programmes yet. The preview will be updated as more details become available.

The schedules from summer 2010 are still not on the site, but will be added soon.

Le Butin de Colombert

5th August 2010: Le Butin de Colombert (The Colombert Booty) was a French-language thriller serial for secondary schools in the early 1970s - the first and only such series made by Thames Television.

This site now has a full account of the series, including the full plot from beginning to end.

The mysterious Magic Grandad

23rd July 2010: I think I have finally identified the mysterious sixth actor to have played Magic Grandad.

Geoff Leesley provided the character's voice in the CD-Roms and E Big Book classroom resources, and I believe the same actor appears in photographs throughout the electronic resources. If you can confirm or deny, please get in touch!

Autumn 1972 Schedule

21st July 2010: A complete guide to the schools TV and radio schedules from autumn 1972, including pretty much all regional variations.

Plus a full explanation of why many of the promised ITV schools programmes failed to be broadcast this term!

Use your imagination, jump Over the Moon

19th July 2010: A guide to the BBC Scotland infants series that conquered the whole of the UK in the 1990s.

Over the Moon with Mr Boom, about a one-man-band living on the moon, observing life on Earth and singing Scottish folk songs, will celebrate its 20th anniversary later this year.

It's Fun to Read

3rd May 2010: Meet Bill and Penelope, stars of the 1970s learn-to-read series It's Fun to Read, from Granada Television. This site's new page about the series includes full details of all the episodes, all of the tie-in books, and all of the broadcasts in the 1970s (when it was brought back by popular demand) and the 1990s.

Schools broadcasting in wartime

2nd May 2010: an in-depth look at the schedules for autumn term 1939, when Britain went to war with Germany. Including all of the originally planned schedules which were torn up when war was declared, as well as the real schedules which went out that term, and several of the pamphlets which were never officially published. Autumn 1939 saw the start of the tremendously long-running series Singing Together, it was the first time that schools programmes were broadcast multiple times during the same week, and marked the return of Walford Davies to school radio.

Schedules up to date

4th April 2010: Schedules section brought up to date with detailed grids & notes...

• Autumn 2009 - the last term with regular schools programmes on Channel 4.

• Spring 2010 - the last term with daytime schools programmes on BBC 2.

With all these services now ended, future Schedule pages will be quite sparse. All that's left is the BBC Learning Zone, which I'm told will continue with just 8 hours per week for all of the BBC's programmes for primary schools, secondary schools and home learners; BBC school radio which is scaling back to just 6 hours per week in the summer term; and any continuing Scottish Gaelic programmes. Teachers' TV programmes are not covered here because I just can't understand their weird scheduling.

Good news though, that means I can concentrate on putting more historical schedules on this site in the future!

Tiki tiki tox, it's Maths-in-a-Box!

8th November 2009: A full guide to the BBC's infant maths series Maths-in-a-Box from the early 1980s. Two children meet a "leprechaun-like creature" called Powka, who travels around in a small magic box, and teach him and his computer all about basic maths.

August/September/October 2009: Summer schedules

Over the coming weeks the Schedules section will be updated and expanded with new schedules and updates to existing ones.

• 25th October: Summer 2001 added. That completes the latest complete batch of summer terms from each decade!

• 20th October: Summer 1971 updated with further notes and pictures, ATV Midlands schedules, and Out of School details for both ITV and the BBC.
  Also: Summer 2009 completely updated to show the schedule-as-broadcast (previously the page had the planned schedules announced before the start of term) for all major channels with full notes. Autumn 2009 will be up here soon.

• 18th October: Summer 1941 added.

• 17th October: Summer 1971 added.

• 27th September: Summer 1991 added.

• 31st August: Summer 1951 added.

• 26th August: Summer 1961 added.

• 19th August: Summer 1981 added.

• 15th August: Autumn 1958 updated with more programme details and full notes.
• also 15th August: The BBC have removed loads of Magic Grandad clips from their Learning Zone Broadband streaming video service. There is a basic explanation on the Toys and Famous People 2 pages.

• 10th August: Summer 1931 added.

• 8th August: Autumn 1978 and Spring 1984 updated with more programme details & whole new grids.

• 2nd August: Spring 1944 updated with images of the very rare BBC schools pamphlets published under wartime economy.
  Many other schedules already on the site have been updated with extra programme information and some new images, and where relevant even more ITV regional schedule variations - autumn 1938, spring 1944, autumn 1948, spring 1954, spring 1964, autumn 1968, spring 1974 and autumn 1978 have all been updated today.

July 2009: Programme updates

This site has now moved to broadcastforschools.co.uk - I have proper control over it again so there can be new updates with pictures, and proper backups are taken so it hopefully won't ever fall offline again!

There should be lots of updates and new pages about schools TV, and possibly radio, series this month.

• Update 2nd August: OK, actually there weren't very many programme updates at all, but the big Magic Grandad section which was added is pretty good (but not quite finished). Next there will be more new and updated schedules.

• 7th July: A whole brand new section about the infant history series Magic Grandad, part of Watch. These pages cover all six incarnations (yes, 6) of Magic Grandad to date, including the brand new series which was first shown a couple of weeks ago. Every episode is covered and, shortly, all of the Big Books, CD-ROMs and other resources will be too. The resources and broadcasts sections will be filled out over the next few days.
  

• 2nd July: La Chasse au Trésor page updated with several new photographs, including one of the production crew on location.

February/March 2009: Schedules updates

I am rebuilding and expanding the schedules section. These are schedules for all schools broadcasts in a particular school term, throughout all of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales, mostly presented in nice colourful grids! Unfortunately I can't add any pictures yet.

• 26th March: some early details for Summer 2009 now available. This page will be updated over the next few weeks as more information becomes available.
• 8th March: added spring 2004 and updated spring 2009 to the end of term.
  That completes the current Schedules project for the site, as we now have a complete set of schools TV & radio schedules for every spring 'x4 term and autumn 'x8 term since schools broadcasting began in Britain 85 years ago (except for spring 1924, which isn't worth doing as there was only 1 unscheduled, experimental programme which will be covered elsewhere). There will be another Schedules project later in the year, but for now I will go back to adding coverage of individual schools TV & radio series.

• 22nd February: added spring 1984
• 15th February: added spring 1964 and spring 1974. 1974 is most extensive and comprehensive schedule on the site yet, with complete regional information!
• 8th February: (almost) all of the termly schedule pages now have pictures of pamphlets which accompanied the term's broadcasts. These set the scene for the historical schedules very nicely, I think.
• 5th February: added spring 1944, spring 1954 and spring 2009
• 3rd February: restored autumn 1978, autumn 1988, spring 1994, autumn 1998 and autumn 2008
• 1st February: restored autumn 1928, spring 1934, autumn 1938, autumn 1948, autumn 1958 and autumn 1968

January 2009: Words and Pictures again

The site disappeared from the web on 13th January 2009, I don't really know why (or at least I can't say why at the moment). It is now back but using an old backup from last year. I am trying to rewrite everything that was lost, then add more new stuff. I am still unable to add pictures to the site.

Coverage is now available (again) of the long-running BBC series Words and Pictures. It was a companion to Look and Read for younger children, beginning in 1970 with Up in the Attic, followed by the fondly remembered story of Sam on Boffs' Island. Both of these are covered in great detail. There is also an outline of the rest of the series, with presenters including Henry Woolf, Vicky Ireland, Sophie Aldred, the little man Charlie, and the famous Magic Pencil - full details of all these later programmes will be filled in at some point. Words and Pictures, with a new format, is still running on BBC2 and Cbeebies today.

The following updates were lost when the site got knackered:

22nd August 2008

There haven't been many updates recently, I have been having terrible problems with the hosting, and also having a summer break. There will be some nice updates starting from September all being well. There is a list on the right of programmes I am working on which should be on the cards for the autumn.

On TV in autumn 2008 there will be another chance to see the Look and Read story Shadow Play on BBC 2 in November.

24th February 2008

Two French-language mystery serials from the 1960s, one made by the BBC and the other by ITV. The pages are written entirely in English and translations are given for the slightest bit of French!

• La Chasse au Trésor
• Le Mystère de Valbec

25th November 2007

This website is all about schools broadcasting - programmes on the TV and radio to be used in schools. It is only about programmes in Britain at the moment. That is still a massive area with over 80 years of history, and it has to start somewhere.

So this website starts with covering the very long-running and popular BBC series Look and Read. It is based on my old website about the same programme, www.lookandread.myby.co.uk, which went for years and years but got shut down in 2007. But this new website has loads of new content that the old site never had. If you want to see what, just start reading about the first Look and Read story, Bob and Carol Look for Treasure and keep going.

There is also lots of information about the Merry Go Round stories from the 1960s which led to the creation of Look and Read.

(A tip about how this website works - if you click on a picture you will just get a bigger version of that picture. To find out about it, you have to click on the text links near to a picture, like the picture above is about the story Tom, Pat and Friday.)

Before Look and Read there was another schools TV series showing exciting dramatised stories to children to encourage them to learn. This series was called Television Club and there is full coverage of the early years of that programme on this site now. I will fill in details about the later years as soon as I can. Before Television Club there was Friday Magazine and before that there was the radio series The Jacksons - both are also covered in depth on this site.

But the BBC weren't the only ones making schools programmes, ITV have been very productive too. And starting at the very beginning, this site has full coverage of the first ever ITV schools programme in London, Looking and Seeing (after which this site is named!), as well as the first ever ITV schools programme in the North of England, Discovery. The reason for the different programmes in different parts of the country is explained on the Discovery page.

Finally, for now, I have started a section about one of the highest-profile BBC schools series, Scene, which has presented some absolutely remarkable plays and documentaries over nearly 40 years. For now all the Scene page really has is a list of all the episodes (over 300 of them!) but in time I hope to cover the individual programmes in detail.

For a list of all the main series currently covered on this site, visit the list of all series link. And please explore because there are lots more pages about individual stories and units of programmes within each series as well.

This website is only just beginning, there are loads and loads more schools programmes I want to cover. If you are able to help with any material - books, articles, pictures, programmes, memories or just information - I would be very pleased to hear from you, please get in touch.

- Ben Clarke (this is my website!)
lookandread@gmail.com