The Land

	Secondary Science
	BBC Schools Radio
	1976-1989
	Science

	The English Programme
	ITV Schools
	1976-2008
	English

	Music: GCSE Assignments
	BBC Schools Radio
	1989-1990
	Music

📺ITV Schools

companyGranada

started22nd Sep 1975

ended22nd Mar 1976

last rpt26th Jun 1985

10 school years

episodes20

duration20 mins

subject 🌏Geography

age rangeAge 14-17Age 13-16 & Age 16-19

languageenIn English

3 images from The Land

The Land is an ITV schools TV series from the 1970s and 1980s, covering geography for secondary school and further education students.

A geography series for GCE O-level and CSE students looking at specific areas of the physical landscape of Britain and man's interaction with it.

The series was influenced by the "new geography" teaching of the 1970s, about "the relationships between one region and another"^[1] and their shared characteristics, and human interaction with them, informed by the development of infrastructure and links to urban hubs - rather than isolated studies of a single region as if it was the only place that, for example, dairy farming ever took place.

For this reason the broadcast order of the episodes into units is arranged thematically around four types of area - sea coast, mountains, uplands and river valleys. Teachers seeking a more geographically-aligned study were encouraged to record the programmes and show them to their class in the order that suited them.^[2]

Widespread areas of the UK are covered - by no means only local to the Granada Television area - and there are six programmes looking at areas in Scotland and four looking at Wales.

The series' major innovation as a schools' resource in 1975 is that it features extensive location footage, and in particular aerial photography taken by helicopter. But this was at first its undoing. Originally planned to be broadcast in 1974, the national fuel crisis in 1973-74 made it impossible to complete the planned aerial photography, and so the entire series was postponed by a year.^[3]

Once they were completed, the full set of 20 films had a long life and much repeat-ability^[4], broadcast consistently for almost a decade and taking them well into the 1980s. From 1981 the series continued to be repeated but reduced to one term per year, with a set of 10 episodes selected from across all four units.

Filming The Land on location (but in this picture at least not by helicopter)

Episodes

The series was shown first locally in the Granada region, as detailed in the Broadcasts section below, and then across the ITV network two days later. These dates are for the initial, local broadcasts by Granada.

#	Title	Broadcast
The Sea Coast
1.	The Lizard and Land's End	#1975-09-22-00-00-0022 Sep 1975
2.	South Pembrokeshire	#1975-09-29-00-00-0029 Sep 1975
3.	Aldeburgh and Orford Ness	#1975-10-06-00-00-006 Oct 1975
4.	The South Lancashire Coast	#1975-10-13-00-00-0013 Oct 1975
5.	The Culbin Sands	#1975-10-20-00-00-0020 Oct 1975
Mountains
6.	The Cairngorns	#1975-11-03-00-00-003 Nov 1975
7.	The North-West Highlands	#1975-11-10-00-00-0010 Nov 1975
8.	Snowdonia	#1975-11-17-00-00-0017 Nov 1975
9.	The Cumbrian Lake District	#1975-11-24-00-00-0024 Nov 1975
10.	The Northern Pennines	#1975-12-01-00-00-001 Dec 1975
Uplands
11.	The Peak District and Sheffield	#1976-01-12-00-00-0012 Jan 1976
12.	Dartmoor	#1976-01-19-00-00-0019 Jan 1976
13.	The Brecon Beacons	#1976-01-26-00-00-0026 Jan 1976
14.	The South Downs	#1976-02-02-00-00-002 Feb 1976*
15.	The Isle of Skye	#1976-02-09-00-00-009 Feb 1976
River Valleys
16.	The River Dee in Scotland	#1976-02-23-00-00-0023 Feb 1976
17.	The Tweed Valley	#1976-03-01-00-00-001 Mar 1976
18.	The Middle Trent	#1976-03-08-00-00-008 Mar 1976
19.	The Tyne Valley	#1976-03-15-00-00-0015 Mar 1976
20.	The River Dee in Wales	#1976-03-22-00-00-0022 Mar 1976

* - The South Downs was previewed in an Out of School programme at around 10:10am on Wednesday 31st December 1975.^[5]

Broadcasts

Year	Term	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Channel	Details
1975-76	Autumn 1975 & Spring 1976	Monday, 10:35am		Wednesday, 11:39am		Friday, 9:48am	ITV	Mon Granada only
1976-77	Autumn 1976 & Spring 1977	Monday, 10:40am		Wednesday, 11:39am		Friday, 10:30am	ITV	Mon Granada only
1977-78	Autumn 1977 & Spring 1978	Monday, 10:09am		Wednesday, 10:31am		Friday, 10:30am	ITV	Wed Granada only^[6]
1978-79	Autumn 1978 & Spring 1979	Monday, 10:30am	Tuesday, 11:39am				ITV	Mon Granada only
1979-80	Autumn 1979 & Spring 1980		Tuesday, 11:39am	Wednesday, 10:33am			ITV	Wed Granada only.*
1980-81	Autumn 1980 & Spring 1981	Monday, 10:40am	Tuesday, 10:26am				ITV	Mon Granada only
1981-82	Autumn 1981				Thursday, 10:26am	Friday, 11:34am	ITV	Fri Granada only
1982-83	Autumn 1982		Tuesday, 10:21am				ITV
1982-83	Summer 1983					Friday, 9:30am	ITV
1983-84	Autumn 1983					Friday, 11:39am	ITV
1984-85	Summer 1985			Wednesday, 10:48am			ITV

* - Due to the long ITV strike the first unit, on The Sea Coast, was not shown. Granada Television locally showed extra episodes of The Land on Thursdays at 10:45am in December after the end of the school term.

Summer School

The Land was also broadcast as a Summer School programme for a general audience during the 1977 school summer holidays, on Tuesday mornings at 9:30am.

Some episodes were due to be shown again as part of a similar Summer Break line-up in summer 1979, taking over from It's More Life on Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:45am from 29th August (curiously in a 15 minute timeslot although The Land films are 20 minutes long). However the long ITV strike which started on 10th August and lasted until October meant that these broadcasts never took place.

An advert aimed at geography teachers about the 1977-78 broadcasts

Credits

Presenter	Bill Grundy
Adviser	Michael Williams
Camera	John Shann
Sound	Richard Laughton
Dubbing Mixer	John Whitworth
Graphic Designer	Ian Scaife
Rostrum Camera	Howard Phillips
Helicopter Pilot	Terry Dixon
Researcher	Marian Nelson
Film Editor	David Rees
Director	Richard Guinea
Producer	Julia Spark

Resources

A booklet of teacher's notes was available to accompany the broadcasts.

Originally in 1975 a pair of booklets was sold, one for each term costing 22p each. From 1976 onwards the notes were combined into a single publication covering the whole year. In 1976 this was sold for 50p.

The notes contained descriptions of the programmes, suggestions for follow-up work and maps and diagrams including the locations of the filming, although one geography teacher reviewing the series raised a complaint that many geography students must have shared during their years at school - that the locations "were sometimes difficult to find without [Ordnance Survey] maps"!^[7]

Sources & References

Independent Television Authority Annual Reports and Accounts, 1975-1983
ITV Schools Annual Programme catalogues, 1975-83
Jones, Christopher (1975a) 'Educational Broadcasting: IBA' in Visual Education August/September 1975. p.10.
Jones, Christopher (1975b) 'Educational Broadcasting: IBA' in Visual Education December 1975. p.10.
Littler, Margaret & Huggins, Graham (1978) 'The Granada TV series 'The Land' - Two Viewpoints' in Teaching Geography vol. 4 no. 1, July 1978, p.45. Geographical Association. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23750085
Thomas, P.R. (1970) 'Education and the New Geography' in Geography vol. 55 no. 3, July 1970. pp.274-280. Geographical Association. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40567272
TV Times television listings, 1975-83, including London editions via TV Times Project database
Weltman, Joseph (1978) 21 Years of Independent Television for Schools, 1957 to 1978 as published with Independent Broadcasting no 16, May 1978, London: IBA
Williams, Michael (1978) 'Schools' Television: Viewing 'The Land'' in Teaching Geography vol. 3 no. 3, January 1978, pp.130-131. Geographical Association https://www.jstor.org/stable/23750218

With thanks to Simon Collins.

↑ Thomas (1970) p.275 talks about the "new geography" as "the key to understanding in geography no longer lies in the appreciation of the unique region, but in the study of the relationships between one region and another," and goes on to focus on quantitative methods. Jones (1975a) p.10 quotes the series adviser Michael Williams defining "new geography" by reflecting that "geographical problems ought to start from the reality of interpreting the environment. This requires careful observation and consideration of the processes which could have produced it, an apparently simple exercise which gives considerable scope for hypothesis testing."
↑ The ITV Schools Annual Programme guide for 1979-80 (Thames edition, p.31) advised of the series that "Schools which have a video recorder may choose to record and regroup the programmes into regional units."
↑ Jones (1975a) explains that "The last new series to be mentioned was postponed from 1974. Filming of The Land (for the age-range 14-17) was threatened last year by the fuel crisis. This term viewers of the series will be able to realise just how much territory the film unit covered within the comparatively narrow confines of the British Isles."
↑ Weltman (1978) p.20 said of The Land, "these quite outstanding location studies making skilful use of aerial photography in a wide variety of different regions have justified numerous repeat showings."
↑ The precise episode of The Land included in Out of School on 31st December 1975 was not specified in the TV Times listings, but details were confirmed in Jones (1975b) p.10 - although he described The South Downs as "the last programme of Unit Three on Uplands" when it was actually broadcast as the penultimate episode..
↑ The IBA Annual Report 1977-78 p.91 lists additional broadcasts during autumn 1977 on Tuesdays, at 9:29am nationally and 10:43am locally. In spring 1978 it (ibid p.92) lists additional local broadcasts on Tuesdays at 10:43am. I can find no trace of any Tuesday broadcasts in the London, Granada, Yorkshire, Anglia or Southern region TV Times listings, so they may have taken place in a particular region, but not those.
↑ Margaret Littler's review of the series in 1978 mentioned that "Filming locations which were given in the text were sometimes difficult to find without O.S. maps."

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Physical geography

Geography of the UK

Geography of England

Geography of Scotland

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[1] Thomas (1970) p.275 talks about the "new geography" as "the key to understanding in geography no longer lies in the appreciation of the unique region, but in the study of the relationships between one region and another," and goes on to focus on quantitative methods. Jones (1975a) p.10 quotes the series adviser Michael Williams defining "new geography" by reflecting that "geographical problems ought to start from the reality of interpreting the environment. This requires careful observation and consideration of the processes which could have produced it, an apparently simple exercise which gives considerable scope for hypothesis testing."

[2] The ITV Schools Annual Programme guide for 1979-80 (Thames edition, p.31) advised of the series that "Schools which have a video recorder may choose to record and regroup the programmes into regional units."

[3] Jones (1975a) explains that "The last new series to be mentioned was postponed from 1974. Filming of The Land (for the age-range 14-17) was threatened last year by the fuel crisis. This term viewers of the series will be able to realise just how much territory the film unit covered within the comparatively narrow confines of the British Isles."

[4] Weltman (1978) p.20 said of The Land, "these quite outstanding location studies making skilful use of aerial photography in a wide variety of different regions have justified numerous repeat showings."

[5] The precise episode of The Land included in Out of School on 31st December 1975 was not specified in the TV Times listings, but details were confirmed in Jones (1975b) p.10 - although he described The South Downs as "the last programme of Unit Three on Uplands" when it was actually broadcast as the penultimate episode..

[6] The IBA Annual Report 1977-78 p.91 lists additional broadcasts during autumn 1977 on Tuesdays, at 9:29am nationally and 10:43am locally. In spring 1978 it (ibid p.92) lists additional local broadcasts on Tuesdays at 10:43am. I can find no trace of any Tuesday broadcasts in the London, Granada, Yorkshire, Anglia or Southern region TV Times listings, so they may have taken place in a particular region, but not those.

[7] Margaret Littler's review of the series in 1978 mentioned that "Filming locations which were given in the text were sometimes difficult to find without O.S. maps."

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