Christa Ackroyd: Why Channel 4 could return Yorkshire broadcasting to its heyday

So much so that he was desperate to take it home with him. Not YTV of course, but the chevron. As his partner Kathryn Apanowicz responded ‘But Richard what on earth would we do with it?’ It would hardly have been appropriate to have had it erected on the roof of their beautiful listed cottage in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales. The national park planners would have had a complete nervous breakdown. But he would have if he could have, such is the passion shared by all of us who worked there about the family that was and still is, in our minds,Yorkshire Television.

This year YTV celebrates its 50th anniversary. Not that its owners ITV PLC plan to honour it with the fanfare it deserves, as I understand it. Well they should. To us it will never just be ITV Yorkshire.

Yorkshire Television was a world beater. Its programmes dominated the schedules. And never did this budding journalist growing up in that Bradford semi watching it on our Bradford-made Baird’s television, ever dare to dream she would one day walk through those hallowed revolving doors beneath that chevron and share a studio with the great late Richard Whiteley. Like so many of us I had grown up watching Richard on Calendar. Not that he liked to be reminded of that fact. Going back to YTV and walking through those doors and its impressive main reception with its trophy cabinets of Baftas and Emmys, it’s hard not to be transported back to its glory days when you walked down the endless maze of grey painted corridors lined with busy studios and teeming dressing rooms. On the walls were decades of photographs of programmes that had been made in Yorkshire but had entertained a nation. From Follyfoot to Flambards and the Flaxton Boys, Through the Keyhole to Bruce’s Price is Right and 321. Rising Damp to New Statesman and Duty Free... and of course almost all that remains of Emmerdale and Calendar. But it was not just entertainment that is worth remembering. Its documentaries broke hearts and changed minds. Hannah Hauxwell’s Too Long A Winter. Kitty Returns to Auschwitz and Johnny Go Home.

To think of the household names who have been in that building. Leonard Rossiter, Les Dawson, Whicker, Frost, Parkie et al. Not not to mention the international stars who trod those same corridors, Ingrid Bergman, Sir John Gielgud , Margaret Lockwood and Grace Kelly to name a few.

I was the Newsreader in New Statesman, a reporter in A Touch of Frost and I loved every minute of it. I will never forget coming back into the newsroom from makeup and telling my Calendar colleagues I had just sat next to Del Boy and the most beautiful girl I had truly every seen . They were of course David Jason and Catherine Zeta Jones creating the wonderful warm and fuzzy Darling Buds of May. Cos that’s how being at Yorkshire made you feel, warm and fuzzy and creative and buzzing . So why did I leave?

The answer is simple. After that Granada takeover in the late ‘90s its future and that of its regional news programme was far from secure. In fact at one time the whole of that iconic building on Kirkstall Road was threatened with closure. It was reprieved thank goodness but never the same. Now we could get back a little of the magic from those glory days for broadcasting on the right side of the Pennines. Forget Manchester and Media City, Channel 4 has announced Leeds is on the shortlist for the site of it new HQ. Manchester’s is as well but I am desperate for the Leeds bid to succeed and the broadcasting balance restored at least in the North of England. I also want it to rekindle the passion for innovative broadcasting pioneered by Yorkshire Television and to give impetus to those who aspire to making landmark television programmes as YTV once did. And there are many reasons why it would be natural new home for Channel 4. The first moving pictures were shot in Leeds. Bradford is the city of film and television. And

Richard Whiteley was the first voice on Channel 4 way back on its opening day so wouldn’t that be a fitting tribute if they came here? So the broadcasting Battle of the Roses has begun. The countdown is on. Let the fight commence. As Richard would have said, Christa if we win, now that would be terrific .