Welly Telly: When Wellingborough had its own television station

Curious British Telly had a post a couple of days ago on The Curious Tale of Bristol Channel, and that has led me to the blog Prodge's Views and the even more curious tale of Wellingborough Cablevision.

In 1972, Christopher Chataway, the minister of posts and telecommunications, announced plans for five local cable channels. They were to be in Bristol, Greenwich, Sheffield, Swindon and Wellingborough.

As Prodge's Views says, with admirable honesty:

What strikes me about Wellingborough's foray into this early broadcasting experiment is that the town certainly doesn't strike you as a media-savvy environment. It's an average-sized market town, dwarfed by at least two or three other places in the county. 

It would be understandable if its bigger brother, Northampton, had gone in for this venture, or at least Corby or Kettering.

Nevertheless, Wellingborough Cablevision - soon to be affectionately known as 'Welly Telly' - began to be piped into homes across the town on 24 March 1974. The people to see if you wanted to sign up for the service were Mobile Radio in Midland Road.

Prodge has been able to find little information on the station, though he does have a friend who remembers appearing on it live as part of a children's choir.

So let me do my bit for Welly Telly scholarship by quoting an article from The Stage (6 February 1975):

Wellingborough goes live 

At a time when the cable television experiment is going through a sticky patch the companies in both Greenwich and Bristol have expressed doubts as to whether they will be able to continue for much longer, even at reduced pressure, Cablevision (Wellingborough) Ltd at Wellingborough has increased its facilities to enable live programmes to be transmitted from its studio. 

The station, which began operating in March of last year, has 4,500 subscribing homes. Until recently it has been transmitting recorded programmes between 5.30 and 6.30 daily and repeating them at noon on the following day. From January 27, there has been a live transmission between 8 and 10 pm every Monday evening. 

A spokesman for Cablevision said this week, "We are now able to include live interviews and discussions in our Monday programming and this has added a lot of excitement to our work. All our programmes are planned and put on by groups in the community and the extra time and facilities will enable us to increase the scope of our productions. 

"We have a bye election coming up soon and we shall be able to make our first real contribution to the political scene on the previous Monday."

That by-election must have been for the local council, as there was no parliamentary contest in Wellingborough that year. And the station was to close on 24 March 1975 after exactly a year of broadcasting.

But keep your eyes open in the town. Prodge quotes one resident:

"If you know what you are looking for around Wellingborough, you can still see cables running along the walls of houses, just below the gutters, and a few booster amplifiers for the old 'piped TV' system.