26th July 1976

Channel Television switches to colour

Channel Television switched from black and white to colour broadcasts in 1976, with a party in a tent beside its transmitter on Jersey’s Freemont Point. It had taken a long time and much discussion for the technicians to work out how to transmit the signals without causing interference to neighbouring networks, on account of the power that their own transmitter would need to put out. In the end, they settled on installing a SABRE aerial in Alderney, developed specifically by IBA engineers. This relayed colour broadcasts from Stockland Hill in Devon, and thus completed the “colourisation” of the UK’s independent television network.