22nd SEPTEMBER 1955!

HERE is TV Times No. 1 — a new paper heralding the opening of a sparkling new era in home entertainment.

Television is at last given the real freedom of the air. The event is comparable with the abolition of the law that kept motor-cars chugging sedately behind a man carrying a red flag.

Now it’s the “go” signal, the green light for TV, too — with no brake on enterprise and imagination.

So far, television in this country has been a monopoly restricted by limited finance, and often, or so it has seemed, restricted by a lofty attitude towards the wishes of viewers by those in control.

That situation now undergoes a great and dramatic change. Viewers will no longer have to accept what has been deemed best for them. They will be able to pick and choose.

And the new Independent TV programme planners aim at giving viewers what viewers want — at the times viewers want it.

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Standards will be raised by this new competitive spirit — with new opportunities for artistes, for writers and producers, and for technicians.

Famous showmen like Jack Hylton and Val Parnell will present on the television screen, as they now do on the stage, the highest paid stars of this and other nations. Such programmes will bring all the star quality of Command Performances into your home.

Also Independent TV really is… independent. It is independent of the advertising techniques used in America. Advertisements fit into the new British TV programmes just as they do into the pages of our newspapers and magazines. They will not detract from your pleasure. Indeed, they will enhance it by combining information with entertainment.

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So this, then, is the exciting prospect which comes with the advent of the new TV. And at a cost to a viewer of no more than the initial expense of converting or renewing the set and aerial already at home.

TV Times, official programme paper of Independent TV, will be your guide to better viewing. Each Friday TV Times will publish exclusively full details of the programmes for the week ahead. It will also be packed with stories and photo graphs of your TV favourites.

In this, our first issue, we extend a warm welcome to readers, and we confidently believe that as the new television grows into a nation-wide service TV Times will become a friend welcomed every week in increasing millions of homes.