Search Individual media Reference department
Quotations department Media department Reference department
< previous | next >
1971 Chronokey Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references.


links and notes
  Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year  
January 2  Cigarette advertising ban begins on US television, deferred for one day because of the Super Bowl broadcasts the previous day. CBS and ABC networks say the ban has resulted in a 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue. Lost revenue is independently estimated at $220m. Under the Fairness Doctrine, anti-smoking advertising is also removed from the air.  
January 3, 11:00  First UK Open University broadcast—Introduction to Mathematics. Regular programmes begin a week later.  > 1973
January 18  CRTC regulation comes into force requiring 30 per cent of music played on AM radio stations in Canada to be Canadian.  
January 21  New transmitter at Emley Moor, Yorkshire comes into operation. A reinforced concrete tower, designed by Ove Arup and Partners, at 1,268 feet high it is the third tallest free-standing structure in Europe.  
February 1  UK radio only receiving licence abolished; BBC funding now comes entirely from television licence fees. > February 15
Radio licence fee
February 15  UK Postmaster General (PMG) Christopher Chatway announces that the television licence fee will increase by £1 from 1 July and that the levy on ITV earnings from advertising is to be halved. This is also the day on which the UK switched to decimal currency. > July 1
early  Radio Monte Carlo International begins broadcasting pop music programmes to the UK after midnight on Fridays to Sundays, soon extended to seven nights week, but the scheme is abandoned after three months due to lack of revenue.  
March 29  UK government White Paper An Alternative Service of Broadcasting outlines plans for a network of 60 commercial local radio stations.  
April 19-23  First International Cartridge TV, Videocassette and Videodisc Conference (VIDCA) organised by American Billboard publications and attended by over 600 commercial representatives is held at Cannes, France.  
May 15  Radio Nordsee International's ship, Mebo 2, is fire-bombed in an attack allegedly organised by rival Radio Veronica.  
May  Associated Newspaper’s UK newspaper Daily Sketch is merged into its stablemate Daily Mail, which relaunches as a tabloid.  
July 1  UK television licence fee is increased by £1 to £7 monochrome and £12 colour. > 1975
September 5  Canada's first French-language private television network, Les Télédiffuseurs Associés, opens with member stations in Montréal, Québec City and Chicoutimi.  
October 1  Disneyworld amusement theme park opens in Florida.  
October  Sony, Matsushita and JVC announce 3/4-inch U-matic cassette format for colour video recording.  
October 26  JVC announces its first U-format video recorders.  
October 28  First British satellite, Prospero, is launched.  
November 8  All testimony in McCall v. Clemens at Erie County Court of Common Pleas in US is pre-recorded on videotape.  
November 29  Corruption at ORTF, the French state-controlled broadcasting monopoly, is exposed by the chairman of the Senate Finance Commission on Information, André Diligent. > 1974
December 17  Radio Bangladesh goes on air, the day after the country's Victory Day.  
December 23  CBS announces its withdrawal from the EVR Partnership.  
December  Sterling Communications’ Manhattan Cable and systems on Long Island lose $2.5m during the year.  
•  UK’s new National Film School is established at Beaconsfield Studios, which are bought for £225,000.  
•  This is the first year since 1949 when no country establishes a television service, showing the extent to which the medium has now spread. Television service start dates
•  Matsushita begins work on a high definition television (HDTV) monitor for NHK.  
•  Australian Film Development Corporation is established.  
•  First feature film in Upper Volta (=Burkina Faso): Le Sang des Parias, directed by Mamadou Djimkola.  
•  JVC markets the U-format video system based on Sony’s three-quarter-inch standard.  
•  Committee of representatives from Ampex, EECO, Advertel and Central Dynamics meet and agree to adopt a standard electronic edge numbering system for computerised video editing (implemented April 1975).  
•  Computer technology is first applied to video editing by CMX Inc. of the US.  
•  Electronic Kitchen opens in New York as first permanent space to provide screening of new video work.  
•  National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures and National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission withdraw support from MPAA film rating system.  
•  Dennis Gabor receives the Nobel Prize for Physics in recognition of his work on lasers and holography.  
•  FCC relaxes regulations limiting cable television in the US.  
•  Cigarette advertising is banned on UK radio.  
•  Partnership between Time Inc and Charles Dolan, Sterling Communications—which operates the New York City cable system—loses $2.5m, according to the New York Times. Time's investment is in return for a growing pile of convertible debentures.  
•  Dolby noise reduction is first used for a feature film soundtrack: Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.  
•  Cinesphere at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada is the first Imax cinema. The screen measures 84 feet wide and 64 feet high and seats 752 inside a triodetic dome.  
•  NBC Mystery Movie slot rotates three 90-minute series: Columbo, McCloud and McMillan and Wife.  
•  UK has 1.56m homes connected to cable and 628,000 on MATV (master antenna television) systems; cable penetration is 9.4 per cent of all TV homes.  
•  Intel develops the microprocessor, reducing electronic circuitry to a single 'chip'. Measuring 12mm square, it has 12 times more power than the entire Eniac computer of 1945.  
•  First brain scanner is installed at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, Wimbledon, London. Designed by Geoffrey Newbold Hounsfield at EMI, commercial production of the device begins in 1972 and leads to sales of 700 units at £200,000 each in its first five years.  
•  Walt Disney Company opens its second US theme park, Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida on a 27,000-acre site. > 1982
< previous | next >

Page updated 29 June 2009
© David Fisher