Inside Greenwich Cablevision News

Greenwich Cablevision was Britain's first cable television channel and launched in 1972, but it only ran as a full service until 1974. However, this was far from the end for Greenwich Cablevision. It continued as an intermittent, community production until the mid-1980s when it had morphed into Greenwich TV. Footage and information regarding this curious corner of British broadcasting is scant, if not non-existent.

Luckily, thanks to a kind donation to Curious British Telly, we can take a closer look at what was happening with Greenwich Cablevision in the early 1980s. This intriguing glimpse into the past comes in the form of 10 editions of Greenwich Cablevision News, a promotional magazine for the service, which date from late 1982 to early 1984.

Archive Tape Digging: April 2026

There's no need to rummage in the dirt on all fours to dig up the past. Instead, you can exhume dusty old videotapes from the comfort of your sofa. It's one of my favourite past times, but the constraints of time and life have meant it's been on the backburner for a while - hence this is the first Archive Tape Digging article in some time. Fortunately, I recently found time to go through some ancient Betamax tapes, so let's take a look at what I discovered.

Help Save Britain’s Forgotten TV!

Yes, it’s that time of year again: the annual plea for readers of Curious British Telly to donate their old video tapes. For those new here, the purpose of this is simple. I dig through these dusty tapes for fleeting glimpses of long-forgotten British television. I’m talking about programmes that haven’t seen the light of day since their original broadcast, in-vision continuity announcers introducing films, regional news reports and, of course, that true blast of nostalgia: the advert break. A fine example of what I can uncover is this Anglia closedown from 1985.