This interview was first published in Welsh on Golwg/Gwerddon
On March 15, 2021, Euryn Ogwen Williams, one of the most widely influential and long-standing figures in British broadcasting, passed away. Many obituaries have paid tribute to his longevity, creativity and generosity across a range of broadcasting areas during his long and illustrious career. Specifically, he was a prolific producer for ITV and BBC from the 60s onwards, was head of programmes at TWW and HTV, was Sianel Pedwar Cymru’s (S4C) first head of programmes from 1981-1991, advised on the formation of Gaelic Television services in the late 1990s, and led reviews in the Welsh media-sphere regarding digital broadcasting and the possibilities of interactive media broadcasting. He remained an active mentor and consultant within the Welsh media scene until his death.

For anyone who had dealings with Euryn, he was also a stupendously positive human being. To have a chat with Euryn was to enjoy the brilliant sunshine of his undivided attention, and to emerge re-energised and with a new view on whatever project or aspect of life that had been raised. In Welsh broadcasting – an often frustrating and difficult area of cultural life – Euryn lifted the clouds, gave confidence and made the seemingly impossible, possible. These gifts were perhaps most apparent at the beginning of S4C, and it this time that this interview recalls.

PART IV

S4C was launched on November 1, 1982 – the night before Channel 4’s launch – and Euryn Ogwen, as head of programmes was responsible for constructing the new channel’s first hour. I was ten years old, and watching the first hour in the office of my father’s television company, Screen ’82, in Aberystwyth. 30 years to the day, Euryn and I met at the National Screen and Sound Archive in Aberystwyth to watch the channel’s first hour once again, and to decipher what Euryn called, it’s ‘hidden messages’. The conversation that follows seeks to dig beneath the surface of the first hour to analyse the roots of the channel, and to reflect on the thinking, the preparation, and the random elements that led to the composition of the first hour of S4C.

This final instalment brings the hour to an end, and discusses the prospective audience’s hopes and fears for S4C…

Eyrun Ogwen Williams: And now we go off into vox pops….

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It was the independent producers who made these vox pops, with clips from independently produced programmes between them. This was, therefore, a chance to introduce the independent sector. If we were going to show clips from programmes that we had in the bag ready to go, they would be independent programmes. The impression we wanted to give was that S4C was giving the audience what they had asked for. That was the new element, that programming came from the people, not from the higher reaches. Taking wrestling as an example; that actually had a small audience, but probably an audience that would watch nothing else except for wrestling on S4C. We did not know how limited the audience would be.

Dafydd Sills-Jones: There was a large audience for wrestling on ITV at the time, wasn’t there?

EOW: Yes, there was, and the same kind of audience that we got, and then Orig (Williams – wrestler) became a big figure. The bonkers bit was Miss World and Bjorn Borg, and now we were taking a turn back to the common people.

DSJ: With interstitials and the like – if that’s what they were called – in this analogue age, where there was no time-shift possible, but of course by now interstitials have changed and have become a type of branding – so you were experimenting with that even in 1982? It’s interesting how the ‘oes gafr eto’ interstitial moves us from Miss World, to a rural space, and then to vox pops – that is a strong combination. It’s interesting that the vox pops are on location, and the clips from programmes are also all on location – is that significant?

EOW: Yes it is – most of Welsh programming pre-S4C was studio-based, and it was important to emphasise the independence and location-based nature of these new programmes.

DSJ: Ah, here’s Syr Wynff ap Concord y Bos and Plwmsan [1], what’s their significance here?

EOW: Well, there is a significance, although I’m not sure about the significance of their positioning within the hour. What we did was take the Syr Wynff brand – knowing that the brand had lost its currency and the BBC had decided to cancel it. We had made a short film for the Welsh Film Board with the two of them, and they had been saying that they would like to make the programme themselves, we don’t want a producer, we know what to do. So, the significance is that they produced their own programme, without the hierarchy of the BBC nor ITV behind them; ‘you know what you want, go and do it yourselves’.

DSJ: Was that therefore a release from the programme conventions of the BBC?

EOW: That’s right – the budget was their responsibility, that’s how much money we have, and that was important. It’s accidental that it fits into this part of the hour, although this I suppose is the ‘independents’ part of the first hour.

DSJ: It’s interesting that whilst everything else made by the independents is new, this is a brand that came from the old sector that you wanted to continue onto the new channel.

EOW: The BBC did not want to make it, but we thought it was still needed. They didn’t want to make them for us, because they were so difficult to make. We had got an agreement to take over the making of the programme. We thought, ‘right, we’ll risk it’ and that the worst that could happen was 6 poor programmes. And if they made a mess of it, then that would be that.

As it turned out, they were fabulous! Mei, some guy from Dyffryn Nantlle was the producer, and a cameraman from Bristol, Graham Edgar who moved up to North Wales, and he shot them. They made them for peanuts! That was really Hollywood silent movie style. They ran out of money to finish one series – they could not afford the set for an episode based around ‘cowboys and Indians’ – so they all went on a package tour to Spain, and they shot it there! Great eh? God knows what the situations was regarding insurance – but we weren’t worried about that!

Mentro, Mentro! – once again, a rebrand. Well, it was originally an English show and Ian Dickinson had established it as a strong brand on ITV – I knew him from HTV, and it was through HTV he made them – about mad things – like going to the top of Everest without oxygen, jumping out of planes and so on. This was a co-production, but we got the first showing.

DSJ: The Jackass of its day?

EOW: Yes! A, here’s S-4-Sex with Dyfan Roberts!

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DSJ: Once again showing touches of Channel 4?

EOW: It does. A dirty old man! And then we have Joni Jones [2].

DSJ: High production values, a shame it never came out on DVD [editorial note: The Joni Jones DVD was released – in 2015, 3 years after the interview took place].

EOW: Yes. The Welsh speaking Welsh had never seen anything like it. I think at the start we didn’t understand the timescales. We tried to squeeze as much out of the money as quickly as we could so we didn’t do proper buy outs (for DVD release).

I remember working on this montage now with Emlyn Davies the other commissioner.

DSJ: What do you remember of the proses?

EOW: I remember we discussed the signs, and that the main message that S4C was more than what you’d had before, because he had achieved an independent sector, without upsetting BBC and HTV, who were making a contribution. So, the easiest way was to have an ‘independents’ section.

Ah here we are, a Welsh detective series. And here’s Ffred Francis [3].

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We are in the heart-rending stuff now!  Ffred Francis, Y Mab Darogan. Y Mab Darogan was quite big – it had a big impact at the National Eisteddfod in Machynlleth in 1981, Theatr Ieuenctid Maldwyn, a rock opera about Owain Glyndwr. Ffred Francis was of course an arch-protestor, who had been in jail for the channel, on screen here with a policeman’s helmet!

DSJ: Was there a problem getting the independents to produce light entertainment programming?

EOW: What they did was do the totally traditional light ents programming – for example Noson Lawen that pulled in a massive audience. This involved, literally, going to a barn, putting some bails in place, putting children on the bails, putting down a stage and wheeling on the talent! The independent did what they found at their feet, and then BBC did the studio-based programming – that was the split. You would never, to begin with, had something as sophisticated coming out of the indie sector as this sketch show we are watching right now. You are talking about a 4 machine edit, a different set for each sketch, etc. Only the BBC could do that. ITV’s stuff was very glossy, Ronw’s stuff, Caryl’s stuff; glossy light ents that were more British and compared well with programmes on the network because the same standards existed.

And then we get to Eiry Palfrey and Mystic Meg – prediction for the new channel…

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DSJ: There’s a feeling of spoof about this first hour.

EOW: We weren’t very serious!

DFS: I suppose live TV has changed since, it’s much more glossy than it used to be – because of the technology – but something is lost in that?

EOW: Yes, some sort of grit, some sort of intimacy is lost.

DSJ: And from looking at this hour, it didn’t need to be quite so gritty did it? Was that deliberate?

EOW: In order to establish we were different, that we were close to the people – it was crucial that both messages came across.

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DSJ: So how was it watching that again?

EOW: I haven’t seen it right through since 1982, and I didn’t remember some of the things in it. I’m glad it was as bonkers as that. Because there was nothing in there because we felt it had to be there. Once we were into the presentation at the start there was a reason for everything, but as it went on it became bonkers and bizarre. And it really did show how much difference there was between S4C and the two other main broadcasters. I can understand why people were not impressed; if they were expecting a programme, and instead getting an hour of welcome, there wasn’t much structure to it, but the messages did emerge.

DSJ: Well, there was a structure, we have discussed that. Maybe it wasn’t clear from looking at the surface, but perhaps all the more powerful because of that. It would have been too formulaic, and the first hour gives an impression of a channel with a very anarchic spirit. I can almost remember the feeling of watching it, aged 10, and the feeling that it was exciting, and that it was the start of something unpredictable. That it wasn’t neat, that it was at its start, and that you couldn’t see its end, and that anything was possible because of this anarchic quality, and I almost remember the feeling of ‘off we go’.

EOW: I’m glad of it. That we succeeded in creating something that was characteristic of S4C. We weren’t orderly, things did not conform to a formula. If a programme was worth 40 minutes, we gave it 40 and coped with the effects on the schedule instead of insisting that it was cut short by 10 minutes. Then people complained that programmes did not start on the hour and the half hour, but in the long run, it’s the content that’s important.

DSJ: Does anything else jump out at you, unexpectedly?

EOW: No, as we went along, I remembered the order. I was a bit confused by that switch into the adverts and then back to the goats, I didn’t know where we were going at that point. But perhaps we had just said ‘right, let’s have a look at what kind of Welsh programmes you’ll get’.

DSJ: That moment was a kind of bridge – from the absurdity of Miss World to the new programmes. Without that bridge perhaps those two things would not have worked, and would have looked odd.

EOW: Thanks for the pleasure of viewing it again!

 

Dafydd Sills-Jones is Associate Professor in the School of Communications at Te Kura Whakapāho, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau (Auckland University of Technology). Before taking up this post in 2018, he was Lecturer in Media Production Cultures and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Arts Faculty of Aberystwyth. Dafydd is co-editor of Peter Lang’s ‘Documentary Film Cultures’ book series, is on the editorial board of Media History (Taylor & Francis), The International Journal of Creative Media Research (Bath Spa University), and is a member of the International Association for Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR).

Web: cstonline.netacademics.aut.ac.nz/dafydd.sills.jones

 

Footnotes

[1] Syr Wynff ap Concord y Bos and Plwmsan were characters initially created as part of the children’s series Teliffant (BBC, 1972-1980), acted respectively by Wynford Ellis Owen and Mici Plwm.

[2] Joni Jones was a series produced and directed by Stephen Bayley, adapting the series of short stories Gwared Y Gwirion (Losing Innocence) written by R Gerallt Jones.

[3] Ffred Ffransis was one of the most prominent campaigners for S4C, and remains a prominent Welsh language rights protester to this day.