The 1950s

The Coronation in 1953 opened our eyes to the power of television. Live pictures of the event were beamed into thousands of households. All at once there was an appetite for what the emerging television service had to offer. In 1954, BBC network television news bulletins began and viewers in Northern Ireland saw their first local magazine programme, the fortnightly Ulster Mirror.

In 1955, the BBC in Northern Ireland appointed its first television news journalist. In 1957, local television news bulletins began with Today in Northern Ireland. Ulster Television went on air in 1959 and BBCNI expanded its output with the news magazine Studio 8. It would have a number of titles in the years to come – Six O'Clock, Six-Five, Six-Ten – before Scene Around Six arrived in 1969.