Ulster Television - 50 years of UTV

As New unmarked Condition Hardcover, 234 pages. First Edition, 2009. Celebrates the history since 1959 start.
When Ulster Television was granted a programme contract by Britain's Independent Television Authority (ITA) back in the late 1950s, it was an experiment. It had been argued within the ITA that allowing a television company for a little area of only one and a half million people was an invitation to failure. This was to be the smallest TV company they had ever tried.

So, with public optimism masking some private qualms across the water, Ulster Television launched in 1959. If the ITA decision-makers had suspected that a mere ten years into its history, Ulster Television's transmission area would be convulsing in inter-communal conflict, they might changed their minds. Ulster Television, situated in the heart of Belfast, has spent most of its life amid a battlefield, doing what is extremely difficult reflecting a divided society to itself. And yet a TV station with bullet holes in its walls called itself privately 'The Fun Factory.

Today UTV, as it is now known, has become a force in the broadcasting ecology of both Britain and Ireland a unique cross-border institution. Had they still been alive, the original decision-makers of the ITA would be astounded that UTV is one of their very few original appointed TV companies still surviving and flourishing. Their 'experiment' has woven itself into the fabric of television history. Indeed, into the history of the two parts of Ireland.