Think Tank [18/08/81]
Fastest fingers first! The race is on to find the answers in this Granada television quiz.
"This is a quiz show for fast brains and fast fingers," declares the host at the start of this 1981 edition of Granda's Think Tank. Weighty reference books pile the desks of the three competing teams of schoolchildren as they prepare to play. They all have access to a computer called 'Viewdata', an interactive information system viewed on a television monitor. Reminiscent of TV Teletext, its 200,000 pages of information are retrieved only by manually typing in index numbers on a keypad - a much slower process than the search engines we're all used to.
What follows is similar to many educational television quizzes such as University Challenge: questions are asked by the presenter and the contestants must answer quickly. The difference with Think Tank is that the competitors have all of the answers to the questions in front of them - they just have to find them. Cue lots of frantic scrabbling through volumes of reference books. All traditional school subjects are covered, with the addition of music, video and newsreel rounds.
Tension builds with thrumming music, electronic buzzers and an impatient quizmaster. The pace is brisk and contenders don't have long to find the answers but somehow they do. Try playing along by searching for the answers online. Impressively, the students often get there before Google can.
QUIZ SHOW. The teams competing are St.Hilda's , Queen's Park and Yale College.
Tags
Kid's TV
Our relationship with the small screen starts early in life, opening our square eyes to a heady mix of drama and comedy; fantasy and fact.
Dedicated children’s programming has been part of the television mix from its earliest years, growing from short intervals “For The Children” after WWII, to a plethora of standalone channels today. The start of the BBC’s long-running “Watch With Mother” series in 1953 set much of the template for pre-school television, blending puppets, song and animation, with the implicit expectation that mum - assumed to be a housewife - would supervise.
Catering for older children, meanwhile, sought to balance the kinds of programmes children want to watch with those their parents want them to see. Eventually a fuller menu of drama, comedy, factual and magazine programmes for children - in other words, versions of 'grown-up' programmes for 'small people' - came to fill the schedules of weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings.
Sadly, the segregation of children’s television to its own satellite, cable and digital channels has made its much less likely for adults to experience the frequent delights of kids’ TV. But our collection welcomes all ages! (Though please note that some programmes maybe flagged as unsuitable for young children.)
48 videos in this collection
1
2
Diane's Panda Party [28/09/72]
3
Animal Kwackers [09/10/75]
4
Witches' Brew [28/12/72]
5
Origami [09/04/70]
6
Mr. Trimble [21/02/73]
7
Gathercole Bunch
8
The Distant Voice
9
The Challenge
10
Play It Again, Stewpot [25/07/74]
11
Play It Again, Stewpot [05/09/74]
12
A Handful of Songs [27/05/77]
13
Saturday Scene Road Show [11/05/75]
14
Big and Bigger
15
Mickey the Demon Barber
16
Kevin Goes to the Library
17
Ragdolly Anna and the Bacon
18
Britain in the Year 2000
19
Delilah
20
Zzzap! [19/02/93]
21
Granny's Kitchen [26/05/77]
22
Heavens Above [23/02/81]
23
Moving In
24
Nature Trail [16/05/83]
25
Our Show [29/10/77]
26
Peter Ustinov Tells Stories from Hans Andersen
27
Quest of Eagles Episode 1 Sailor
28
Sunny Side Up [28/04/82]
29
The Children's Royal Variety Performance
30
There's Nobody There
31
Think Tank [18/08/81]
32
Two Good Turns
33
William Clears the Slums
34
Gus Hunnybun
35
One Day in the Life of Television
36
Gus Honeybun Animation
37
Gus Honeybun around Plymouth
38
Modern Music
39
Calendar Kids
40
Sus
41
School Around the Corner
42
Tots TV [19/03/93]
43
The Raggy Dolls [10/11/92]
44
Skoosh Summer Special [14/07/98]
45
Zig Zag (Prog 11)
46
Stookie [15/09/85]
47
Brushes
48