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Space 'hit' for ITV
Catacombs Reference Library
Belfast News-Letter, Thursday 28 August 1975
Britain went ahead in the television space race yesterday when Sir Lew Grade announced that ITV's new science fiction series, 1999 had been sold to 120 countries. It will be seen on British screens this autumn.
Sir Lew, chairman and chief executive of ATV, said that 1999 had already earned the £3 million that it cost to make the 24-part series.
And he has defied the American TV networks by selling the series in the USA - where the big money is made in television sales.
Sir Lew said yesterday that the three major American networks did not want to know about his series possibly for the same reason that they had dropped Star Trek.
Sir Lew said: "We made a mistake in going to them. but I had great faith in the series, so we decided to set up a 'fourth network"."
Sir Lew went to every major independent station in the USA and succeeded in selling the series to 146 of them.
He scored a greater victory when some of the independents started screening the series in the prime time normally given to network programmes - and winning big audiences by doing so.
Sir Lew thought that the new series of hour long "Sci-Fi" programmes which took two years to make - would be a hit with British viewers, a possible successor to Star Trek, ever popular with BBC audiences
In spite of the initial snub by the big American networks, he thought the series would do well world- wide and was keeping the 1999 studio at Pinewood on rental for a year for the possibility of making a second series.
Special effects - which Sir Lew claimed were better than those in the film 20001 - were done by Sylvia and Jerry Anderson, who have been responsible for a series popular space programmes for children on ITV.
Sir Lew added that although the production had covered its costs, he hoped it would make a profit in the long run - particularly through merchandising and repeats.