50 Years of UTV

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 have equivocated even more.

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 had become one of their very few original appointed TV companies still surviving and flourishing.

Their `experiment' is now half a century old and has woven itself into the fabric of television history.

Indeed, into the history of the two parts of Ireland.