[Bluecortina]

Did Channel 4 turn off the colour burst for black and white programmes like the BBC and ITV companies did at the time? If they did, that could explain it being black and white, somehow it didn't come back on when it was meant to.

Channel 4 never turned the colour burst off during black and white programming. That doesn't preclude a fault of some sort of course.

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Not so much awkward placement as awkward promo - TV-am plugging a forthcoming Richard O'Brien interview in their final months on air.

Evidently trying to save up the cash before their franchise expires, they couldn't even be bothered to buy at least even a few seconds of Crystal Maze footage!

Granada takes over once they go off air - and with no This Morning/TTTP promo business to go through, they opt for a relaxed in-vision welcome from Charles Foster (IIRC, Granada usually handled nominated contractor duties for the network during daytime)

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Thames and LWT were always the nominated contractor - that being a network managing role and nothing to do with the physical networking of programming.