[IanJRedman]

EPG had it listed as HD and the picture quality was good.
Did the BBC produce HD programs in HD at 4:3 ?
Odd it wasn’t widescreen using new tech for that period.

It was upscaled from standard definition. Upscaled SD can look surprisingly good when it's not being chewed up by ancient MPEG-2 encoding, but it's not comparable to true HD - this programme was around eight years early for that. As for widescreen - 16:9 was starting to come onto the scene at around this time, wasn't it? How late was the BBC still making 4:3 shows?

[Andrew]

I watched some of the repeated Paul O’Grady programme on Channel 5 tonight, and the clips used on that certainly weren’t HD

Some of them looked like they’d been blown up from RealPlayer!

The poor quality clips really lets down these Channel 5 clip shows

One thing mentioned, linking back to the discussion about Blankety Blank was how it was quite a brave move from the BBC at the time to use Lily on such a wholesome early evening show, when she was known for rude late night entertainment. I’m guessing the way she was able to clean her act up for The Big Breakfast might have been key to that decision.

[XIII]

Piers Morgan mentioned that Britain's Got Talent was originally a vehicle for Paul O'Grady and that the pilot went well although I'm sure I remember reading ITV were having reservations which didn't help when Paul left for Channel 4 so Cowell decided to launch it on NBC and the rest is history.

[tellyblues]

Some footage from the pilot here:

www.youtube.com 

[XIII]

I can see why ITV weren't keen on the pilot, it looks so amateur compared to what it eventually became.

[Bluecortina]

I can see why ITV weren't keen on the pilot, it looks so amateur compared to what it eventually became.

It was very much a small scale no frills pilot. The audience shot looks like TLS studio 1 but from memory I seem to recall it was studio 2. When it was eventually commissioned by ITV TLS were very much hoping it would produced at the SouthBank and had been very accommodating for the pilot. But it was not to be.

[Michael Kenchington]

Here's the news report about his death from Channel 4 News: www.youtube.com 

Rest in peace, Paul O' Grady.

[VMPhil]

Although perhaps understandable due to its long and complex history, it's irked me a little bit that a lot of the reports have gotten the dates of his chat show wrong. So, a brief history:

Paul had filled in for Des O'Connor on ITV's Today with Des and Mel. On the strength of this, he was given his own chat show, weekdays at 5pm from October 2004. This was successful almost immediately, it regularly beat Richard and Judy on Channel 4 in the ratings and the show won a BAFTA in 2005.

After a dispute with ITV when they "forgot" to renew his contract, and wishing for more creative control, the showed moved to Channel 4 in March 2006 and began to be made by his own production company. This continued until 2009 when, unhappy with proposed budget cuts, Paul signed a new deal with ITV and the Channel 4 show ended in December 2009 with a big farewell programme.

Paul's new show for ITV was called Paul O'Grady Live and was broadcast on Friday nights at 9pm but followed a similar set and format to the daytime show. This show is where the clips of Paul ranting against the coalition government come from as I remember watching them go out at the time. Although this show was not a flop, I don't think it was the ratings success either Paul or ITV had hoped for and it only ran for two series in 2010 and 2011.

After a year away, the daytime version of his chat show returned to ITV in November 2013, again at its previous time of 5pm. This ran for three series from 2013-2015. I don't recall any big farewell programme for this version - it seems like he simply stopped doing it.

[Andrew]

After a year away, the daytime version of his chat show returned to ITV in November 2013, again at its previous time of 5pm. This ran for three series from 2013-2015. I don't recall any big farewell programme for this version - it seems like he simply stopped doing it.

By that point I recall that The Chase had started and was rating well, Paul’s show was replacing it and wasn’t rating as well, and we were in the ‘The Chase REPLACED and viewers aren’t happy’ stage, so it seemed like time had moved on really.

The fact that Paul was now having great success with his For the Love of Dogs programme helped smooth this over so there wasn’t a big fuss when the daytime show ended

[TIGHazard]

EPG had it listed as HD and the picture quality was good.
Did the BBC produce HD programs in HD at 4:3 ?
Odd it wasn’t widescreen using new tech for that period.

It was upscaled from standard definition. Upscaled SD can look surprisingly good when it's not being chewed up by ancient MPEG-2 encoding, but it's not comparable to true HD - this programme was around eight years early for that. As for widescreen - 16:9 was starting to come onto the scene at around this time, wasn't it? How late was the BBC still making 4:3 shows?

From discussions on the previous places it's been said that on the BBC pretty much everything went widescreen between 1998 and 2001. One of the last holdouts was TOTP which changed in October 2001 when they moved back from Elstree to TVC. After that only Parkinson was produced in the ratio for BBC 1. TOTP2 was produced in 4:3 as well for BBC 2 due to the archive nature. After that the only things in 4:3 were foreign imports or Sport. BBC Sport studio segments were produced in widescreen, but the match footage was shot so that the world feed could be 4:3 centre cut out. As late as 2004 the Olympics world feed was only 4:3 for example.