Mrs Wagner's Beaver

I don't think this slice of late seventies local TV really requires much in the way of comment.  It's the 'Complaints Box' segment - a sort of consumer advice section - of a 1979 edition of Southern Television's daily news magazine Day by Day.  It's all so po faced and middle class that it could be a comedy sketch.  It's a reflection of the time and the place (the affluent south of England) that someone misplacing a fur coat could be considered as a typical example of a consumer affairs problem.  It's the background details which fascinate: a beaver fur coat, a private dinner dance at an hotel - all so seventies and middle class.

It all reminds me of why I preferred the BBC South equivalent to Day by Day - South Today.  It always felt far more businesslike.  That said, even though South Today is still going, while Day by Day has been succeeded first by TVS' Coast to Coast and then Meridian Tonight, I haven't watched in years, having long ago become tired of the parochialism and triviality of local TV news programmes.  Thanks to the advertising revenues it could draw by virtues of covering such an affluent area of the UK, Southern Television was pretty well funded, yet most of its programming had a slightly cheap and amateurish feel to it, as most of those revenues seemed to be paid out in dividends to the shareholders.  Despite that, Southern Television still holds an important place in my childhood memories, having been my local ITV franchise for many years, until being replaced by TVS.