In this BBC clip from 1964, the Irish journalist and presenter Cathal O’Shannon visits the Shetland Islands to report on the arrival of a television transmitter, which will make the remote Scottish archipelago the last part of the United Kingdom to receive broadcasts. Detailing local traditions of self-sufficiency, hand-knitting and fiddle music among the islands’ 19,000 inhabitants, O’Shannon wonders aloud if the arrival of television will sand away at the edges of the unique local culture. Viewed today, the clip serves as something of a Rorschach test for one’s views on the global modern world: does the report simply represent the latest alarmist tech panic, or did the arrival of television truly portend the end of an era?
The long-awaited arrival of TV to Shetland sparks debate in this vintage clip
Video by BBC Archive
4 April 2023
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