YORKSHIRE TV was formed from a 'shotgun marriage' between two companies – Telefusion Yorkshire Ltd and Yorkshire Independent Television – in 1967.

It was officially opened on July 29 1968 by the Duchess of Kent and went on air from purpose-built colour studios in Leeds, the first of their kind in Europe.

It quickly established itself as a major player in the industry.

It made investigative documentaries like Johnny Go Home, Alice: A Fight For Life and the Guildford Four, which not only affected a social change but got the attention of London-based broadcasters.

Suddenly, there was a channel in the north of England which was a serious contender to the BBC.
Despite inauspicious beginnings – staff being forced to work from an old trouser factory while their studios were built – and technical teething problems on its news programme Calendar, which led to it earning the nickname Colander, it was a serious channel which meant business.

It attracted the likes of well-established TV journalist Alan Whicker, who moved to the channel in 1969 and remained with them until 1992.

They even tempted Diana Dors up to Leeds to make Queenie's Castle, a raucous sit-com in which she played a brassy matriarch.

Producers like John Willis and Barry Cockroft were key players in establishing a strong reputation of factual programmes, as was David Reynolds in terms of drama.

In addition to launching the careers of actors like David Jason and Catherine Zeta Jones, comedian Les Dawson, presenters like Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman and Mark Curry, Yorkshire TV gave the county a door on to a world to which it had thus far not had access.

Stand-out shows down the decades include Hadleigh, Jimmy's, A Touch Of Frost, Emmerdale, The Darling Buds of May, Countdown, Too Long a Winter, Rampton: The Secret Hospital, Winner Takes All, The Beiderbecke Affair, Duty Free, The New Statesman, Rising Damp, Scab, Through the Keyhole, A Bit of A Do, Heartbeat, The Royal, Harry's Game, My Parents Are Aliens, After They Were Famous and Johnny Go Home.

Many of the shows are available to watch at the National Film Museum in Bradford in their 'TV Heaven' vault of over 900 classic shows.

YTV's early days saw shows like South Riding, a 1974 adaptation of a novel by Winifred Holtby, which starred Hermione Baddeley and Nigel Davenport, and Bar Billiards Champion.

When Emmerdale Farm first went on air in 1972, people in the village upon which the soap was based – Arncliffe, near Settle, population 101 – could not receive the YTV signal and therefore could not watch it.

Jimmy's was the first-ever docu-soap and arguably gave rise to 'reality TV', including everything from Airport to Big Brother.

Today Yorkshire TV will be better associated with its long-running dramas, documentaries being made under a subsidiary company called Shiver. The shift away from documentaries began with the arrival of Australian tycoon Bruce Gyngell in 1994.

Dubbed the 'Pink Panther' for his love of pink and his belief it had positive effects on people, he took the channel in a new direction, concentrating more on drama.

He parted company with the channel in 1997.

Yorkshire TV merged with Tyne Tees TV but that was then taken over by Granada in a £700m deal in 1997.

There was speculation at one point that United News and Media, which then owned the Yorkshire Evening Post, were to mount a rival bid but this never happened.

In 2004, the YTV branding was removed and the channel renamed ITV Yorkshire.

Sadly, on January 1, 2007, it officially ceased trading altogether.

Yorkshire can no longer boast its own TV station, the studios on Kirkstall Road are underused and, according to many, including Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell, a former Calendar newsreader, are in danger of closing down altogether.

The shift away from documentaries coincided with the TV revolution and the 'digital age' and saw a new "brutal" form of commercialism, where TV schedules were to be decided by considerations of a financial, rather than ethical, slant.

Most commentators mourn the passing of YTV and hold little hope that we shall ever see a return to the golden days when local TV meant just that.

YTV Top 10 programmes