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- Gwlad y Gân (English: Land of Song) was a monthly television series that was broadcast on the United Kingdom television network ITV from 1958 to 1964. Featuring traditional Welsh music and song, with costumed performers and choreography, the programme went out on early Sunday evenings. The series, starring Welsh baritone Ivor Emmanuel and supporting cast, expressed a set of ‘feel-good’ values that were wholesome, folksy, rustic, fun-loving and family-oriented. With a solid foundation of musical excellence and a respect for a Welsh musical tradition that held significance for an entire generation, the show caught a mood and struck a chord as it aimed to celebrate Wales within Wales and beyond. Broadcast in Welsh (but with bilingual captions on screen and bilingual voiced-over links), Land of Song was made in Cardiff by Television Wales and the West (TWW) and then distributed or ‘networked’ to ITV stations serving many parts of the country, thus reaching a nationwide audience which, in the early 1960s, peaked at around ten million viewers. The Television Act 1954, which created the UK's second television channel, Independent Television (ITV), prohibited broadcasting on Sundays between 18:15 and 19:15 - unless the programmes were religious or in the Welsh language. The BBC carried religious programmes at this time, so the choice for viewers was dire. The ITV used the Television Act's loophole to transmit throughout the UK a programme in Welsh. Since it was mostly singing, it did not matter that most viewers (including in Wales) did not understand it. Having no competition, it drew very large audiences. The downside was that advertising was not permitted: so the various companies of the ITV network were paying TWW in Cardiff for a programme which generated no income. The upside was that it pulled viewers away from the BBC and, in an era before TV-remote-controls, delivered a large audience to the first entertainment programme, with commercials, at 19:15. (en)
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