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TV History
The Toddlers’ Truce: a Strange Moment in TV History
Early British television had some weird rules
In our age of on-demand entertainment and countless channels to flick through, it’s hard to imagine a time when you could turn on the TV only to be greeted by a blank screen.
However, this was exactly what happened every night at 6 pm in 1950s Britain. This week marks 65 years since the end of one of the oddest quirks of British broadcasting history — the toddlers’ truce.
Broadcasting rules were strict in the 1950s. TV could air for only 12 hours a day in the week and under 8 hours at the weekend. But no doubt the strangest rule was that no television could be broadcast between 6 and 7pm, so that parents could put their children to bed.
This rule, known as the toddlers’ truce, wasn’t put in place by the BBC (the UK’s only broadcaster at the time) or even by parents, but by the government.
Concerned both that television would rot young minds and that parents would struggle to tear little ones away from the so-called ‘idiot box’, it was decreed that broadcasting must cease for one hour from 6 pm so parents could wrangle their children away from the screen. A state-mandated bedtime, if you will.
