T.V in the early 50s

Now I will say a little about the early days of T.V.
As my Mother was disabled, my Father did everything to make her life easier. As he was a normal working class man it was hard for him to purchase a television. I think iot cost 99gns. That is £99 plus 99shillings. 5p.in todays money. A guinea was 31. and 1 shilling. This was about 10 weeks wages for him. I have mentioned it before but there would be some 200 or more houses on the Estate where we lived. When my Father bought the T.V there were only about 6 others on the whole of the Estate that had a Television. He bought it specially for the Coronation of the present Queen in 1952.
The televised live Coronation had been planned for months. To be candid, it was because of this, that the signals were upgraded so that the vast majority of the country could at last receive pictures.
What most people don't realise is that programmes were very limited. Programmes did not start until somewhere around 5.00pm. It was called Newsreel. The announcer would talk about the days news and after that, there would be pictures of yesterdays news.
Outside broadcasts were infrequent and regularly would break down. often there would be a picture blackout. The announcer would then say that there would be a short interlude while the fault was rectified. not for the first time, after an hour of watching a cat playing with a ball of woo, horses ploughing a field, watching a stream. You get the idea. The announce who would not be seen would apologise and say that the BBC was closing down for the night. Anyway, the evening nearly always ended at about 10.45pm.
The first television sets had no other channels. just a switch that turned the set on and off.
I can't remember exactly when Independent Television first started. (ITV) but it would be around 1955. Something seems to tell me that you needed another Ariel to pick up ITV. However this revelation started people to purchase T.Vs and in next to no time, they were in abundance and the majority had a Television.
As for us, we could not get ITV at all. My Father could not afford another T.V just to look at ITV. To be honest though, it made a huge difference to me and my attitude to advertisements. I detest them and if at all possible, will NOT watch anything that has commercial breaks .
What I tend to do with Sky, which is full of adverts. I try to record them and fast forward the programmes when a commercial break comes along.
It would be about 1960 when I was sitting in the Drivers and Fireman's rest room. One Driver was saying to another that he had been watching cricket on BBC2. The other Driver didn't believe him as BBC2 had not started broadcasting . He was then told that it was test transmissions and if he tuned his set, then he could watch BBC2.
I went home and immediately started to experiment. To my delight I managed to get BBC2. Sunday cricket was transmitted every Sunday during the Cricket Season. The team was called International Cavaliers. They played, I think every 1st Class County at their home ground as the Cavaliers had nothing. They were ex test Match players. Not all of course but most. They had a good team. 40 overs each side. Played on a Sunday afternoon between 2.00pm and 7.00pm.
This was really the start of something different to the County Championships which were played every week and they started on a Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. then Wednesday to Friday so you can see there was very little time off.
In those days, most cricketers either signed on the dole in the winter of had a winter job. The odd player went to play professional football. More soon.