TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

Intended to attract the Kerrang! crowd, ECT was a feature of Channel 4's Tube replacement for the spring/summer of 1985, The Friday Zone.

ECT 'Extra Celestial Transmission' was taped at the Wembley Studios, London and produced by Keith McMillan's Keefco productions and invited the cream of British metal and hard rock. The show even had its own dance troupe Beauxartz. TV Times didn't pull any punches when describing the second show, headed by Girl School referring to them as "a bizarre comic spectacle." Everyone played live and loud and some of the unused clips from the show later turned up in a Channel 4 filler show Rewind in 1986. Sadly, the show was broadcast just before the introduction of NICAM stereo broadcasts in the UK, so no-one really got the benefit of the live and loud studio sound, despite there being five mixing desks. The show had four stages, one of which cost £60,000 alone.

The success of the show mirrored the success of the post New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, but despite its popularity it never made it to a second series, like so many of these Friday evening shows that Channel Four broadcast.

THE FRIDAY ZONE: ECT

C4  / Keefco

12th April 1985 - 14th June 1985