Rediffusion (South West) Limited

Overview
The South West Region was established in the late 1940's when the Rediffusion wired vision consessions for Bristol and Southampton were acquired, although a branch office had been opened in Plymouth as early as 1933.
By 1973 thjere were 28 shops in the region, a territory which covered more than 10,000 square miles and stretched from Portsmouth in the east to Penzance in the west. This large area was controlled by the regional office at 2 / 3 Broad Plain in the heart of the city of Bristol.
By the early 1980's the company still operated from these premises but by then boasted 73 shops, 13 branches and 3 districts to oversee. Much of this territorial expansion was the result of opening shops in new towns.
The addition of large parts of Gloucestershire, Somerset, Hampshire and Dorset gave access to over 80% of homes in the south west.
The acquisition of South West Rentals Ltd made a valuable contribution to rental contracts and shop premises in the region.
By the early 1980's the region had over 110,000 subscribers on it's books. The integration of non-Rediffusion type television sets on such a large scale gave the need for extra training as the region now serviced more than 50 chassis - types over the brands available.
One of the showpieces in the region was the Penn Street shop in the middle of Bristol's Broadmead shopping complex.

Regional Headquarters, Bristol
Bristol, the Regional Headquarters of the South-West was the largest operating branch in the UK.

After reviewing the region's television market penetration in 1973 it was concluded that it just wasn't good enough and there seemed to be two main
reasons for this. Firstly, the coverage of the region was poor - only 40% of the homes in the region were within the service area and secondly, the very
narrow cable/rental image inhibited disposals of aerial television sets and audio products.
The company set out to remedy these weaknesses and John Reay, the General Manager of Rediffusion South West, introduced a marketing strategy which helped the company to push the number of TV rental subscribers to 110,000, from just below 63,000 and to achieve audio sales of over £1.7 million by the mid 1970's.
Parts of Gloucester, Somerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset lay beyond the boundaries before the expansion. Rediffusion South West grew the business to cover more than 80% of the homes in the South West. The objective was always to integrate the new operations within the own base whether the new operation had been a new shop or an acquisition.
Acquisitions ranged from the purchase of a few hundred rental contracts without a shop or staff, to a major company, such as South West Rentals
Limited. The company purchased the twenty-two shops belonging to South West Rentals and each acquisition was treated as an individual one, with the preservation of that business's goodwill being of paramount concern.
Many of the owners and staff continued to run their businesses and were to become valuable members of the South West team.

As part of a centrally promoted experiment - the company began to stock an extended range of British and Japanese brands, at a price in line
with their High Street competitors. Thus, the turn-around in colour sales was, in part, due to the reasonably priced sets available in the South West shops. These additional sales, and the vastly increased rental disposals, had the effect of quadrupling the region's share of the South West colour market. As part of the company's long-term marketing developments, audio was recognised as an area with significant growth potential. In addition, the extra profit which increased turnover would generate was considered to be a vital element in financing the shop expansion programme.

With such a far - flung scattering of customers, and diverse range of products, servicing could well have been a problem for the region. The servicing
of audio was previously done on a regional basis, with the majority of repairs carried out at the workshop in Bristol.
However, after a re-think about the customer's servicing requirements, servicing was to be carried out in service centres in Southampton, Plymouth, Penzance and Bristol.

The South West Rentals acquisition opened up an opportunity for the region to do business in towns where Rediffusion had not previously been represented, 29c Bridge Street, Taunton, was one of these. The shop was the first to be re-fitted, and was one of the locations with a service
centre on the premises - again, part of the regions forward thinking policy. All the staff at the branch were ex-South West Rentals, and had a lot to say about the take-over.

Exeter Branch
The company was already very well established in Exeter, where it opened a branch in the late 1940s, after purchasing a local sound relay system. By the mid 1970's, the branch claimed a 33% share of the local market.
One of the branch's newly acquired shops was to be found in Chelston, Torquay. Known as Drury & Company, the shop was taken over in 1977. Drury's was formed in 1910, and had operated from the Old Mill Lane site since 1946. They commenced selling TV in Coronation year - 1953.
Hamish Wood, a lively Scots gentleman, was a partner in the company, and managed the shop for Rediffusion.. The customers were very loyal, and stayed with afetr the acquisition. The technicians and sales staff remained too. Following the acquisition, Rediffusion was able to make good use of
Drury's management expertise, and another ex-Drury employee, Gerald Madge, continued running the Market Street shop in Torquay.

Plymouth Branch
Rediffusion was very much a part of the community in Plymouth. The region`s oldest branch, the first subscriber was connected in 1933. The town in 1977 was still predominantly cable, with 4,600 colour and 3,800 mono subscribers on the network.
The network provided a vital source of information to the local Civil Defence organisations during the bombings in 1941. Despite the heavy assault on the town, a continuous service was maintained.
The longest serving member was 'Bunny' Bourdon. Bunny joined in 1934, and was still employed there by 1977.
Bunny's branch was most affected by the South West Rentals acquisitions, as the former company's head office was located in this town.
It not only have to take on branch work, but also the additional accounts, The biggest job being to change the accounts from a manual to a computerised system.
Tony Howard, who was assistant to South West Rentals managing director, and had worked for the company for 12 years, became assistant to the
general manager.

The Rest of the Region
The sheer size of the region made it impossible to cover it in its entirety. The fact that the rate of growth had been consistently high right across the region and Cornwall had more than doubled its subscribership between 1972 and 1977.
Southampton district, comprising Southampton, Portsmouth, Bourne mouth, North Hampshire and West Dorset branches, increased by 70%
and Cotswold and West Wiltshire branches had been developed from scratch.
The future
In terms of geographic development, the region had a very limited amount of in-filling to complete. The policy was improve the shop sites and
developments in the larger towns and cities.
As far as product development were concerned, the VCR, Computer Games, Home Computers, Teletext and Viewdata all appeared to have enormous potential, and although it was still very early days in the development of these products, Rediffusion were nicely poised to exploit the opportunities they would certainly present.
The changes which had been made were not at the expense of the region's traditional cable business. The cable operation, which served over 61,000 customers, was maintained at peak performance. The possible development of Pay-TV would be a service which would have great appeal to the
200,000 householders covered by the region's systems.

Engineering
The Chief Engineer, was Mr S. W. Wells and assistant Chief Engineer was Bill Jackson who joined Rediffusion in 1960 as an apprentice at Nottingham and spent six years with Leicester before his role in Bristol.

Training in the South West presented its own problems, as an appreciable amount had to be carried out at branch level; despite this, the
regional school was always fully booked and the Training Officer was John Eastment.

The regional television workshop was run by John Collins, assisted by John Costello and Mervyn Hurley; this section was used to supplement the output of branch television workshops and to act as an 'on the job' training ground for television servicing recruits. The workshop dealt with both colour and monochrome boards and panels, and had an output of approximately 2,000 units per month.