5. The Open University
The Open University was an idea of Harold Wilson's. Not your typical university where you had to get A Levels to fight for places, The Open University offered a decent, university education that wasn't too expensive for people who were smart, but maybe didn't want to go to a mainstream university. Situated in Milton Keynes, The Open University began to make programmes for the BBC in the seventies. These were shown on the weekend mornings and there was a scary OU ident with a trumpet playing a weird avant garde tune. Programmes were cheap and were repeated for years and years. This was despite the fact that the kipper ties and the uniquely 70s fad for wearing a colour of clothing which could best be described as 'dysentery beige' - dated the shows horribly. Still, there was something soothing about OU programmes. They ranged the whole gamut from humanities to sociology, physics to geography. In the naughties, DVDs became a better way for the OU to distribute their learning material and in 2007, we waved goodbye to OU programming on BBC 2 forever. The end of an era.