When movies disappeared from their big screen runs, back in the days when Star Wars was a new thing, TV premiere showings of movies felt like huge events.

Very few people had VHS machines at home, and the cost of actually owning tapes was astronomical; renting films was the way that most people engaged with their VHS players, and ownership didn’t start becoming wider until tape prices dramatically dropped in the mid to late 80s.

Films generally weren’t released to own until a rental window had passed; it could be a few years from cinema to affordable ownership of a film. Despite the fact that TV broadcast of movies was set for 3 years after cinema release, it always felt like a big deal when you could watch a film on the television, even though they were broken up by adverts (or even split in two with the news in the middle, depending on what day and time it was shown).

So this Star Wars Day, I wanted to talk about the very specific memory I have of Star Wars being shown on TV for the first time in the UK. I was 5, and we actually had a VHS recorder at the time, way before most of my friends and family had one. We taped Star Wars so I could watch it again and again; complete with all of the ad breaks, which we always fast forwarded through on a rewatch (but which became almost a part of the experience of watching Star Wars in general, at least until it became available to buy – but that wouldn’t happen until several years later!).

I wasn’t overly familiar with Star Wars until it was shown on TV; I’d seen The Empire Strikes Back at the cinema a few years prior, and I knew all about Star Wars (I was obsessed with it), but I’m not sure if I had even seen it all the way through until then; if I had, my memory of it certainly wasn’t as strong as it was of The Empire Strikes Back!).

I do remember that I watched the entirety of Star Wars at a friend’s birthday party in early ’83; his parents had also recorded it after it was shown on TV the previous year!

Interestingly, the TV broadcast of Star Wars happened a few years earlier in the UK than it did in the US; we got it in October 1982, but it was first shown on US TV in 1984.

Anyway, here’s the ads leading up to, and shown in the middle of, Star Wars when it was first broadcast on ITV in the UK. They’re quite a time capsule, to say the least!

So all that remains is for me to say: may the fourth be with you!

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