The ITV Emergency National Service was the management response to the near-complete Independent Television technicians' strike immediately after the 1968 franchise changes took effect. During the national ITV technicians' strike between 3 and 18 August 1968, the individual companies were off the air for several weeks and an emergency service was presented by management personnel with no regional variations. This was the first time that a uniform presentation practice was adopted across all regions. This did not happen again until ITV's first few days back on air following the technicians' strike of 1979, which blacked out the channel for 75 days. Presentation All programmes played during the service were repeats or had been pre-made for forthcoming transmission. Other than continuity, there was no live material. The programmes were transmitted from the ATV switching centre at Foley Street in London, while a team of ex-ABC announcers based in both Teddington and Foley Street provided presentation. The announcing team for the special service was mainly David Hamilton, John Benson, Sheila Kennedy and Philip Elsmore, who would all continue as Thames announcers when the regional services restarted at the end of the strike. The service was mounted at short notice after several days of blank screens. The management team behind the emergency service had needed to create a quick and simple national presentation style. The term "Independent Television" was chosen for the temporary national station (as the term "ITV" was relatively little used until the 1970s) and a range of text-only captions also provided. No symbol was used – the ident was simply the name in upper-case characters. A clock was borrowed from the studios at Teddington and the ABC triangle on the clock was mostly covered with tape. Tuning signals For the first three days of the service, an insert of the local "Picasso" tuning signal was tried along with a start-up tune before switching to the national output. To avoid confusion over regions, the ITA provided the Foley Street centre with a copy of the blank "Picasso" containing no regional identifier. A version with the words "Independent Television" was commissioned but did not arrive until the final few days of the service and was only used briefly at the end of the period. This short service was not wholly consistent in presentation, and opened on some days with Picasso card and ident, whilst on other days only the ident card appeared.