Resolving to become a freelance producer, Tesler lined up contracts with both ATV and the BBC at the beginning of 1960, but before they could begin he was approached by Howard Thomas, the managing director of ABC Weekend TV. ABC held the commercial television franchises for weekends in the North of England and the English Midlands and was one of the so-called "Big Four" companies that between them produced most of the ITV networked programmes. Thomas invited Tesler to become ABC's Supervisor of Features and Light Entertainment. Thomas offered him a "free hand" answerable only to him. Tesler was wary of becoming a programme executive at this point in his career, feeling that for the time being he wanted to stay as a producer. "I would miss the sheer fun of it," he wrote later, "the thrilling danger of a live production; the exhilaration of seeing something come off ... live, on air." Thomas persisted, however, and Tesler, having been shown ABC's state-of-the-art new production studios at
Teddington in west London accompanied by Thomas' further persuasive efforts, accepted and joined ABC in February 1960 to be in charge of everything ABC transmitted other than drama and outside broadcasts. Now controlling what was thought to be the only combined Light Entertainment and Features Department in television, Tesler needed to exercise executive responsibilities which were new to him and at the same time develop knowledge and expertise in features, an area of television in which he had not previously been involved. Disregarding his lack of experience he moved quickly to improve ABC's feature offerings, particularly in terms of the company's regional identity. He set up local news and current affairs operations at the studios at Didsbury in Manchester and Aston in Birmingham for programmes of local interest,
ABC of the North and
ABC of the Midlands, to be transmitted to their respective regions on Saturday evenings. At the end of his first year at ABC Tesler was able to write that the company had transmitted the first British television programme to be devoted solely to books and authors,
The Book Man; a popular science programme with high ratings, ''You'd Never Believe It!
; a teenage religious series, The Sunday Break
; and an investigative religious series called Living Your Life''. Tesler was also able to increase ABC's light entertainment contributions to the ITV network in 1960. Bob Monkhouse presented
Candid Camera with the help of Jonathan Routh fooling the public with pranks from September 1960,
Our House, a rare 60-minute situation comedy was launched and ran for 39 episodes, a pop and rock show
Wham! began in April 1960, though it received poor reviews and a second series was cancelled.
Steamboat Shuffle presented a wealth of traditional jazz acts and occasional folk singers on board a mocked up Mississippi riverboat moored on the Thames by ABC's Teddington Studios in the summer of 1960, and Tesler was able to sign up American dancer and singer Sammy Davis Jr to make his first British television appearance on ABC. Even though as an executive Tesler's producing days were supposed to be behind him, he could not resist taking on directing
Sammy Davis Jr meets the British. Tesler vowed it would be his last production job but was tempted to produce one more programme, a Christmas show for 1960,
Alice Through the Looking Box, featuring many of the biggest comedians, actors and personalities of the day. It won ITV's biggest audience on that Christmas Day. During the ensuing seven-and-a-half years before the end of ABC's franchise in the North and Midlands, Tesler established a growing reputation as a production executive, particularly when in October 1962 he was promoted to be ABC's Programme Controller, in charge of the creation and presentation of all the company's output, and in 1964 when he was made Director of Programmes and elected to the Board of ABC Television, becoming the first ITV Programme Controller to be appointed to a Board. ABC was the smallest of the so-called 'Big Four' ITV companies which were expected to make the impressive, expensive programmes that would be networked over the whole country, but it was increasingly able to carry more production weight than its size suggested. Much of this was down to Tesler's personal reputation and his ability to attract a new school of producers, directors and writers. With them under contract it was easier to entice top performers and presenters to ABC. Many of the programmes and series Tesler introduced at ABC became major network successes. Among them were the pop music show,
Thank Your Lucky Stars, which lasted for five years from 1961;
Big Night Out, which brought outside broadcast cameras to major entertainment events around the country and ran for five series from 1961 to 1965;
Comedy Bandbox, which showed off new comedians like
Jimmy Tarbuck,
Mike Yarwood and
Les Dawson;
Opportunity Knocks, a talent show presented by Hughie Green, which became one of ITV's Top Twenty shows and ran for 14 years; and
The Eamonn Andrews Show − Live from London! was produced from Teddington in 1964 and was British television's first late night chat show. It, too, appeared regularly in the Top Twenty TV ratings. After Sammy Davis Jr, American entertainers like
Bing Crosby,
Frank Sinatra and
Peggy Lee made their first British TV specials for ABC. A successful new sitcom emerged in
Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width with
Joe Lynch and
John Bluthal.
Blackpool Night Out from the resort's ABC Theatre, later became
The Blackpool Show, hosted by
Mike and Bernie Winters,
Tony Hancock and Dickie Henderson.
Tommy Cooper and
Ken Dodd joined ABC for their own comedy shows on Saturday nights, and Bruce Forsyth starred in his own Sunday night ABC series. Tesler ensured that sport dominated the network on Saturday afternoons with a new show,
World of Sport, hosted by
Eamonn Andrews, and supported by ABC's outside broadcast vehicles, at that time ITV's largest fleet. Culture was represented by an arts programme,
Tempo, which was so successful it remained as ITV's only regular programme on the arts until 1968 and showed that ITV could be highbrow while remaining populist. Network drama on ABC flourished with one-off plays continuing successfully in Sunday night's
Armchair Theatre, and a number of popular drama series were sustained or emerged under Tesler's encouragement, such as espionage series
The Avengers,
Redcap about the military police,
Public Eye, a crime and detection series, and action-drama spy series
Callan. In 1967 the Independent Television Authority (ITA) announced a rearrangement of franchises to start in 1968. This meant that there would no longer be a contract for ABC to reapply for. The Northern area, split into North West and Yorkshire, was to become a seven-day operation, as would the Midlands. Existing weekday contractors,
Granada in the North West and
ATV in the Midlands, were considered the favourites. ABC decided to submit two applications: one for the service for London weekends, the other for the Midlands seven-day operation, although it favoured the first contract. It was expected that ABC would be awarded the London licence, but the strength of another application, from the
London Weekend Television consortium, ruled this out. Since the Midlands seven-day franchise was to be taken by ATV, and the ITA had no desire that an operator with the reputation of ABC should lose out through no fault of its own, they ordered a merger between ABC and the existing London weekday company
Rediffusion, with ABC having majority control, to become the weekday supplier for London, the prime ITV contract. The ITA also insisted that the Managing Director of the merged company should be ABC's Howard Thomas, and the Director of Programmes should be Brian Tesler, the only individuals named or specified in the 15 franchise awards, and "regarded as having the safest hands in the network". The two companies became
Thames Television. ABC ceased weekend broadcasting in the North and Midlands on Sunday 28 July 1968 and, with Rediffusion, and with Tesler as Director of Programmes, became the weekday supplier in the London region. ==Thames Television==