In 1960 Tesler moved into executive management by becoming Supervisor of Features and Light Entertainment at ABC Weekend TV which provided commercial television for the North of England and the Midlands.

[1][7][8] Tesler was mustered in the Royal Artillery in the summer of 1947[7][8] but after auditioning was posted to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) radio station in Trieste in Northern Italy as a presenter.

He produced a pilot show for a possible new series written by the radio writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden for the husband and wife light comedy team, Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly.

[34] Tesler broke some boundaries with We Got Rhythm, a show with an all-black cast of singers, dancers and cabaret artistes, including Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson.

[38] Tesler later wrote in his autobiography that "the idea of working in the cut-throat commercial world was repugnant," and that he felt his future at the BBC held plenty of attractive production prospects.

[41] Tesler's office received as many as 10,000 request letters a week from viewers and Ask Pickles became the most popular show on television,[42] scoring appreciation ratings in the 90s.

"[11] ATV held the major ITV contracts for the weekends in London and weekdays in the English Midlands and was eager to transmit a lot of light entertainment, Tesler's speciality.

[52] This series of entertainment specials, which ran from November 1956 to March 1961 (though in the last year or so without Tesler as he left ATV at the end of 1959) performed well for audience appreciation, occasionally making it into that week's ten most-watched programmes.

[56] Tesler's show New Look was a studio-based revue with a regular team of young all-round entertainers who could gain television experience and possibly be moulded into star material.

[52] Tesler continued a heavy production schedule at ATV, making at least one Saturday Spectacular a month and sometimes more often, featuring artistes of the like of Harry Secombe, Bernard Bresslaw, Dave King and Arthur Askey.

[52] Once New Look was completed Lew Grade also asked Tesler to come up with an idea to feature the West End's latest showplace, a theatre-restaurant named The Talk of the Town.

[67] 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.

[74] As for the regional aspect of light entertainment in his first year at ABC, Tesler set up weekly outside broadcast live transmissions of adapted theatrical farces from many of the multiple repertory theatres throughout the Midlands and the North under the umbrella title of Comedy Matinee.

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,[80] a pop and rock show Wham!

[67] Tesler vowed it would be his last production job[84] 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.

[87][88][89] 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.

[97] After Sammy Davis Jr, American entertainers like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee made their first British TV specials for ABC.

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.

With staff and studios lined up, Tesler, now liberated from the tight confines of a two-day weekend, set about building a more expansive weekday schedule of programmes.

Persuading the Thames board to guarantee a large investment, in 1971 Tesler set up with Isaacs the production of a monumental 26-hour-long historical documentary series about the Second World War.

Its original presenter, Eamonn Andrews, brought it back successfully in a long run of many years on Wednesday nights, beginning in the first few days of colour transmission on ITV in London in November 1969.

[128] Outside of education Tesler ensured a healthy supply of children's programmes, including Sooty (featuring a teddy bear hand puppet) which had been dropped by the BBC after running there since 1952.

[133] He later wrote that he was very much aware that in resigning from Thames at the age of 45 he was "saying farewell to more than twenty years of personal involvement with programmes and programme-making and hadn't the faintest idea of what might await me in my new career.

Financial problems, changes of shareholders, resignations of some senior executives, union difficulties, press hostility and some poor programming had led the Independent Broadcasting Authority to consider removing LWT's contract altogether.

[138] LWT's Deputy Programme Controller (Current Affairs), John Birt, later recorded that by 1976 the company "seemed to be in the doldrums, and ITV's weekend schedules - compared with the BBC's - appeared dull".

[149] He felt that what was urgently required to improve LWT's performance was a creative conference of the company's programme makers so that they "could get to know each other, exchange ideas, share problems, develop a sense of solidarity.

[176] Tesler was mentioned, along with other LWT executives, in an early day motion in the House of Commons signed by 65 MPs condemning the share scheme and deploring what it called a "crass personal lust for money".

[179] In June 1993, at the same time as Tesler and the other investors in the scheme were profiting, Granada Television, the ITV company which held the franchise for the north west of England, began to buy LWT shares.

[193][194][173] When his tenure as Chairman ended in 1996 Tesler was asked to serve as a lay interviewer for the Judicial Appointments Commission to examine prospective Assistant Recorders, Acting Stipendiary Magistrates, Presidents of Industrial Tribunals and Circuit and District Judges.

[200] When Tesler retired in 1994 he and his wife set up a small charity, The Multithon Trust, which supports the treatment of and research into the causes of illness, disease and disability, and the care and welfare of those who suffer from them.