However, problems with transmission infrastructure and poor market research led to financial difficulties within two years and the station was taken over by its neighbour Television Wales and the West. During the 1970s, Welsh-language activists had campaigned for a TV service in the language, which already had its own radio station, BBC Radio Cymru. Both the Conservative and Labour parties promised a Welsh-language fourth channel, if elected to government in the 1979 general election. Shortly after the Conservatives won a majority in the election, the new Home Secretary William Whitelaw decided against a Welsh fourth channel, and suggested that, except for an occasional opt-out, the service should be the same as that offered in the rest of the UK. This led to acts of civil disobedience, including refusals to pay the television licence fee, thereby running the risk of prosecution or even a prison sentence, and sit-ins in BBC and HTV studios. Some took more extreme measures, including attacking television transmitters in Welsh-speaking areas. On 17 September 1980, the former president of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans, threatened to go on hunger strike if the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher did not honour its commitment to provide a Welsh-language TV service. The channel started broadcasting on 1 November 1982, the night before Channel 4's opening. S4C's remit is to provide a service which features a wide range of programmes in the Welsh language. Like Channel 4, S4C does not produce programmes of its own; instead, it commissions programmes from BBC Cymru Wales and independent producers (although the quantity purchased from ITV Cymru Wales has greatly reduced since the early years of S4C), and it has particularly developed a reputation for commissioning children's animation, such as "SuperTed", "Rocky Hollow", "Fireman Sam" (also broadcast by the BBC), "Gogs", "" and the 1992-1996 French co-production "Natalie". BBC Wales fulfils its public service requirement by producing programmes in Welsh, including "Newyddion", S4C's news bulletin, and a soap opera, "Pobol y Cwm", and providing them to S4C free of charge. It has also provided (or licensed) Welsh-language versions of English-language programmes, such as the original "Teletubbies". On the analogue service, S4C showed programmes produced for Channel 4 in the rest of the United Kingdom – either simultaneously or time-shifted – outside of peak hours. These programmes were provided to S4C by Channel 4, free of charge.