What was your ITV region?

[Victoria O'Keefe]

[George 1978]

Reminds me of Game for a Laugh ending, that does.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

[lewdsnarler]

My TV region growing up, living in Kent in my younger days was Southern TV, lots of good memories with shows like Out of Town one that my Grandparents used to sit down with us to watch. Then in 1981 it became TVS, for some reason I remember the first thing they ever showed was Digby the biggest Dog in the World. Local news was always good with TVS and we even had a couple of shows filmed in my hometown. Then came Meridian but I really didnt watch much TV after then. We also had another aerial pointed north so we could get Anglia TV which was good on Late Friday nights as the films locally used to be different, and there were different things throughout the day. Many others had aerials to get Thames / LWT but my Dad preferred Anglia.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

CITV was really great in the 1980s and early 1990s. As demonstrated by this photo taken at Broad Street.

[George 1978]

There might have been a competition for viewers to appear in the photograph, and the girls had won it? I know that they did things like that.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Great Uncle Bulgaria... thanks for that, it was going to bother me all day otherwise! Don't forget Sooty. Rupert looking a bit pale, always thought he was more off-white or tan.

Wonder who the CITV two little girls are in this press photo? I still think that they are wishing they were in trousers/pants! Bwa-ha-ha!

(Reminds me of Tony Blackburn's words: "suits and ties are for when there is a photographer in the on-air studio").

[beccabear67]

Great Uncle Bulgaria... thanks for that, it was going to bother me all day otherwise! Don't forget Sooty. Rupert looking a bit pale, always thought he was more off-white or tan.

[George 1978]

I always think of Yvette Fielding as being very much a BBC presenter because of Blue Peter - I was surprised to see her on there because although she presented What's Up Doc? on Saturday, that serries actually began in 1992, a year after that picture was taken in 1991 - one assumes that she was also involved with other programmes at the time?

Regarding the Womble, I think that it was Great Uncle Bulgaria on there.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Care to name all of them, Victoria?

Yes, one of them (initials: RH methinks) will not be doing children's television again. Would have liked to have seen Danielle Nicholls in that picture, but it was taken seven years too early.

Front Row L-R: Geoffrey Hayes, Bill Oddie, Rolf Harris, Tommy Boyd, Michaela Strachan, Keith Chegwin, Grotbags Carol Lee Scott, Julia Sawalha, Dexter Fletcher.

Middle Row L-R: Andrea Boardman, Evette Fielding, Neil Buchanan, Womble, Andrew Andy Crane, Rainbow Bungle, Danger Mouse.

Back Row L-R: Dungeon Master Treguard Hugo Myatt, Count Duckula, Rupert the Bear.


I wonder who the two little girls in that CITV picture are. If i was being mean, I'd say they both seem to be wishing they had their trousers back. But, I'm totally not mean, so I didn't say that.

[George 1978]

Care to name all of them, Victoria?

Yes, one of them (initials: RH methinks) will not be doing children's television again. Would have liked to have seen Danielle Nicholls in that picture, but it was taken seven years too early.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Here is Children's ITV's presenters and stars in a photoshoot at ITV's Broad Street Studios in Birmingham, West Midlands, on 2/4/1991. And so you will see this stupid remark first from me - yes, one of the people in this photograph will not be doing children's television ever again.

[Arran]

The bidding system for the 1991 franchise round was one of the sick and twisted sides of Thatcherism, but Carlton and NuLab also shoulder much of the blame for the state ITV is in today.

The fact is, Carlton would have wormed its way into ITV one way or another no matter what the outcome of the 1991 franchise round was. Carlton unsuccessfully tried to buy out Thames in the 1980s, and by 1991 had a stake in Central. If Carlton did not win either the London Weekday or South East ITV regions in 1991, then it almost certainly would have completely taken over Central and bought out Thames by the late 1990s. Carlton probably would have taken over another region or two as well by 2000.

There should have been another franchise round in the early 2000s but the NuLab government decided not to go ahead with it and instead allowed Granada and Carlton to merge to form ITV. NuLab wanted to see a single unified ITV rather than a regional ITV network.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Margaret Thatcher has not just the destruction of a "sane" ITV and ILR, but, personally for me, Section 28 as her legacy and the blood on her hands of my friend who was hounded and mocked with homophobic slurs about needing ladies bedroom wear until it was just too much.

[Arran]

A friend lived in Bath back in the late 1990s. He was talking to a local resident who mentioned that he would have welcomed a change in ITV company in the 1991 franchise round, and was disappointed that both TVS and TSW lost but HTV had gone on to win a 3rd franchise period. He thought that HTV was the Southern Television of 1991. A company that punched below its weight compared to similar size ITV companies of STV and Anglia, and it had dull and dated styling and presentation barely changed from the 1970s including regular in-vision continuity that most other ITV companies (Ulster being a notable exception) had done away with. HTV didn't produce many networked programmes, and for some unexplainable reason they had never repeated Children of the Stones although the friend hadn't heard of this programme at the time. The resident commented on how the styling and presentation of HTV was no match for the slick and snazzy presentation TVS adopted in 1987, and even that of TSW was more modern and attractive than HTV despite the small size and limited resources of this company.

The resident had a cynical view that ITV companies won in the past by being the best after careful scrutiny, but in 1991 they won simply by submitting the highest bid as long as they met the bare minimum with regards to quality and business plan - providing they didn't overbid.

The applicants for Wales and West of England were:

HTV £20.5m
Merlin £19.4m
C3 Wales & West £18.3m - Failed on quality
C3W £17.8m

Notice how closely spaced the bids are. Just £2.7m difference between the highest and lowest bids.

C3W was backed by TSW. If they won but TSW lost then the company would have effectively moved regions.