The end of ITV as we used to know it - 30 years on

[Victoria O'Keefe]

[Arran]

It was a sad demise to Central...

Mountains of stuff have been written about Thames losing their franchise in 1991 and the resulting impact it has had on ITV and its programmes. Less has been written about the decimation of Central following the mergers which created a unified ITV.

It really is a sobering thought that what in 1990 was Britain's 2nd largest ITV company which ran a massive programme factory and even ran the network for a large part of every week has been reduced to a neutron star only existing for local news.

Central was well known for running CITV and producing over half of all ITV schools programmes. It was also a prominent player in sports output, and for many years produced the majority of football coverage for ITV.

The decimation of Central has left the Midlands as a major population centre without any significant presence in ITV, and it is possible that it has been more detrimental to ITV than the loss of Thames at the end of 1993. At least Thames still continues as an independent producer.

Blame Carlton. Doesn't Michael Green feel guilty about what he has done?! He retrained in psychotherapy, which he has practised from 2011.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

A time travel scenario from this sci fi and fantasy lover:

messing with a television event for shiggles: at 11PM Birmingham time December 31, 1979, the whole of the traditional area of the West Midlands is transported to the same time and date in 2000.

I'm very interested in how this messes up the year 2000 era Carlton-Granada ITV given that - among other things - the old ATV Midlands and their old studios in Broad Street have suddenly been brought to 2000.

[Arran]

Michael Palin was a shareholder in Meridian, I think - although he didn't originally come from the region itself.

Yes he was.

A notable feature of Meridian is that they offered 3 local news services - south coast, south east, Thames valley - whereas TVS only offered 2 local news services.

I have wondered if Meridian was partially inspired by Network South from the 1980 franchise round which proposed 5 sub regions each with a local news service. Meridian did not produce as many programmes as TVS did. Neither did Network South intend to produce much apart from local programmes, with fewer networked programmes than Southern produced.

Meridian has been criticised for being more like a Southern Television mk2 and lacking the ambition that TVS had, but they should be given credit that in 1994 their parent company MAI took over Anglia Television, then in 1995 MAI became a major shareholder in the consortium that won the franchise for Channel 5.

In 1996 MAI merged with United Newspapers to form United News and Media (UNM). This now resulted in a company which owned both print and television media, like the owners of Southern Television did. A position which was very unpopular with the IBA during the 1980 franchise round.

In 1999 there were proposals to merge UNM and Carlton. This failed when it was revealed that Meridian would have to be sold off as a condition of the deal. Meridian and Anglia were instead sold to Granada, and HTV sold to Carlton in exchange for the 20% stake in Meridian owned by Central. This was due to regulations limiting the audience share of ITV companies at the time.

The takeover of Meridian by Granada represented the point where Meridian began to decline to little more than a local news service for the south of England.

[Arran]

Doesn't Ofcom have them these days?

They most likely retain them locked away in a basement vault and they haven't been converted to a digital format yet. Ideally they should give a copy of them to the National Archives.

Historians of ITV are limited in their research in the absence of the application documents.

You can see a pile of them for the South and South East region in the 1980 franchise round in the TVS programme Birth of a Station

https://youtu.be/NDhSWbj_puM

Go to 6:15 and 7:54

[George 1978]

That's right - the very first regular programme (not counting the "This is 5" opening show) was Family Affairs, where we got to see the new Thames logo for the first time. Incidentally, I wrote to one of the FA cast members on the first evening that Channel 5 was on air, for an autograph, and addressed it to the old Teddington address, and she had received it and responded a couple of months later!

[Richard1978]

I remember Channel 5 was originally offered as a franchise, & Thames was one of the bidders.

[George 1978]

Speaking of Mister Taylor:

You certainly kept 'em peeled.

He reminds me of when me and my late mother witnessed a jewellery shop robbery in Nottingham City Centre and Police 5 covered it - I can even remember the Reg No of the getaway car.

[George 1978]

Doesn't Ofcom have them these days? - I don't think that Freedom of Information requests cover things like that. I believe that the BFI could have the paperwork but they focus on actual archives of TV programmes.

[Arran]

I would like to read the applications for the ITV companies to find out what they really proposed to do if they won the franchise. Any idea where they can be viewed by the public?

Could it be possible that Carlton was truly fantastic on paper, whilst the public fantasises over Thames in the absence of knowledge of their future plans, but it completely failed to live up to its promises?

Take into account that ITV in January 1993 was one analogue terrestrial channel with a teletext service. Did any applicants ever plan for digital terrestrial, satellite, cable channels, or internet services?

There was the fiasco with ONdigital / ITV Digital, operating between 1998 and 2002 as a digital terrestrial pay TV service owned by Carlton and Granada. Did this ultimately result in no franchise round being held in the early 2000s, before Carlton and Granada merged in 2004?

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Speaking of Mister Taylor:

[George 1978]

Was ATV the only ITV company to have a "digital" clock at closedown, I wonder?

Thinking about it, both ATV and TVS' final broadcast had Shaw Taylor in them!

[Victoria O'Keefe]

[Victoria O'Keefe]

[Arran]

The end of TSW and the start of Westcountry.

https://youtu.be/Kwvx2ak7iSo

Note the omission of a final TSW logo before ITN.