Tweet
New Year's Eve 1992 - the day that traditional ITV died. Call me sentimental if you wish, but I was so devastated when I head the news from the red-tops that Rainbow had been axed - I know that I was a teenager (14) by then and was too old to watch it, but I had probably broken the record for watching a programme intended for under fives for over a decade. Perhaps if it had been a soap opera, it would have survived? Thames was outbid by Carlton some 14 months before, and New Year's Eve 1992 was its final day - the company was used to going off-air once a week, but usually at 5.15 pm on Friday evenings and not midnight on that day (well, 11.59 pm, pedantically). This Week was axed (and no, I don't think that Death on the Rock was the reason why it ended). Ironically, The Bill was saved and was even shown on Saturday, and later Friday evenings at the same time of 8.00 pm, and I bet that London viewers would have thought it being strange for LWT to introduce a Thames programme (Thames Weekend News excepted).
Thames programmes were biked around to different companies after its franchise loss: Yorkshire TV got The Bill (until Carlton took it over later on the year): Granada got the rights to make new series with Sooty; Anglia got Cosgrove Hall, and eventually HTV in association with Tetra Films did a new Rainbow series sans Geoffrey Hayes in 1994. Central, thanks to their 2,000 pounds bid for being unopposed in the Midlands, took over quite a few programmes, in fact, probably more than they did from ATV a decade before. This is Your Life; Strike it Lucky; Minder; and Wish You Were Here? were three of them in which the ITV Network continued to have for a few more years.
"As we salute out talented performers..." went Thames Managing Director Richard Dunn on screen (and how many TV chiefs would do that?) to London viewers before handing over to a montage of the Tourists' I Only Want to Be With You, and then ITN taking us into the New Year. Dermot Murnaghan reading out news about a man who had been mauled to death at London Zoo; something to do with Diana, Princess of Wales, and then a handover to Big Ben. After that, all hell broke loose. Welcome to both the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Independent Television Commission's core era in in one fell swoop!
We all know that back in 1989 Corrie's Mike Baldwin had sold his factory to someone called Maurice Jones, who demolished it for housing for the benefit of new Friday episode. Well, who was the first person to be seen on Carlton? Not Chris Tarrant, but someone else called Maurice Jones: a Mayor who appeared in their first ident, ringing bells and shouting: "This is Carlton - Television for London!" And then we went back to a differently-angled Big Ben and Chris Tarrant, a crude Simpsons-alike opening title sequence, almost sticking two fingers up at its predecessor, introducing a Channel 4-type show with Paul McCartney, Take That, and others - the shape of things to come. The first advert was for the Vauxhall Carlton car. And they only ever did one edition of the This is Your Life-alike Surprise Party, even though Michael Parkinson asked us to look out for more editions in the future.
Monday 4th January 1993 rather than New Year's Day was the real acid test - the first full weekday where people were back to work or school in those dark mornings, what I would call "Back to Normal Monday" before Blue Monday was concocted. It was when London Today courtesy of London News Network, was first seen during GMTV's first regional bulletin at around 6.30 pm, and Paul Greene read the Capital's news - the very first time that London had a seven day news service that other regions had. A lot of networked programmes (commissioned by independent producers as Carlton was a publisher broadcaster) were soon forgotten about as soon as their series ended.
TVS was strong at weekends when it came to networked programming with classics such as Catchphrase and the Bobby Davro's sketch shows - they bid 59 million pounds in 1991 (the equivalent of one pound for each person in the UK back then), and had understandably overbid as a result. Meridian, with its 36 million pounds bit got the contract instead. They were good right to the end: giving their Southampton and Maidstone studios (as well as the versatile Fred Dinenage) to their successors. And then it was "Goodbye to All That": just like the Scottish regions; they had opted out of Thames' End of the Year Show (which paid tributes to their networked programmes mostly on Mondays to Thursdays between 7 and 10 pm) with their own final programme. "You've been a wonderful audience, and Meridian are very lucky to have you", Fern Briton remarked before TVS closed down for good, also opting out of the ITN Into the New Year bulletin as well (naughty). With an applauding audience (with Shaw Taylor being one of them) the pre-recorded programme went to the very last time to an special TVS ident and "Thanks for watching" underneath it. And then it was Big Ben.
Cue a noisy Winchester Cathedral; New Year crowds, and Debbie Thrower introducing the first ten minutes of Meridian, and comparing 900 years of the cathedral with nine seconds of the TV station. A lot of optimistic viewers taking part in vox-pops in the street, being asked what their hopes would be for 1993. Andy Craig showed viewers the ropes of this new television station, and even Alison Holloway (former wife of Jim Davidson, lest we forget) was interviewing someone near the Channel Crossing in Dover. On the network, we had to wait until Tuesday 5th for Meridian's first network offering: the children's series Wizadora. Oh, and Meridian's first advert was also for a car called a Meridian - a word meaning "in the South". Meridian was the most optimistic of the newcomers.
(Continued...)
Thames programmes were biked around to different companies after its franchise loss: Yorkshire TV got The Bill (until Carlton took it over later on the year): Granada got the rights to make new series with Sooty; Anglia got Cosgrove Hall, and eventually HTV in association with Tetra Films did a new Rainbow series sans Geoffrey Hayes in 1994. Central, thanks to their 2,000 pounds bid for being unopposed in the Midlands, took over quite a few programmes, in fact, probably more than they did from ATV a decade before. This is Your Life; Strike it Lucky; Minder; and Wish You Were Here? were three of them in which the ITV Network continued to have for a few more years.
"As we salute out talented performers..." went Thames Managing Director Richard Dunn on screen (and how many TV chiefs would do that?) to London viewers before handing over to a montage of the Tourists' I Only Want to Be With You, and then ITN taking us into the New Year. Dermot Murnaghan reading out news about a man who had been mauled to death at London Zoo; something to do with Diana, Princess of Wales, and then a handover to Big Ben. After that, all hell broke loose. Welcome to both the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Independent Television Commission's core era in in one fell swoop!
We all know that back in 1989 Corrie's Mike Baldwin had sold his factory to someone called Maurice Jones, who demolished it for housing for the benefit of new Friday episode. Well, who was the first person to be seen on Carlton? Not Chris Tarrant, but someone else called Maurice Jones: a Mayor who appeared in their first ident, ringing bells and shouting: "This is Carlton - Television for London!" And then we went back to a differently-angled Big Ben and Chris Tarrant, a crude Simpsons-alike opening title sequence, almost sticking two fingers up at its predecessor, introducing a Channel 4-type show with Paul McCartney, Take That, and others - the shape of things to come. The first advert was for the Vauxhall Carlton car. And they only ever did one edition of the This is Your Life-alike Surprise Party, even though Michael Parkinson asked us to look out for more editions in the future.
Monday 4th January 1993 rather than New Year's Day was the real acid test - the first full weekday where people were back to work or school in those dark mornings, what I would call "Back to Normal Monday" before Blue Monday was concocted. It was when London Today courtesy of London News Network, was first seen during GMTV's first regional bulletin at around 6.30 pm, and Paul Greene read the Capital's news - the very first time that London had a seven day news service that other regions had. A lot of networked programmes (commissioned by independent producers as Carlton was a publisher broadcaster) were soon forgotten about as soon as their series ended.
TVS was strong at weekends when it came to networked programming with classics such as Catchphrase and the Bobby Davro's sketch shows - they bid 59 million pounds in 1991 (the equivalent of one pound for each person in the UK back then), and had understandably overbid as a result. Meridian, with its 36 million pounds bit got the contract instead. They were good right to the end: giving their Southampton and Maidstone studios (as well as the versatile Fred Dinenage) to their successors. And then it was "Goodbye to All That": just like the Scottish regions; they had opted out of Thames' End of the Year Show (which paid tributes to their networked programmes mostly on Mondays to Thursdays between 7 and 10 pm) with their own final programme. "You've been a wonderful audience, and Meridian are very lucky to have you", Fern Briton remarked before TVS closed down for good, also opting out of the ITN Into the New Year bulletin as well (naughty). With an applauding audience (with Shaw Taylor being one of them) the pre-recorded programme went to the very last time to an special TVS ident and "Thanks for watching" underneath it. And then it was Big Ben.
Cue a noisy Winchester Cathedral; New Year crowds, and Debbie Thrower introducing the first ten minutes of Meridian, and comparing 900 years of the cathedral with nine seconds of the TV station. A lot of optimistic viewers taking part in vox-pops in the street, being asked what their hopes would be for 1993. Andy Craig showed viewers the ropes of this new television station, and even Alison Holloway (former wife of Jim Davidson, lest we forget) was interviewing someone near the Channel Crossing in Dover. On the network, we had to wait until Tuesday 5th for Meridian's first network offering: the children's series Wizadora. Oh, and Meridian's first advert was also for a car called a Meridian - a word meaning "in the South". Meridian was the most optimistic of the newcomers.
(Continued...)
Comment