ITV: A (Very) Brief History
From 1936 to 1955 there was only one television
channel in the UK (and nothing at all during World War 2),
then the ITV (Independent Television) network came along
which unlike the BBC was funded entirely using revenue from
advertisments shown between programmes. Another key
difference was that Independent Television (or ITV as it
became known later) consisted of several different
companies, each one serving a different part of the British
Isles and producing programmes which were either shown
locally or nationally across the entire
network.
ITN (Independent Television News) provided news
programmes for the ITV network and the organisation still
does so today. The first bulletin was transmitted at 10pm
on 22 September 1955 on ITV's opening night, and introduced
a less formal style of news broadcasting to the UK imported
from America, which was in direct contrast to the cinema
newsreels and still pictures that the BBC used. The
appropriately-named Christopher Chataway presented the
first programme, and him, along with Robin Day and Ludovic
Kennedy, became household names.
To begin with independent television started life in
London with Associated-Rediffusion providing the London
weekday service plus ATV providing the London weekend
service, but over the next few years the ITV network
expanded with the addition of more regional franchises
covering various parts of the United Kingdom. This caption
from Tyne Tees (North-East England) gives the VHF channel
number. Many TV sets produced before 1955 were often only
capable of receiving one channel and these sets needed a
"set-top convertor" to enable additional frequencies to be
viewed.
The news was not the only thing different about the
new service. ITV, in contrast to the licence fee funded
BBC, was more 'downmarket' in its approach, showing quiz
games and popular light entertainment shows in order to
attract viewers to the channel; many of these formats such
as Associated-Rediffusion's
Double Your Money were
imported from America. The caption shown here is the start
of the title sequence for
Sunday Night at the London
Palladium, presented by Jack Parnell, and produced for
the ITV network by Associated Television (ATV), which was
the company that held the London ITV weekend franchise
until 1968. ATV also held the Midlands ITV franchise
(weekdays only until 1968) up to 1982 when ATV essentially
reinvented itself as Central.
Sunday Night at the London Palladium was
basically an 'old-style' variety show which had been
adapted for television, but it also featured what was the
novel addition of a quiz show segment (Beat The Clock,
shown here with Bruce Forsyth as the presenter). This
entertainment mixture proved to be very popular for many
years with audience figures often exceeding 20 million in
its heyday, and the format has been revived on more than
one occasion.
Granada Television (which originally served the
North-West of England and Yorkshire) is the longest
surviving of the ITV companies (since 1956) and now owns
all of the ITV franchises for England and Wales. It is
famous for several programmes, especially
Coronation
Street (a long-running soap opera) and
World in
Action. (Photo courtesy of EMC.)
ITV started showing schools programmes as early as
1957, when Associated-Rediffusion (managed by the
forward-thinking Paul Adorian) established the first
regular schools broadcasting in the UK; the BBC only
following suit by September 1958, initially showing one
programme each afternoon. Teachers (on the other hand) were
initially very suspicious of using television as a teaching
tool in the classroom, and initially having to fit lessons
round the various programmes was not an easy task.
The ITV franchises may have produced 'populist' drama
such as soap operas along with even more lightweight quiz
and variety programming shown during the early evening, but
ITV proved that there was a sizable audience for more
serious drama offerings such as the ABC-produced
Armchair Theatre that featured one-off plays; indeed
Armchair Theatre outlasted ABC and continued when
Thames was formed for the London weekday ITV franchise in
1968.
The 1960s saw a further expansion of the ITV network,
which finally enabled ITV programmes to be viewed in most
parts of the country. Westward Television was arguably the
first of the "second wave" of ITV franchises to start
broadcasting in 1961, following on from the initial batch
of franchises which had included Southern and Tyne Tees as
well as the pioneers Associated-Rediffusion and Granada. At
this point it seemed fairly obvious that ITV franchises
were now capable of making money, though the first and only
ITV company to go bankrupt whilst still holding a franchise
(WWN) was soon to follow.
1967 saw the introduction of
News at Ten, the
half-hour news bulletin that became the cornerstone of the
ITV schedule for over thirty years before it was finally
dropped in 1999. (The 10pm bulletin was later reinstated
for a short while.)
ITV's Picasso Period...Up to the advent of colour in
1969 there was what as known as the 'Picasso' tuning
signal, which was unofficially named after the famous
artist by virtue of its style. What Picasso himself would
have made of it is unknown, but he surely would have given
nodding approval! The example pictured was broadcast
exclusively from the Emley Moor transmitter in Yorkshire,
and various other transmitters showed
ITV's first major shakeup caught almost everyone by
surprise. The popular and respected ABC, whom prior to 1968
owned the (now extinct) Midlands and North of England
weekend franchises had just expected to have been given one
of the remaining major ITV franchises, eg. London weekdays,
but also being asked to form a company (that became known
as Thames) was a twist that nobody foresaw.
Peyton
Place was the very last programme to be transmitted by
Rediffusion London in 1968 before Thames Television took
over as the London weekday franchise holder. Thames was a
new company that was formed from the television production
divisions of ABC (comprising 51% of Thames) and Rediffusion
(the remaining 49%) with ABPC (ABC's parent company) being
in overall control.
With the new company structure, ABPC took the
opportunity to change the name from ABC to Thames; one
reason for doing this was that with international sales in
mind it would avoid confusion with the US and Australian
ABC networks of which which it was totally unrelated to.
Indeed what was the British ABC has nothing to do with
today's ABC1 channel which has been created by the Walt
Disney Company and is loosely based on the US ABC network
of which it also owns. After the creation of Thames both
the ABC and Rediffusion brands continued to be used for
other purposes (cinemas and cable television to name but
two) by their respective parent companies since only their
ITV franchise operations had been affected.
Before
| Rediffusion London |
Served London Monday-Friday. |
| ATV Network |
Served the Midlands Monday-Friday and London at
weekends. |
| ABC Television |
Served the Midlands and North at weekends. |
| Granada Television |
Served the North Monday-Friday. |
After
| Thames
Television |
A new company which was jointly owned by ABPC (the
parent company of ABC Television) and
Associated-Rediffusion, with ABPC having the majority
shareholding (51%) - contrary to popular opinion it was
not a merger. Serving London from Monday until 7 pm on
a Friday. |
| London Weekend
Television |
Another new company serving London from 7 pm Friday
until Sunday. |
| Yorkshire
Television |
The North region was split in two, with this new
company serving Yorkshire for the entire week. |
| Granada
Television |
Now serving Lancashire throughout the week. |
| ATV
Network |
Now serving the Midlands thoughout the week. |
As well as the changes listed above, TWW (Television
Wales and West) were ''dispossessed' and were replaced by
Harlech Television, a company named after Lord Harlech but
which was soon to be renamed HTV since the Harlech name
(rightly or wrongly to many viewers) reflected a Welsh bias
to viewers in the West of England. The HTV franchise has
since passed through the hands of UNM (United News and
Media) and Carlton before Carlton was 'merged' with
Granada; it is now simply known as ITV1 Wales.
Pre-programme company idents (as such) were no longer used
from the beginning of 1988.
World Of Sport was ITV's famous Saturday
afternoon sports programme presented by Dickie Davies which
ran until 1985, and typically featured football (On The
Ball), Australian rules football, stock car racing and the
very popular wrestling matches as well as horse racing and
other sports.
Various regional ITV companies became well known for
their contributions to the ITV network; for example Anglia
became famous for its wildlife series
Survival as
well as its downmarket quiz
Sale of the Century
("From Norwich, it's the quiz of the week..."), and Granada
became synonymous with
Coronation Street and
World In Action (amongst others).
The 1980s started with a degree of uncertainty for
the ITV contractors, as the second franchise review took
place. Three familiar ITV names - ATV, Southern and
Westward - were displaced by newcomers Central, TVS and TSW
on January 1 1982 - one surprise was the loss of ATV
because they were still a very successful TV company, but
Central were in essence just a 'reorganised ATV' with
greater local commitments; a change were also made to the
South East with the Bluebell Hill transmitter in Kent
broadcasting TVS (which also had to provide an improved
local news service) instead of Thames/LWT. Also ITV gained
a new national breakfast television service which was
provided by a complete separate contractor - TV-am.
Before ITV's Network Promotions Unit was established,
individual ITV franchises were responsible for producing
programme promotions either for their own productions or
alternatively nominated by the ITCA to produce ITV-specific
promotions for special events. Pictured is the famous World
Cup promotion from 1990 that also featured a football being
passed between different famous people.
Unlike the BBC, the ITV companies only hold a
franchise to broadcast in a particular region, and these
franchises are reviewed every couple of years - licence
renewal is not automatic, as many companies subsequently
found to their cost. Thames, TVS, TSW and TV-am all lost
their franchises and were replaced by Carlton, Meridian,
Westcountry and GMTV at the start of 1993. The manner of
which the franchise renewals were conducted in 1991 was
highly controversial, and the loss of Thames in particular
was a point of huge contention.
Commercial television often uses what is known as a
'break bumper' which is a very short (typically less than 2
second) animation with no music shown just before and/or
after the commercial break - the picture is taken from one
which was used by Meridian Television. Occasionally ITV
companies used a simple animation between each commercial
as well (technically an 'optic'); the one used by Westward
Television featured a rotating hexagon!
With the new ITV franchise holders came new early
evening regional news programmes in their respective
regions: for example, Meridian introduced
Meridian
Tonight (replacing TVS's
Coast to Coast) whilst
Westcountry introduced
Westcountry Live as a
replacement for
TSW Today.
TV from the heart...ITV's new image as introduced on
5 October 1998, which includes a new lower case itv logo
(replacing the 1989 design) and colour scheme. The 'heart'
is meant to symbolise 'warmth' and 'cuddliness', though ITV
executives nearly had heart failure when they learnt of the
BBC Choice 'three hearts' ident! 'Break bumpers' have been
produced with 'hearts' as the theme along with other
promotional items. However not all companies made use all
the changes, eg. Meridian and others used their own style
of ident/break bumper and adds their own logo to generic
ITV trailers.
The next (and not uncontroversial) change was the
axing of News at Ten from March 8 1999 - since 1967 this
news programme had been a regular feature of the ITV
weekday evening schedule and it had also been a condition
of the ITV franchise holders that they had to show it
regardless, meaning that it was impossible to start showing
a movie at (say) 9 pm without being interrupted by anything
but commercials. After many complaints, the ITC forced ITV
to reinstate its 10pm bulletin at least for four days a
week; it was known as the "ITV News at Ten", though it
wasn't too long before this idea was abandoned for a
shorter bulletin in a later slot.
From Monday 8 November 1999 - a year and a month
after the ITV 'heart' logo was introduced, all English ITV
franchises (except the Carlton-owned regions) adopted the
ITV "generic" look for their on-screen presentation. The
Carlton example is taken from the Midlands region which
uses orange as a background colour.
Behind the scenes at ITV there have been many
upheavals within many of the franchises since the mid 1990s
with numerous mergers and acquistions; the net result by
2000 being that Granada owned all English ITV regions apart
from London weekdays, the Midlands and the HTV West/South
West of England (Westcountry) which were owned by Carlton,
but even that was going to change by 2004 when Granada
finally 'merged' with Carlton.
The studio set of the early evening regional news
programme Central News at Six (shown here) demonstrates how
the star theme used by Carlton had been utilised (note the
star pattern on the backdrop of the news studio). Nowadays
all the English ITV regions use the same style of general
presentation throughout.
This 'programme menu' shows the lineup of programmes
for ITV for Christmas Day 1999, which is dominated by a
selection of programmes designed to try and attract the
largest popular audience possible. ITV has in recent years
performed relatively poorly in terms of audience share on
Christmas Day, so this illustrates a clear attempt to
reverse the trend.
This picture illustrates something that is starting
to become more commonplace during 2001 on both ITV and BBC
One; notably End Credit Promotions (or ECP for short).
Whilst the end credits of one programme are being shown (in
this case for an episode of the ill-fated revival of
Crossroads) in one part of the screen, a promotion
for another programme is being shown at the same time.
October 2002 saw ITV1 launch a new look as part of a
concerted effort to restore its image. ITV's audience had
been in steady decline over the last few years whilst
(amongst other things) it concentrated efforts on the
failed Ondigital/ITV Digital project. The new look featured
various ITV personalities (such as Ant and Dec, pictured
here) appearing before programmes, showing them as being
"off duty" as part of short sequences, though an even more
fundamental change at this point was that regional names
such as Granada and Meridian were no longer used except for
local news bulletins and sometimes seen just before
regional programmes, plus some of these names having been
abandoned altogether, eg. LWT is no longer used and the
name ITV1 London is used seven days a week (although the
London region was at this point still controlled by two
companies with Granada operating at the weekend and Carlton
during weekdays).
The final transformation: On 2 February 2004 Granada
finally merged with Carlton to create one ITV company ("ITV
plc") for England and Wales when shares in the unified
company were first traded on the Stock Exchange, though SMG
(Scottish/Grampian), Channel and UTV (Northern Ireland)
remain separate entities at the time of writing. The
Granada name was soon adopted as the network production
brand, whilst the Carlton name disappeared into the history
books like so many of its ITV franchise predecessors.
A new unified look was introduced for ITV1 and ITV2,
with ITV3 being created soon afterwards when Granada bought
out BSkyB's share of the digital channel (Granada). ITV4
was subsequently launched in 2005 with a new style of ITV
logo that will be adopted elsewhere during 2006; the
original plan was to scrap the Men & Motors channel but
its continued popularity led to a rethink and the ITV News
Channel ended up being scrapped instead ostensibly due to
the popularity of "on-demand" news (the ITV News Channel
closed on the 23 December 2005). ITV has also recently
acquired the SDN digital terrestrial multiplex for future
usage, though what it will ultimately do with the space is
as yet uncertain.
