When Granada bought LWT

I came across a thread on TVF from about 2006, where a series of interviews or something surrounding the purchase of LWT by Granada.

I was just wondering whether anyone had the videos, because the link has gone dead.

Thanks for your help

There a video on Youtube if you looked..

I did look actually, I maybe didn't make myself clear. It was a documentary featuring interviews, the thread is here;

http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/granada-bought-lwt-23079/

It was quite a complex process. LWT were unhappy about being acquired by Granada (it was, of course a hostile takeover).

LWT tried to get out of it by instead purchasing Yorkshire. But the problem was that YTV already owned Tyne Tees, so the latter would need to be sold off to allow the LWT-YTV merger under the rules of the time.

So a plan was put together to sell TTT to Anglia, which itself was the target of a takeover by Meridian. But Anglia took one look at the mess TTT was by this stage and ran away screaming. And so Granada got their way.

Imagine if it was the other way round. Had LWT actually brought Granada TV then LWT wouldn't have gone downhill and the company would've rebranded as Granada Media (owning LWT and Granada).

I'm surprised LWT never went for Border or West country, small but would have kept the wolfs off the door.

The Border and Granada merger was always a done deal following the schedule and ad sales merger

Not an option.
Granada getting Border was all tied to Capital Radio Group buying Border.

Capital wanted Border for Border Radio Holdings (mainly to own the Century radio stations) and then would keep those, but sell Border TV to Granada almost immediately.

Agreement was in place before the cheque book was brought out of Capital Radio's pocket.

Thats six years later.

That was some time later

Granada merged its scheduling and Ad-sales operation with Border some years earlier, meaning there was no real need for a takeover earlier as they had essentially asset stripped the business.

Agreed -- or indeed Anglia as that company was up for grabs at the time.

I guess LWT didn't want to be 'saddled' with a small company that might have prevented their own future expansion (no-one at that point knew how long the two franchise rule would be around for), perhaps depressing their value.

None of the minor ITV companies (apart from Tyne Tees, which effectively busted themselves with the £15.5m bid and therefore had little choice but to sell up for a song in 1992) were of interest to the big companies until the two franchise rule was ended; you'd think that if there was a commercial advantage to buying these up it would have happened almost straight away as a defensive measure; Central had the same opportunity to protect itself against Carlton.

Indeed I remember in 1992 a national BBC report into the YTV-TTT merger in which the journalist speculated that this would be the first of many 'minnows' to be taken over in the new year. So at the time some felt that was the way things were going. But it didn't pan out like that.

I was just rereading that old thread, a few points thankful my grammar improved, I still believe if the takeovers were done by others companies we would have had a better shape ITV plc. of course were did all those nice members disappear to?