26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Im surprised no one is talking about it here, yet twitter is on fire about it, ( Im starting to think you get better pres talk on twitter at times)

Feels like yesterday.
A total joy to have worked with such a fantastic, creative, talented team - on and off screen. https://t.co/9saog87qaJ

— Lorraine (@reallorraine) December 31, 2017

TV25 : From31 December 1992 at 09:25 - Thames Television

"Well as we say goodbye to TV AM, good morning and welcome to the very last day of transmission from Thames Television"

Watch the final day opening here : https://t.co/e7Xrv7g3gA pic.twitter.com/lHbLudHkSG

— Russty_Russ #Retro (@russty_russ) December 31, 2017

From 31 December 1992 at 09:25 - TVS

"Good morning and welcome to the final days transmissions on TVS"

TVS' final morning start up on their last day.

Watch the final TVS start up here : https://t.co/SXw9DVcY9J pic.twitter.com/zlTi8xZSmV

— Russty_Russ #Retro (@russty_russ) December 31, 2017

I remember watching the closedown of TSW (featuring Ruth Langsford) and the launch of WestCountry and GMTV on 1 January 1993:







"A new day. A New Year. A new television station."

Christ. That GMTV saxophone was a bit much for 6am.

Was obviously massive at the time and some would argue it set the course for ITV, but I do wonder if ultimately it's just a footnote in the channels history as I suspect even had little changed in 1993 sooner or later we'd have been at the point of a single ITV for much of the country, so doubt the ITV of today would be much different had the likes of Thames and TVam survived beyond the early 90s as ITV franchises.

Alot of people agree we would have ended up with a single ITVplc its how it would have got there and much more importantly who would have been controlling it. Some say it would have been thames/ TVS/ Central and LWT, instead of Granada and Carlton.

The Television market in 2017/8 is obviously a lot different from that of 1992/3. I still think that had the franchises been unchanged, we would've still had a single ITV, but, as mentioned by Brekkie, it would be a question of control. I think it would've been Thames and Granada that would've been the driving forces, possibly with Central as well. One point would've been whether or not it would've happened quicker or not, had the franchises remained unchanged.

A small footnote; the four firms that lost their franchises all began with a T......

(sigh)
Again. Thames had two major shareholders who wanted out as quickly as possible. Carlton would have brought it out fairly quickly.

TVS would have fallen to Granada to increase pressure on LWT going the same way.

The wildcard would have been TV-am. TSW would have gone to either Charlton or Granada.

It's who Kerry Packer would sell TV-am to. It would have ended up in a biggest chequebook deal, rather than any great corporate ITV strategic deal.

I believe TVS would have merged with Lwt. Alot of stuff would have been ripped out, including southampton etc and W/E Ca

True, though three out of four of those Ts stood for Television, so no great surprise !

TVS did have an arrangement with LWT in the late 1980s, to get some of their stuff networked, so quite likely TVS and LWT would've merged. Had that happened, I think what you would've seen would be what 623058 mentioned, with the South bank and Maidstone retained. Southampton may well have gone.

The spare studio capacity would be achieved as the ITV franchise holders, from I think 1989 or 1990, had to commission 25% of their programming from independent production companies.

I agree. In fact a year ago, you could have said that both the South Bank and Maidstone had survived into the present era, the shock of 2017 was the announcement that TLS is closing.

Southampton (Northam) wasn't getting any work beyond regional news etc this century before closure in 2004, so no surprise the site was razed to the ground

Full of what ifs, this topic, the butterfly effect in full flow as it were. What if there was no Death on The Rock documentary from Thames, would we have had a 1990 Broadcasting Act that changed the rules and the system? Would we have had a 1991 franchise round (not necessarily in that year or maybe a year or two later) with the same outcomes under the old system?

Of course the seeds of the 1990 act were sown at the time of the Peacock Committee, two of its recommendations amongst others being "ITV franchises should be put out to competitive tender" and "Channel 4 should be able to sell its own advertising." Thatcher expected the committee to recommend scrapping the BBC licence fee. They didn't.