26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Yes, I take that public wrist slapping for typing factually incorrect drivel, but..

There is a bit of a difference in my mind, between LNN - which was at least taking on some staff from the former LWT outsourced operation, and of course based in the same building as one of the two companies with the shareholding certificate, and what Sirs Frostie and Beardie were proposing which was to pay someone to start up a new operation and run it for them.

The ITC said that they couldn't see where the control (both production and editorial) would have come in from with CPV, if that (somehow) passed the required quality threshold.

I'm sure I had read somewhere that Scottish had manged to keep the licence for a measly £2000. Did anyone go up against Scottish when it had came round?

Scottish and Central managed to keep it for £2000- precisely because nobody bidded against them. The whole system was a joke, really.

Yes, the idea in their case wasn't thought through... but my point was that outsourced news wasn't unknown and wouldn't have been a total no-no for the ITC.

Carlton won with a bid that they'd produce nothing at all, and of course GMTV didn't do their own news.

As I say there was a connection between CPV and TVam, it wasn't just some random outsourcing. Their comparison with Channel 4 News was a good point, except for the fact that they might not regain their license, having TVam do their news is no different to ITN doing Channel 4 or 5's news

It been said Meridian was going to win either way because there were pushing for 3rd regional news operations, which made it a special case.

Yes, I said this here a few months ago, because it's in Independent Television In Britain. George Russell in the ITC suggests that Meridian were the only bidder who would have got through on "exceptional circumstances" because they were the only bidder that were promising three regional news programmes, which was considered an exceptional offer. So it would appear that even if TVS hadn't been such a financial basket case, it wouldn't have won anyway. That said, the ITC said they were invited to use their skill and judgement as to what "exceptional circumstances" were - they almost put Thames through on it but decided not to in the end.



Although the main reason nobody bid against Central was because, again, they were doing three regional news programmes so anyone bidding against them would have had to commit to that too or they'd lose out on exceptional circumstances. Also Central, and Scottish, were very quick in working with indies so no indies from the Midlands or Scotland wanted to bid against them as they already working with them and didn't want to bite the hands that fed them. Mentorn were thinking of bidding against Central but Central gave them a two year contract to make programmes for them, so decided to bid against LWT instead.

I wonder if Thames never got the "exceptional circumstances" because it had shareholder who wanted rid, thus the ITC wouldn't know who would going to own the company by 1993?

Border also had no one bid against them but bidded £52'000, no idea why.

Scottish claimed there had alot of freelancers working for them and also there had alot of indies inside the cowcaddens, Gus Mcdonald had alot of fingers in alot of pies. Mind you it give ITC want it wanted, Very streamline ITV company with alot of local programming with many indies ticking the boxes.

Border weren't sure that nobody was bidding against them so they didn't want to bid a token sum just in case. It says in the book that they were going to bid £50,000 but then got paranoid someone else was going to bid that (I think there was a rumour going round someone was preparing a bid), so decided to go a little bit higher - a grand for every week of the year. And although nobody did bid, they said they were happy enough with their bid, which gave them peace of mind.

The reason Central and Scottish bid £2000 rather than £1000, BTW, is because the document stipulated that the bid must be "in multiples of £1000", and both companies took legal advice because they couldn't decide if £1000 was a multiple of £1000. And in the end they decided to go for two just in case.

As for Thames, the book also says that the ITC were very close to putting them through on exceptional circumstances, because of their programming record, but decided in the end that this was unfair on Carlton because the decision had to be based on what they were going to do, not what they had done, and it was an unfair comparison because obviously Carlton didn't have a programming record. They decided that Thames' bid was better than Carlton's, but not so much better that it had to be given the franchise regardless, and that Carlton's was also very good indeed.

In the book David Mellor, who was of course in charge of the whole process from a government perspective, says that if he was making the decisions he probably would have put Thames through on exceptional circumstances, and suggests they could have put in a token bid and promised to spend the difference on programmes. But David Elstein says that while they considered doing that, they wanted to do it "properly" and not just try and get through based on their name and history.

LWT committed to work with whoever won the weekday franchise to try and set up a joint news and transmission facility to save costs and improve the service to the viewer. But it wasn't a given. LWT went ahead planning a new TX suite and Carlton went ahead with plans for a news provision service based in Docklands. In the end common sense prevailed post licence award and the subsequent LNN Tx suite was based on the LWT design, and LNN's news facility was based on Carlton's design (which itself was designed by a turnkey company - IPK). £13m was the figure I heard spoken of at the time. Carlton designed and installed their own promotions post-prod area in the same building.

Edited to add. TLS wanted to provide the TX facility to LWT/Carlton/GMTV but Carlton weren't having any of it - too much prestige at stake, hence why LNN was born.

Why would Thames be concerned that video/audio they had switched out to LWT via BT was getting through or not? They would have lined up beforehand and established the circuit. LWT however were concerned about Home and Away because of the somewhat unusual scheduling and sometimes put a small cue dot up in the lh corner and looked for it off-air post franchise switch.

Just to check which book are you about? It would seem, because there were just looking at what was being programme promise, shareholding, and what being suggested in the docs, it would seem thames lost fair and square. Can anyone remember half the stuff Thames made in its last three years bar the bill, minder and Mr bean? I wonder if there thought some young blood from the indies would give ITV brand new ideas? Personnel I think ITV central office for programming caused half the troubles in the first place, instead of making the ITV companies fright.

Also I still think is weird all the companies in the south lost the franchise

Maybe to check that both video and audio feeds had switched away from their output?