26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

A shame that after what they promised, what little Carlton ended up producing for the network mostly ended up being total ****.

Wans't half the stuff Thames made crap aswell?

I'd recommend 'Under the Hammer: Inside Story of the ITV 1991 Franchise Battle' as a great read about the 1991 franchise round.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Hammer-Inside-Franchise-Battle/dp/0434178888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514981292&sr=8-1&keywords=itv+franchise+1991

Thames were at least a major contributor to the network, how much stuff did Carlton make (well, commission as they were a publisher)? I can only think of a handful of things they did, and the only one that was really a success was Catchphrase- which was just continuing what TVS had been making for years.

I got this from Oxfam in Notting Hill the other year (charity shops in Notting Hill are a bit different). Interestingly someone's written inside it "To Kate, a TV star of the future". I wonder who that is? Kate Garraway? Kate Silverton? Kat(i)e Derham?



Not that weird, TVS were totally imploding so were almost certain to lose, and Thames had their ownership issue which meant they were likely to be vulnerable. And the Southern franchises were always likely to be competitive because the areas they cover were so affluent so there was plenty of money to be had.

You say "apart from The Bill, Minder and Mr Bean" but they were three exceptionally successful series. Who can remember half the stuff any ITV company made in the late eighties and early nineties? They made lots of shows that were popular in their day but haven't lasted, the same as any ITV company, at any time in their history.





And again, wasn't half the stuff made by every ITV company crap? You can look through the back catalogue of all of them and there are stinkers everywhere. That's the way telly goes.

For what it's worth, it's easy to slag off Carlton but they did some innovative and interesting things and I don't think their output was much worse than any of the other ITV companies at the time. Certainly if you look at the people behind the scenes, there were some hugely distinguished programme makers involved (and you can't say, oh, but Carlton didn't make anything so if they did anything good it was because of the indies, because Carlton commissioned these shows and you may as well say the same thing about C4).

I think the big problem for Carlton was that they were trying a bit too hard to be different. I think the ultimate Carlton show was Lose A Million, the flop game show, which was trying to subvert the concepts of light entertainment, while trying to be light entertainment at the same time. I think that's the kind of thing you can do on C4 but probably not on primetime ITV, and I think a lot of Carlton's shows were too obscure or arch for mass consumption, certainly at the start.

As for Thames, you could argue that they had a wonderful heritage but a lot of their success was based on old brands which were starting to decline a bit, and some of it seemed a bit old-fashioned. They certainly struggled to reflect things like alternative comedy, and Capital City, which was supposed to be an upmarket drama for the nineties, was a total disaster.

Alphabet Castle.

You raise a very good point. Imagine the ITC used "exceptional circumstances" and Thames got the franchise for its lower bid, then they sold up to Carlton the following year when regulations started to relax.

The loss of Thames and TVS (and crucially, their displacement by Carlton and Meridian) did a great deal to boost the independent production sector and encourage former producers to set up their own companies. That arguably put the whole industry on a better footing for the decade(s) ahead.

Imagine the extra blood shed during the ITV consolidation of the late 90s/early 00s if you still had large production factories like Thames and TVS alongside Granada, Central, LWT et al.

Well, this is the thing I just mentioned, I know Carlton were just a publisher but they still had to commission these shows and without Carlton they wouldn't have been made. C4 don't produce anything but people don't turn their nose up at them as they do with Carlton.

Carlton produced plenty of stuff at the time but not much of it has lasted, the same as any ITV company. It's certainly hard to compare it to Thames because Thames had 25 years of programming to fall back on, whereas Carlton were subsumed into the single ITV within a decade. And a lot of Thames' shows were inherited from Rediffusion and ABC in the first place.

The other difference is that we now had the Network Centre who were supposed to commission shows from the companies on merit, whereas with Thames a load of horse-trading went on and so it meant that Thames were more or less guaranteed X number of hours on air, regardless of what they were offering.

One obvious success Carlton had was with The Brit Awards because when they started showing them they were a complete laughing stock with no credibility on the Beeb, and they were responsible for turning them into the huge success they are now.

That wasn't what I said, I said in the mornings after TVam.

They certainly would have wanted to make sure that both their audio and video were making it to air. Although I suspect such an eventually was highly unlikely.

Did Carlton make any dramas? This might be where it fell down. Carlton did make crap but it outweigh any good stuff.

Network centre really didn't help matters I don't believe there were commissioning programme on merit or uk wide appeal. I still wonder if alot of horse trading had to be done would we have same programmes?

Even if Thames were promised x hours on the network per say, it wasn't rumber stamp since plenty still opted out or moved content around.

What would have happened if Granada had lost? Surly corrie would carry on but some other itv company would gobby it up?

Probably would have been the same as The Bill carrying on when Thames lost. I'm sure Granada would have carried on as an independent like Thames.

Don't forget Granada were trying to be pally with Sky at that point - at one point they threatened to take Coronation Street to Sky as they weren't getting enough contributions from the Network Centre to make it with, so who knows what could have happened there if they lost their franchise. The GSkyB could have started early?