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26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Formerly 25th Anniversary (December 2017)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
NL
Ne1L C
Riaz posted:
Either that or LWT/TVS would have been a useful counterbalance to Granada.


I have written before about a TVS LWT Anglia merger as a potential southern powerhouse, also broadcasting under a single identity at weekends in all three regions.


Would LWT have continued with local news?
LS
Lou Scannon
Wasn't there a period (in the earlier years of ITV plc) that the weekend weather sponsor was always worded "London Weather at the Weekend" like they were desperate to not say something that sounded identical to the legacy franchisee company name?

Kind of understandable in a way, as the weekday weather sponsor presumably hasn't mentioned "Carlton" for years.
RI
Riaz
Would LWT have continued with local news?


TVS already had two news regions so after merging with LWT it would have a third news region for London. If Anglia was later included then it would add another two news regions taking the total to five.

The closure of the Southampton studio was almost inevitable and it would have been replaced with a smaller news studio similar to Meridian at Whiteley. The same would happen with the Anglia studio in Norwich resulting in the combined company having its studios in Maidstone and the South Bank. TLS would probably end up becoming the corporate HQ and news hub with Maidstone used mostly for the production of entertainment programmes.
KE
kernow
Wasn't there a period (in the earlier years of ITV plc) that the weekend weather sponsor was always worded "London Weather at the Weekend" like they were desperate to not say something that sounded identical to the legacy franchisee company name?

Kind of understandable in a way, as the weekday weather sponsor presumably hasn't mentioned "Carlton" for years.

There was actually a period shortly after the ITV plc merger when it reverted back to "LWT weather", as discussed here:

https://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/lwt-returns-12314/
BR
Brekkie
Wasn't there a period (in the earlier years of ITV plc) that the weekend weather sponsor was always worded "London Weather at the Weekend" like they were desperate to not say something that sounded identical to the legacy franchisee company name?

Kind of understandable in a way, as the weekday weather sponsor presumably hasn't mentioned "Carlton" for years.

I wouldn't be surprised if pre-ITV Plc they were so petty they'd only allow the forecast to be for the days of their franchise.
RI
Riaz
It’s arguable that the Yorkshire-Tyne Tees merger is what shaped the rest of the network through the 90s.


In a scenario where:

Yorkshire takes over Tyne Tees
Carlton takes over Westcountry
Granada takes over Border
STV takes over Grampian

Hardly anybody would have batted an eyelid. It's only when the larger companies started to merge and take over each other did the network reshape - like Carlton owning both the London weekdays and the Midlands regions or Granada taking over LWT.
:-(
A former member
NL
Ne1L C
Riaz posted:
It’s arguable that the Yorkshire-Tyne Tees merger is what shaped the rest of the network through the 90s.


In a scenario where:

Yorkshire takes over Tyne Tees
Carlton takes over Westcountry
Granada takes over Border
STV takes over Grampian

Hardly anybody would have batted an eyelid. It's only when the larger companies started to merge and take over each other did the network reshape - like Carlton owning both the London weekdays and the Midlands regions or Granada taking over LWT.


Very true. Might have been better that way with a strong selection of separate majors and fewer regionals.
RI
Riaz
Very true. Might have been better that way with a strong selection of separate majors and fewer regionals.


I would say that one of the biggest flaws with regional ITV was the disparity between the size of the regional companies. The large regions dominated the network both in production and taking the best timeslots with the smaller regions forced into local interest programmes, minor networked programmes, and conduits for Coronation Street.

When the 1991 franchise round was called ITV had only one terrestrial analogue channel. Developments in satellite, cable, and DTT in the 1990s would have theoretically provided more outlets for smaller and medium sized ITV companies therefore helping to preserve some of the regional nature of ITV.

I think that the 1991 franchise round took place without sufficient realisation of future developments in broadcasting technology and these future developments are why a single unified ITV is not always a justified or inevitable product.

Even so, there should definitely have been more restrictions on mergers and takeovers between the big 7 (this includes the South and South East region and the Breakfast franchise) that are only allowed to go ahead with approval of the ITC - and possibly Parliament - until 2000ish when the situation would be re-assessed.
NL
Ne1L C
That would have made sense. I could see an "ITV1" run by Carlton and an "ITV2" run by Granada on satellite and cable showing the best of "majors" and "regionals" with DTT keeping the franchise names:
RO
robertclark125
Could the ITC have put in a ruling that the ITV Network centre, what effectively replaced the Big 5 in 1989, had to network something like 40% of programming commissioned by the other 10 smaller ITV companies? I'm not saying produced, but commissioned by them? I also admit that it may have been hard to implement.
DV
dvboy
If Carlton and Granada had not merged I think we would probably still have various seperate Carlton and Granada branded digital channels today instead of ITV2, 3, 4 and Be.

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