It is noteworthy how there were fewer applicants for the south and south east region in 1991 compared with 1980, and two of them were also contesting the London weekday region. The bids they placed for the south and south east region were respectable but a bit on the low side which makes me wonder whether they were only placed because they knew that TVS was vulnerable as a result of its precarious financial situation, so in case they failed to win the London weekday region they could potentially pick up the lucrative south and south east region on the cheap.
The London weekday region in 1991 was almost the opposite of what it was in 1980. A major battleground with two heavyweight applicants whereas in 1980 the so called jewel in the crown of ITV regions had left Thames without any opponents until close to the application deadline when London Independent Broadcasting, who were competing against LWT, decided to also stand in against them.
Has anybody got more information about the Carlton application for the south and south east region, or Three East Television (3ETV) an opponent of Anglia that appeared to pass the quality threshold?
The South/SE region always seemed to me one of great instability. Southern, TVS and Meridian were either vanquished or absorbed and didn't seem to have much of an impact outside their own coverage areas. Its as though who took the franchise was a target right from the start.
The South/SE region always seemed to me one of great instability. Southern, TVS and Meridian were either vanquished or absorbed and didn't seem to have much of an impact outside their own coverage areas. Its as though who took the franchise was a target right from the start.
Meridian didn’t have a franchise, it was a Channel 3 licencee.
The South/SE region always seemed to me one of great instability. Southern, TVS and Meridian were either vanquished or absorbed and didn't seem to have much of an impact outside their own coverage areas. Its as though who took the franchise was a target right from the start.
Well, it sort of was, because it was such an affluent region and there was such great potential to make money, so it was a coveted franchise. A couple of books have mentioned the paradox of TVS - it was actually one of ITV's least watched regions in terms of audiences, because it had a much larger ABC1 skew who generally didn't watch much ITV, which meant that advertisers had to buy more adverts to get the numbers they were after, as opposed to a big ITV-viewing region like Yorkshire where one ad which reach far more people. So it had money coming out of its ears, and that meant it was a prized region for potential bidders.
I don't know if you can say it was especially cursed as a region. The general consensus was that boring old Southern were a sitting duck who had got complacent and hadn't seen the region was changing. Then TVS got into massive financial problems because they'd expanded too fast and made unwise investments, but that could have happened to any region. Before the MTM purchase they were coining it in. And then Meridian didn't make much of an impact, but not many regions outside the Big Five did post-1993, and they did about the same as other regions of similar size such as Anglia and Tyne Tees.
The other point is probably that a lot of major players in the media who worked in London probably lived in the region and so saw it regularly and knew its strengths and weaknesses which was obviously valuable when preparing a bid. And the region was always likely to attract big talent because it's convenient for London and very affluent, so it's a nice place to work.
How crucial was the moving of the Bluebell Hill transmitter to the South and South East ITV region in 1980, in making the area attractive in both 1980 and 1991?
:-(
A former member
It was to give people in KENT the same ITV contractor and to make the new duel operation workable. If you live on dove you get special local news but in maidstone when the new studios were, you would get Thames news.. It does seem bonkers pre 1982 it belonged to London...
It was to give people in KENT the same ITV contractor and to make the new duel operation workable. If you live on dove you get special local news but in maidstone when the new studios were, you would get Thames news.. It does seem bonkers pre 1982 it belonged to London...
There are still parts of Kent that are part of the ITV London region. The boroughs of Dartford, Gravesham and Sevenoaks. More recently in 2012, the Gravesend relay that during the analogue era had BBC1 SE from Bluebell Hill and ITV London from Crystal Palace switched wholly to Crystal Palace after DSO.
Living in the borough of Dartford I have watched both TVS/Meridian and London news and have found that Meridian provides much more local news than London. Similarly BBC1 SE is far superior to BBC London in covering the area. In fact SE have many live reports from the town and on a few occasions within a few hundred yards of home. I have yet to to see anything similar on London news. The ridiculous thing is that London news is on 101 on sky and in my opinion it should be SE news. I did contact the BBC a few years back over this and they said that this is an overlap area where coverage is provided by SE and London and London was allocated as the most appropriate. How they came to that decision they did not say but I my opinion appeared to be down to the toss of coin.
I now always watch BBC1 on 963 and Meridian news on other channels, plus this has the excellent ever lasting Fred Dinenage fronting the programme.
It was to give people in KENT the same ITV contractor and to make the new duel operation workable. If you live on dove you get special local news but in maidstone when the new studios were, you would get Thames news.. It does seem bonkers pre 1982 it belonged to London...
Bluebell Hill is one of those sites that had a larger than planned coverage area, it's used over the water in Essex, right the way up to Clacton.
Even before it was allocated to the S+SE region, Southern TV pretended it was theirs
I grew up in Swanscombe (borough of Dartford) and we had London ITV though we were aware that TVS was also available. I always wonder whether families who went back a long way in the area were more likely to watch TVS and families who'd moved out of London (as mine had) were more likely to watch Thames & LWT - the idea that watching TVS was some sort of symbolic holdout to an older sense of local identity and a bulwark against the London overspill. Absolutely no proof of whether this was ever the case, mind. Of course, in that era the BBC was exactly the same from both transmitters whereas ITV was quite different, whereas now the BBC varies more if anything - an excellent example of how the BBC has, in effect, become what it wasn't historically but what ITV can no longer afford to be (although the strongest examples of the BBC making huge efforts to do that are, of course, well outside the south-east).
One thing that is worth noting about the Southampton-based companies (and the same can be said of Anglia) is that their series ***which specifically reflected the areas*** could often sell very well internationally because the conception of Britain abroad is so massively over-skewed towards the shires beyond the percentage of Britain's population who actually live in them (which the BBC also became as an inherent part of Reithianism, and which it has been fighting very hard against in modern times by moving so much to Salford etc). Brendon Chase sold very well abroad for those reasons, as did the Ruth Rendell & P.D. James adaptations. The latter were doubly important for ITV (and especially for LWT, who didn't make them but showed them during their time on air) because they both helped to reduce ITV's bias towards C2DE-heavy areas *and* because they could appeal to the PBS set and the many mainland Europeans, not least Germans for whom it seems so untainted compared to their own history, who find such imagery appealing (and this fits into places like Winchester, where a lot of people would have gites and spend time in Chiantishire, voting Remain). For Granada & Yorkshire to have major international sellers they had to do series set in the South in the past, like Brideshead or Flambards. Northern Englishness, however regrettably, just isn't so recognised abroad (and when it is, it's usually the never-industrial parts where Heartbeat & All Creatures were set), and when international sales became more important this did cause a problem for ITV at first.
But it's undoubtedly a fact that ITV never minded that, say, Cover Her Face never made the Top 10 in Yorkshire or Ulster, because they had countless shows that went well there anyway. Morse, Poirot, Wexford & Dalgliesh were designed for ITV's weaker areas, and were extremely good at that process. TVS' share edging above the network share in December 1985, previously unthinkable, is as symbolic of Thatcherism's assault on traditional conservatism, with its wariness of commercialism, as an abandoned mine or steelworks is of its assault on socialism. If only 'Running the Show' by David Docherty were more cheaply and easily available! It deserves a reprint as bona fide late 20th Century history.
The South/SE region always seemed to me one of great instability. Southern, TVS and Meridian were either vanquished or absorbed and didn't seem to have much of an impact outside their own coverage areas. Its as though who took the franchise was a target right from the start.
Meridian didn’t have a franchise, it was a Channel 3 licencee.
The latter were doubly important for ITV (and especially for LWT, who didn't make them but showed them during their time on air) because they both helped to reduce ITV's bias towards C2DE-heavy areas *and* because they could appeal to the PBS set and the many mainland Europeans, not least Germans for whom it seems so untainted compared to their own history, who find such imagery appealing (and this fits into places like Winchester, where a lot of people would have gites and spend time in Chiantishire, voting Remain). For Granada & Yorkshire to have major international sellers they had to do series set in the South in the past, like Brideshead or Flambards. Northern Englishness, however regrettably, just isn't so recognised abroad (and when it is, it's usually the never-industrial parts where Heartbeat & All Creatures were set), and when international sales became more important this did cause a problem for ITV at first.
But it's undoubtedly a fact that ITV never minded that, say, Cover Her Face never made the Top 10 in Yorkshire or Ulster, because they had countless shows that went well there anyway. Morse, Poirot, Wexford & Dalgliesh were designed for ITV's weaker areas, and were extremely good at that process. TVS' share edging above the network share in December 1985, previously unthinkable, is as symbolic of Thatcherism's assault on traditional conservatism, with its wariness of commercialism, as an abandoned mine or steelworks is of its assault on socialism. If only 'Running the Show' by David Docherty were more cheaply and easily available! It deserves a reprint as bona fide late 20th Century history.
To be fair it boiled down to to things, TVS was cash rich, and buy joining up with LWT resulted in LWT getting lots of free shows to fill up its slots. LWT were struggling to get top end stuff, It wasn't until 1985 it started to vamp up the dramas once again. Of course some of the TVS show did perform extremely well up north, but you still had different listings at times between southern and northern itv stations.
Why is Emmerdale so big in finland? Taggart did outstanding worldwide, Im sure there are few other big hits more set up north.
Last edited by A former member on 23 January 2019 11:30pm