ITV Breakfast

But they could, in theory, have replaced TV-AM if it was stripped of its licence!

Well yes I suppose they could have. You could have had say a TSW/Channel Breakfast Service or a HTV Wales/West Service etc. They'd have to have some kind of agreement with ITN or Reuters to provide a national and international news service otherwise the IBA would have done its nut.

Not necessarily, there was no indication that the Trident contractors were going to farm out news provision to ITN if they had continued with their morning programmes past their trial runs.

Ultimately I think any ITV-run breakfast service would have evolved in much the same way as the late-morning (and very similar) programme did. A number of ITV companies put in bids for that service, Granada won but there's no reason it couldn't have turned out differently. Perhaps in the more regionalised 1970s you might have ended up with several opt-in local programmes running from 6am right through to midday, in a similar manner to the Saturday morning shows, that might have slowly coalesced into a networked ITV-wide offering.

What!? You were asking about whether they could have been replaced that week? .

The IBA wouldn't have been on the phone to tell them not to bother turning up the next day. It was general concerns over their news provision that came to a head when they had a massive story they flunked.

Yorkshire?

I don't recall Tv-am not being able to cover the event being a terribly big deal at the time, the main concern was that the IRA had come close to wiping out the government, and that consumed media attention for days after

Any major ITV region could of done a interim national breakfast television service, but at the time, I think Thames/LWT/ITN would of taken over from TV-am if its franchise got revoked as it would of stayed in London.

In London, the transmission links were already setup (opt-ins and opt-outs for TV-am by BT were a struggle from the beginning) and because of the talent base already in London, they may of wanted to use ex-TV-am's presenters as familiar faces.

I don't think so. Even in the 80s you needed a lot of connectivity and editing resources. Only ITN came close to that.

It's like expecting the BBC to mount election coverage from Southampton or Norwich

Or Rutland Weekend Television.

Of course, which is why ITN was part of the recommended suggestion, that and the location and technical reasons. Any major region could of done an interim service if there wasn't the aforementioned constraints. Some aspects such as news would still be substandard, it wouldn't matter that much as it's only for the short term (as long as the long-term replacement is better than TV-am), but with ITN's help such a service would of been better.

Indeed. As I said up thread it was a part of a general concern about their news coverage. It was a bit of a cock up and embarrassing for all concerned but it would have been a long process to oust them from their franchise.

Even if it had have happened fantasy ideas of getting an ITV company or 3 to step-in are unlikely. It would either have been readvertised or the idea of a seperate station dropped. If the screens were blank in the mornings for a while then so be it, it wasn't that essential a service that it needed some cobbled together 'interim'

If the very unlikely thing happened then of course whoever took over would probably be forced to takeover TVams staff and resources so that might not be a problem



Could have , not could of.... That's very annoying

Richard Whiteley was one of the journalists staying at the Grand that night. He was downstairs when the bomb went off and would have been well placed to provide coverage.