ITV stations that lost their franchise

Looking at old tv listings from 1992 TVAM seem to cut back on everything once it knew it had lost its franchise but was still broadcasting until the end of 1992. I know they outsourced news to sky and looked like most weekends it was just random cartoons rather than news, sport and other kids shows. What was cut back towards the end and what about the other outgoing franchises?

I remember TV-am showing summer 1987 editions of Wacaday during weekends in 1992 which seemed fairly astounding to me. Not only was it not the sort of show to ever be repeated, but it obviously contained so many references to the charts etc. Hearing Michaela Strachan mention Nick Berry in 1992- for example- sounded absolutely prehistoric.

Pretty much everything was cut back at TV-am after October 1991. If it could be cut, it was cut. The news was farmed out to Sky in February 1992 for a one-off payment. The children's original output was scaled back and I think Wacaday was the only thing that survived long-term and was still going at the end.

Other outgoing companies from 1992 had other issues. TVS for example. Entire operation pretty much fell down round their ears due to bad investments, and bidding a fortune to retain the licence which was used against them, so they lost. At some point somebody lost a ton of paperwork which now condemns the archive to "sitting around taking up space somewhere unable to be exploited", but we don't talk about that

Thames I believe planned to carry on independently after 1993, and they did so, and still continue today in some form, albeit in name only. TSW ended up having an argument with the regulator, as did TVS to an extent. Not entirely sure what TSW did cut back wise, if anything, since they didn't do that much outside of their area anyway. Anyway after a reverse takeover into some other direction the entire operation has since I believe fell into administration.

As discussed in the Big Breakfast thread, TV Mayhem, the Saturday morning kids show presented by Chris Evans, was commissioned to run for 40 weeks, but was dropped the week the franchise loss was announced, after only 6 shows.

Does anyone know when ‘Frost on Sunday’ finished on TV and if they totally axed any live Sunday programming when it did? Apparently there was a one off show on Sunday 27th Dec 1992 but the regular show ended sometime before.

Frost was only on for a few months a year, even before losing the franchise, so that wasn't unusual.

Clearly TVS sold their studios to Meridian, does anyone know what happened on switchover night? Did the same playout director who closed TVS open up Meridian? (Albeit TUPED to the new company) or was their quick changeover in the hotseat/ or did it come from a new Transmission suite?

Yes they did that Frost on Sunday right at the end of 1992 (I thought it was before Xmas, but clearly not).
Frosty- as ever- used the opportunity to subtly promote his new show starting on the BBC the next week (I think).

No, it was an entirely different operation. Videos on YouTube show the "handover", which was basically nothing more than a quick picture roll at the stroke of midnight, the effect of which is exacerbated somewhat on VHS recordings for technical reasons, and it wouldn't have looked that bad on the night.

And TVS did not sell their studios to Meridian. Meridian rented part of the floor, but the studios were later sold to Flextech.

TVS did sell the Northam site at Southampton to Meridian, as did the previous franchise holder Southern TV sell to TVS.
It's well know that TVS had camped out in the portacabins in the carpark towards the end of Southerns franchise and was nick named "Portacabin TV"

So with Meridian presumably using the same playout facilities as TVS, would there have been a picture roll at midnight?

As macro regional playout (North, East, South) was all from Southampton the only real change would have been the handover to the new Teletext franchise holder who inserted the VBI data at the transmitter site. I recall all the TX site engineering was done long before the Oracle franchise handover.