North East Tonight & Look North (NE&C)

I suspect YTV would have done just that if they'd been allowed to get away with it. Get rid of the broadcasting news from the North East and you're effectively denying one of the most distinctive regions of the UK its local TV base.

The argument, although compelling from a purely financial perspective, is equivalent to the rumours going around that ITV eventually want to produce local news broadcasts from London. I can't see many people in the Yorkshire area being too happy with that, so why is it OK for Tyne Tees?

Even now this subject is approached rather gingerly. Note how the closure of Teesside as a studio base in its own right was not mentioned AT ALL when TTTV moved to Gateshead (moving the southern opt there in the process). I wonder why that was then...

And yes Lynch did have a "starring" role at Belasis for a while, having been planted there by YTV in a well publicised episode which led to TTTV's biggest name of the time, Paul Frost, disappearing from the nightly news programmes. He wasn't popular, came across as stiff and wooden on-air and Tyne Tees couldn't get rid of him quick enough -- research showed that NN had a 20% weaker audience share than Tyne Tees Today, most of which was put down to a lack of affection to Lynch as a presenter by viewers. Indeed it was NN's weakness which was the initial catalyst for the rebranding of the whole station in 1996, the eventual introduction of Channel 3 North East and the poaching of Mike Neville -- Tyne Tees, especially in the south, was dying on its arse by that stage and a lot of what happened in 1996 was an act of desperation.

It is as good a demonstration as any that if you are serious about getting a good audience for a local news programme, meddling from afar is not the way to do things.

After the takeover, I remember the Independent reported that YTV planned to pull the plug on the Tyne Tees operation if the ITC agreed. There would have been absolute hell on if the North East ended up with "Yorkshire Television" for those remaining years of the "original" ITV.

Exactly. People don't seem to realise just how close YTV got to killing TTTV off completely. At one point every new decision seemed to be aimed squarely at diminishing the TTTV operation.

The original plan for Network North, according to the Northern Echo, was that this was intended to be the Northern base for regional news in the company, City Road was to be closed and a skeleton staff of around 60-70 kept on at Belasis under the editorial control of YTV's news department -- hence the reason so many YTV staff were moved to the building.

Doubtless the TTTV name would have been retained. Remember that the company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in 1993/4 -- the two companies had both bid way too much for their franchises and really it's debateable whether either should have retained the licences. YTTTV saw the get out of jail card in the form of closing Tyne Tees TV. It is thanks to the ITC that this did not happen.

Do you recall also that YTV, on realising that their plan would not work, desperately tried to get LWT to take them over in 1993 when LWT were on the verge of being bought in a hostile takeover bid by Granada? The deal was that YTV would sell Tyne Tees to Anglia. Anglia took one look at the finances and ran a mile. It speaks volumes that LWT and Anglia were so impressed with the YTTTV company that they found hostile takeovers by rivals as preferable to the deal on the table (indeed, it is rumoured that TTTV would have been sold to Anglia for £1, and they still refused).

Mike Neville update. Tyne Tees have given Mike an extra month off, He was due to return on Monday but now wont be back until the end of the month. Mike is aparently on the road to a full recovery and is now taking his usual August holiday in September.

On another matter it was amusing to see the storms in full display on the Screen behind Malia tonight...

Since this is also a Look North thread, let me tell you about today at Barrack Road.

The studio is much bigger than it used to be, and is facing in the other direction. It's made out of MDF and perspex mostly, hence why it was so cheap. The end result looks good on camera, but up close is very different. The seat is smaller than you think and isn't amazingly comfy. The sofa is quite bulky, but slightly more comfortable than others, e.g. GMTV. They only have three cameras in the studio, and they all look fairly old.

15 lights are used during Colin's morning updates, and they generate 59 heat bars each.

The Politics show set is stored just behind the sofa part of the right hand side. There are black markings for that set instead of the red markings for the news set.

Not much to say about the gallery - but I was told the studio is completely soundproof.

Might put some behind the scenes pics up later.

Hardly bankruptcy (a £7 million loss, in the first year, I grant you) but world's away from the realms of TVS. The story as I understand is that LWT and Anglia made an approach to YTV in oreder to protect themselves from Granada. Anglia got cold feet, because it felt it would have been getting the worthless franchise and a little matter of insider dealing. LWT and Greg Dyke in particular, liked the set up at YTV and would have used it as a springboard to take the whole network on.

If my memory serves me right (I'm getting on now!) Granada and YTTV actually merged. Part of the deal being that YTTV actually got the networking arrangements that it currently enjoys. Let's face it, YTV is currently the largest producer of TV in the North - Manchester having been pared down to the bone.

I have to agree that Jake Lynch was 'wooden'. If he was any stiffer they would have made the set out of him.

the other thing of note today at the Owen / Newcastle United press conference..... Tyne Tees went down in my estimation.

Simon O'Rouke introduced himself as from ITV Tyne Tees whilst the Granada Tonight reporter just said "Granada". Where's the spirit of independence Tyne Tees used to have? The ITV News reporter also got stagged off by Fat Fred and Souness after the press conference but before Sky Sports News switched off the mikes.

Interesting. I wonder how the network would look if Anglia had bought TTTV.
Or what if LWT had bought YTTV? Then LWT would have probably rescued the stations and be poised to become .
What about Central? A very easy way to prevent a hostile takeover from Carlton would have been to buy YTTV. With that extra baggage, Central would have seemed a much less attractive target.
So many possibilities, and each scenario seems preferable to what actually happened. I believe that Granada's (read Charles Allen's) domination really is the worst case scenario - and it happened!

That's because all the regions are now branded as ITV Tyne Tees or ITV Granada. As much as people don't like it, it's not a good idea in the current climate to rock the boat! (and that includes people at Tyne Tees)

Sounds like the Granada man was more than happy to rock the boat!

As I recall the Carlton/Central takeover was friendly, at least from a shareholder point of view.

Any takeover of YTV at the time would have necessitated a divestment of Tyne Tees under the rules of the time. Ironically one of the reasons Anglia balked was the tight, messy integration of the TTTV operation into the company; in less than a year YTV had turned the Newcastle station from an independent to something that would have taken millions to separate out again. This was mainly due to the financial position. The £7m loss does not tell the whole story; it was abundantly clear that YTTTV would have been in a very sorry state by the end of 1993 if the cutbacks hadn't taken place. Bear in mind that both YTV and Tyne Tees bid substantially more than their annual profit (in the Tyne Tees case 3 times as much). The ITC dropped the ball spectacularly in handing out the franchises to the two companies in 1991; either company without the other would have been unsustainable under the new arrangement. As far as I am concerned that was reason enough to deny both companies their licences. I think the main reason the ITC did allow YTV and Tyne Tees to continue was that there really wasn't a compelling alternative to YTV in Yorkshire, and as a result the TTTV franchise had to stay as well. Bear in mind that TSW's financial position post-1993 would have been almost identical to Tyne Tees's (TTTV's profit 5m, TSW 4.5m, TTTV's bid 15m, TSW's 16m), and they lost.

I think YTV's aim was to close TTTV for political reasons; by merging the two areas they would have been able to claim they were one very large franchise potentially, then would have been a very tasty morsel for a takeover in 1993-5, instead of the sick and weakened company they became.

The whole thing was planned a long time in advance. YTV and TTTV had bid against Granada together in 1991 in the form of "North West Television", after it emerged that Tyne Tees was facing a threat from Granada ("North East Television"). This was the shot over the bows which started the whole thing off; without this TTTV would have been able to bid low. The ITC clearly knew what they had done; they allowed TTTV and YTV to merge in the summer of 1992, coming on for almost a year before everyone else was allowed to marry up. They clearly acknowledged that the two companies would have been totally screwed if they'd been forced to wait until 1993. These things take time to set up; it was sorted out in 1991, it has to have been.

I can see why it happened, but it was a total betrayal of viewers across the North East in particular.

You are right though that the alternative permutations of the YTV/TTTV/Anglia/Granada/LWT/Meridian thing are fascinating. If Anglia and TTTV, both of which were fiercely independent regionals, had merged, would regionalism within the network have been stronger? If Granada hadn't got LWT and instead had to settle for something like Meridian or Border (or HTV), would they be dominant today?

The franchise was only worthless because of the internal dismantling that had gone on previously. As I say though with the benefit of hindsight some of the blame should really be laid at the door of the ITC, but at the time YTV was seen as the devil in the North East.......



By this stage YTV and TTTV had received a substantial reduction in fees by the ITC and had largely recovered. YTV was once again a strong station and TTTV had refound a lot of its old niches again. It has to be said that TTTV is now in a much better state than most small regionals around the country, with the internet work, Signpost and the archive stuff that they're still involved with. Who'd have thought that would be the case in 1995?



Tell me about it. The fact that Frosty was effectively pushed out in favour of that chump is incredible. Paul was an equal to Mike Neville any day of the week.