The 1980 ITV franchise auction

From what I've read, it was largely driven by academics from the university and polytechnic. How many went on to be involved in Phil Redmond's Mersey Television I'm not sure.

IIRC Phil Redmond lead North West Television, which attempted to outbid Granada in the 1991 auction. His Mersey Television production company produced both Brookside and Hollyoaks, and it's knocking about nowadays as Lime Pictures albeit no longer with Redmond at the helm. Not a clue if he had anything to do with Mersey Vision though.

The Media Merchants and The Foundation can also be added to the list of TVS 'offspring'.

Redmond *did* outbid Granada, but despite the backing of one of the country's largest independents, as well as two ITV licence holders (Yorkshire and Tyne Tees), it failed on programme quality. Much of the blame for this must have been Redmond's frankly silly promises regional content - it was all spread too thinly.

I can't read the minds of the staff at the IBA which decided to award the contract to TVS, but I'm of the opinion that if TVS did not contest the region then the IBA would, reluctantly, hand the contract back to Southern. The ownership of Southern was its Achilles heel but any replacement must have had both the right sort of ownership and capable of producing programmes of a comparable quality to Southern. I have thought that despite the large number of applicants for the region, it turned out to be a straight fight between TVS and Southern because the other competitors had too many deficiencies and shortcomings. The 1500 hours of programming a year from TVS looks like a big exaggeration but it was most likely a minor issue compared with the shortcomings of its competitors.

Southern would have went the same way as ATV, and would have seen its shares sold off to locals, It would also be most likley a shot gun marragied would have taken place to try and breath new life in the station.

Oh, how ITV would look different now if Granada had lost their franchise... That would've changed the fate of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees and the UNM stations.

I completely agree with you - that's exactly what would have happened - and in fact it's what TVS was expecting to happen, but it was a little taken aback to be awarded the full franchise.

Actually, on youtube GLFvideo has "birth of a station" in two parts, which was a TVS documentary on their launch day, in 1982, looking at how they came to be on air, and the challenges they faced. TVS actually weren't expecting to win outright; in fact, they were expecting a shotgun marriage with Southern, as Southern had made good quality programming, but TVS were planning a service for the eastern half on the region, and did mention the Bluebell hill transmitter, which was going to be moved from London, to the South and South east.

In fairness to Southern, they did propose to build new studios at Vinters Park, Maidstone, but when TVS won, they took over the project. But yes, TVS were expecting a shotgun marriage with TVS, and were just as shocked at winning outright, as Southern were at losing.

The whole sorry mess with the northern franchises was completely avoidable. There was a gentleman's agreement that ITV companies didn't run tanks on the lawns of other contractors... until Granada decided to bid for Anglia as they were after an empire. But apparently Anglia had board members who were ex Granada staff and they persuaded Granada not to bid against them so Granada turned their sights on the North East. The decision by Yorkshire and Tyne Tees to go for Granada was retaliation... if Granada had not been so aggressive, it's unlikely that either North West TV or North East TV would have been taken seriously, and around 25 million quid wouldn't have been taken out of the ITV system in the north. It's also likely that Yorkshire would have failed on financial quality without the prospect of the Tyne Tees merger, and this would have had the effect of the Leeds licence also being much cheaper. I think it's fair to say that Granada unleashed a massive self inflicted wound in 1991.

I think Granada were attempting to take over the whole of the northern bloc in 1991 by weakening Yorkshire fundamentally. It's quite telling that when Granada launched its hostile takeover of LWT, the latter responded by trying to seal a deal with YTV instead. This would have meant Tyne Tees being sold on to Anglia, but the latter took one look at the state of the Newcastle station by this point and walked away.

I think Granada probably saw the small stations either side of YTV as potential merger targets for YTV and so wanted them out of the picture. It was pretty obvious that Granada's ultimate aim was control of both large northern areas.

Not sure I agree it was avoidable. As soon as companies were allowed to hold more than one franchise, the gloves were always going to come off. After getting a foothold in London with LWT, it was logical from a Granada perspective to try and form a northern bloc. It worked out, as did scuppering the Carlton/UNM merger and so they 'won'.

You misunderstand - the avoidable part I refer to is the 9 million committed to by Granada and 15.5 million by Tyne Tees... these figures were purely a result of the two companies ending up bidding for each others' licences. If they had not done this there's a very good chance that one, if not both companies would have gone into the round with no serious competition and could have saved a large pile of cash, which could have been spent on something more worthwhile.