Stewart Purvis who has occupied several roles in Broadcasting has reviewed the recently released Cabinet Papers for 1989-90 covering the subject of Broadcasting and the defranchising of ITV. Amongst things revealed, a plan from ITN's Burnet for an eight hour overnight service run by ITN. Remarks by Whittingdale also seem relevant bearing in mind his most recent Government appointment and it's results
Interesting... dare we open the can of worms that is Death on the Rock?
I sometimes wonder if Death on the Rock had not happened how things could have panned out differently. It's often stated (but was AFAIK never proved) that that documentary was the catalyst as it were for effectively forcing Thames out of ITV.
ITN (or Alastair Burnet) trying to steal the overnight ITV airtime is quite interesting - wondering if there were already murmerings then of axing News at Ten (certainly were by the early 90s). I'm also intrigued by the statement that the central ad break in News at Ten would be more than enough to pay for the proposed ITN and just wonder if the idea of ITN effectively becoming a third broadcaster on Channel 3 was ever floated, so they'd be self-funding with specified slots in the schedules (i.e. 5.30, 12.30, 5.40 and 10pm) - although they'd probably have wanted a 30-minute early evening slot as well to maximise ad revenue.
Interesting... dare we open the can of worms that is Death on the Rock?
I sometimes wonder if Death on the Rock had not happened how things could have panned out differently. It's often stated (but was AFAIK never proved) that that documentary was the catalyst as it were for effectively forcing Thames out of ITV.
Of course would what have happened if Carlton had manged to keep hold of Thames in 1985?
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An interesting question, although I suspect the government of the day would have found a different excuse had DOTR never been produced (as it would not have been in its specific form as Thames would have been a different company with different management).
^Uh, if Carlton owned Thames, they wouldn't have bid against it. What stopped the other bidders from winning? Underbidding? Quality? Because it actually sounds to me like Thames would've kept it's franchise. If nobody else is suitable the incumbent wins by default, surely?
Well I guess we don't know who else might have bid and what might have been different in their applications if that happened. Can't assume it would have been the same bidders bidding the same in an alternate history (or even that the system itself would have been the same!).
If ITN had become a separate franchise/licensee then would they have been able to keep their slots? ITV might have said "right from 10PM its all yours but we take back your slots and hand them over to the regions"
In the detail ITN propose giving up the 5.40pm slot. Perhaps in that scenario we could have seen integrated news programmes made by the regions with ITN supplying the national and international reports. At that time live crosses didn't really happen in the 5.40 News so the regions running reports within their own programmes to their own time would have worked fine I suspect.
The Broadcasting Act 1990 correctly shaped the ITV of the future. It was the shock needed to make ITV a lean, fit competitor in the face of Sky, Cable, Broadband and Gaming.