1989-90 What if?

You're missing the point that the raison d'être of the Broadcasting Act was to break the dominance of the ITV companies (and the BBC for that matter).

The BBC and ITV were still incredibly dominant at that time - indies needed to be given a fair shot in order to grow.

I still see it as an incredibly crude way at giving indies a fair shot when at the time the smaller ITV companies struggled to get their programmes networked.

More sensible suggestions:

1. The percentage of productions that ITV companies have to commission from indies varies according to the size of the ITV company. For example, the big 5 might by 25%, the middle 5 might be 10%, and the small 5 might initially be 0% but the situation reviewed in the future.

2. A certain percentage of prime time programmes must come from indies, but the schedule outside of prime time is unaffected.

3. A new national ITV company is established which functions purely as a publisher broadcaster and is allocated a certain minimum percentage of time slots throughout the week.

They didn't want to give the smaller ITV companies more power - they wanted to break up the dominance of ITV overall.

Don't forget we're talking about a Conservative government here, champions of free enterprise rather than archaic big powerful institutions with zillions of workers.

Let it also be said that many smaller ITV companies were extremely happy with the Big 5 set up as it was they that footed the lion's share of the bill for programming. Companies like Scottish & Southern were notorious for rarely producing networked shows while raking in huge profits from advertising.

True Blue, no. Economic libertarian, yes.

My cynical theory is that the bottom line was crushing the powers of the trade unions in ITV more so than stimulating new industries or providing an output from ITV better reflecting the requirements and interests of the viewers of the future.



If the government played clever then they could have put a bomb up the backsides of the smaller ITV companies by forcing them to be more proactive with production rather than operating as conduits for Coronation Street to the far flung corners of the realm. Sadly they didn't.

Maybe I'm missing something but wasn't the launch of Channel 4 in 1982 meant to herald in a shiny new era of indie productions and it just so happened they couldn't get in on ITV?

The trade unions were pretty crushed already.

Riaz, I really feel you don't understand the purpose of the Act. They didn't want to put a bomb up the backsides of the smaller ITV companies - they wanted to open the industry up to a free market, not pander to the old boy's club.

That may have been true in the early days, with lord Thompson, but by the 1980s STV wanted a piece of the cake, and with the help of Sandy Ross and Gus McDonald, it really went to town.

Surely the fact C4 launched in that model under a Tory government should give you a clue of how the Tories thought TV should have been.

Also I think we all know a LOT happened between 1982 and 1990. Maggie was gunning for ITV for various reasons by the end of the decade.

That was no different to any other ITV company pre-1990, which were all set up to produce their own content in-house. As mentioned, contract all your kids' programmes out (which they did) and that's a load of hours ticked off, and then contract out a few slots to indies (like GMTV did) and you're sorted. Obviously you're making less in-house than you did, but that was the case with every other company.

The benefit of contracting things out to indies also had advantages. One of the main reasons why Central were unopposed in 1991 is because all the Midlands-based indies who might have been involved in bids against them were already making programmes for Central and so didn't want or need to bid against them. Mentorn considered bidding against them but Central offered them a long contract and they decided against it. The more you contract out, the fewer enemies you make.

Would the content Disney made for GMTV count as outsourced or not?

Carlton's 20% stake in Central didn't do any harm either. Not only did it guarantee that Carlton wouldn't bid for their franchise, the both could also share information between them about any bidders they were aware of.

Central were winning awards during that period aswell, so just because you ask someone to make your programmes didn't mean it was of poor standing. Didn't a few indies end up having ITV companies having shares in them.