1989-90 What if?

LWT did make Airline, yes, and Carlton made Ministry of Mayhem, but that was a long time after both companies had to all intents and purposes become seven day operations as Carlton owned Central and Granada owned LWT. Clive James' shows were Carlton productions at the weekend as early as 1995, the same year LWT produced the Children's ITV fortieth anniversary programmes, though of course by this time the Network Centre were in charge and could therefore schedule programmes from either company on whatever day they wanted.

The weirdest one was obviously flop soap Night and Day which announced it was A Granada Production for LWT.

At the time I desperately wanted Granada to lose their licence and was disappointed they only had one (rather weak) bid against them.

Ministry of Mayhem was technically a Foundation/Carlton co-production, The Foundation basically being what emerged from TVS's kids department. Effectively the same team who made Number 73, Motormouth and What's Up Doc.

I remember that and thought it looked a bit odd, Granada for LWT. I also seem to remember it and its then on-screen sister Crossroads was described by one TV critic as "one [programme] is made by people who don't want to make soaps and the other is made by people who don't know how to make soaps".

But yeah, Night & Day was one of those Marmite shows - either you liked it or you didn't, there was no halfway house with it. Maybe there is a place for a show like that, but obviously not on ITV(1).

Indeed, and they had a similar feel as well, Ministry of Mayhem very much felt like What's Up Doc revisited (though the fact some of the cast were in both obviously helped). I remember reading Chris Bellinger was involved behind the scenes at Ministry of Mayhem although it seemed to have very little in common with the shows he was most famous for at the Beeb.



Yeah, they weren't very good, but one of the problems with both those shows is that they were so late on screen. The idea of getting rid of Home and Away and replacing it with a British show was fair enough, but they should have had Home and Away finishing on Friday and Crossroads and Night and Day replacing it on Monday. But it didn't, there was nearly a year's gap, so all the Home and Away viewers had already gone off elsewhere and they had to start from scratch.

As we know, Night and Day ran three days a week with an omnibus (with added rude bits) after ten o'clock on Thursday, but they dropped the teatime showing after six months and then only did the omnibus, which got later and later and later, so by the end it was going out around 1am, surely the most expensive programme ever transmitted at that time.

It also didn't help that Night and Day was very, very weird. Not your typical soap at all.

The gap in screenings of Home & Away was deliberate by ITV as I think it was a clause they had prior to it switching to Channel 5. But of course they invoked it with nothing similar to fill the gap so that slot before Crossroads came along on screen was full of repeats from the prime time schedule and some regional programming and the odd gameshow.

Wiki suggests the late night omnibus of Night and Day ended up at one point at like 2am. Think they missed a trick airing it at 4am in the summer when outside was turning from night to day? *ahem* I'll get my coat.

I'm sure after a while they cut down the length of the omnibus too, from 90 minutes to an hour, which would have extended the length of time until the show ended. I think the show ended production well over a year before the final episode aired I seem to remember!

Someone at ITV know Home and away was on the way out, or it wouldn't have order year worth of Wheel of fortunes in 2000. ( yes 250 eps) then even more during 2001.

There should have kept H&W on air until December 2000, then pulled the plug for those 6 months.

I would have thought Central due to their much lower Franchise payments (if done before Carlton put in their bid for Central). Anyone got a time machine?

Reminds me of that purple endcap era where despite the regional production companies still being credited in the places you'd expect, some programmes carried an endcap with the Granada corporate logo instead.

Yes, they did indeed exercise the clause so C5 had to wait a year to show Home and Away - but that doesn't mean ITV had to wait a year to replace it. They should have had a soap ready to go the next day so everyone would have got into it before Home and Away returned.