26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Unlikely, that C5 was a city based network and as you say would have needed to expand its coverage.


But also it was also only a few years later that Thames effectively did get the Channel 5 license yet all of their offerings to the channel were new rather than transfers. The same for other production brands within Pearson or other owners of 5 such as Meridian and Anglia (not that those two had a key existing formats on ITV that could have gone over)

The fact is that having The Bill etc on ITV would get more viewers and produce more income for Thames than C5

Well, given that when the ITA first advertised the Borders region they required bidders to make a case for the region even existing (as opposed to just splitting it up between the existing companies) as well as their particular consortium, I would suggest that was indeed the case.

Without being disrespectful. I never understood separate licences for Border and Channel. Surely it would have been easier for Granada to take Cumbria. STV to take Selkirk and have a combined Southwest/Channel Isles licence.

I'm sure ITV grew to appreciate the tiny Channel franchise when they were able to use them for "compliance" so they could keep any potential fines to a minimum.

IBA etc could have made it clear there would have to make more programmes for the Isle of man. Its a shame there was chance for an opt out.. on the island. Thus there coudl have told TT, STV, Granada and UTV to all 52 hours worth of programmes for it.

TT Races, tywald reviews... cant think of any more

You say that but Grampian was smaller than Ulster, and even Tyne Tees wasn't massively larger than TSW (around half a million more viewers but a poorer area and so turnover was only around 25% larger).

Where would the cut-off be? The odd thing is, some of the 'mid-size' contractors were not far off the smallest of the big 5, YTV, in terms of number of viewers and turnover. HTV, TVS and Anglia all had around 5 million viewers to YTV's six.

The smaller contractors did cooperate on a number of programmes, notably the Saturday morning shows.

This has been discussed here before. Border was a kludge because the Caldbeck transmitter served both Cumbria and the south of Scotland. STV wanted Selkirk but Border would not be viable without it.

IMO serious considerations should have been given to abolishing the Border region after 1992 with:

South of Scotland into Central Scotland
Cumbria into North East
Isle of Man into North West

Makes sense. Tyne Tees (or who ever) and Granada would have to reformat their news operations.

Caldbeck is now engineered with two sets of PSB muxes for 'England' and 'Scotland', so that's now technically possible, and that's exactly how the BBC are running things there.


More or less there now anyway, with Border now just an opt out of Tyne Tees. BBC already doing it (although
South Cumbria is tied to BBC N West)

Happened for ITV at DSO in 2009. BBC always was.

Considerations should also have been given to creating a new South Midlands and Thames Valley region out of the Midlands and the South and South East regions after 1992 if there was sufficient public interest in its territory although the creation of Central News South and Meridian committed to offering a Thames Valley news region could have reduced public demand for it.

"Your'e watching Carlton. Television for the Home Counties"