26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Not that I *especially* wish to drag up a post from the start of the thread but...

623058, you are *part* of the forum. If people aren't talking about a topic on here, it's because they aren't aware or aren't interested, but as you have just demonstrated, posting it on here has resulted in some good conversation. I'm not sure that has anything to do with the platform, but simply that you've pointed out something relevant.

I've always believed the Death On The Rock documentary and the outfall leading to highest number of '0's' in the envelope blind bid ruling the 1990 ITV franchise auction to be a complete red-herring.

It was all down the Peacock Report. As he was as even his best friends described him as 'a rabid free-markerteer' that's why Thatcher asked him to write the report, which as you say, was expected to recommend the BBC being funded by advertising and the removal of the licence fee. However, his report came back with the opposite - and it was ITV that took the bullet, with the blind auction and the removal over time of the takeover/stakeholding rules.

Maybe so but it could be argued that since the Peacock Report was published in 1985/6 and the 1990 Broadcasting Act didn't come in until, well, 1990 that Death On The Rock was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. It may have just sped up the process. Whether it was an attempt to punish Thames and/or the IBA for allowing the broadcast was never proved.

If you look at the Twitter account there's another video showing the end of their last programme


Yes, UK Gold came from Thames at Euston.

I used to work with the UK Gold transmission controller on that night, he missed out on all the farewell party and was left in the building when everyone else had switched off and gone home!

I recognise someone in that video who I used to work with - I knew he was at Thames but not that he'd been in the control room as it went off air! Fascinating clip. For the more technically minded among us, would the TC have had to put up the off air audio to hear the Carlton intro, surely they wouldn't be listening to that normally

The actual switchover from Euston Road to South Bank has quite a jump on the off air recordings (although that may be VHS machines not keeping up), not helped by Carlton using a different shot of Big Ben. TVS to Meridian didn't take the ITN bulletin, only Big Ben itself, and kept the same shot, but the sound faded out just before midnight - of course there was no move for the tx output there as far as I know.

Yeah unlikely they'd normally be listening off air. In those days there wouldn't be as much of a delay as there would be now but probably still noticable. Off air monitoring is common in radio studios so I assume it easily listenable in their TX suite too


It would have been no different to what happened every Friday evening which wasn't that big a jump. I didn't watch it live as we were watching Channel 4, and that did have a few jumps, one at midnight and some more a few minutes later

If Thames had survived as a broadcaster post 1993, would Euston Films have survived as well?

Technically Euston Films did last beyond the end of the franchise, but itself was wound down when Minder ended in 1994.

I think it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer, even if Thames had survived beyond 1993 as a broadcaster it would have had to make cutbacks anyway, or wouldn’t have survived through various mergers or takeovers.

I think we said before the "jump" (Thames to LWT and TV-am to regions and back) is exaggerated to a degree when viewed today, because home (and professional) videos couldn't cope with it. Some YouTube videos suggest different machines had different tolerances, some locked back quickly, others took a second or two to figure out what the deuce just happened.

It was relaunched in 2014: http://fremantlemediauk.com/our-labels/euston-films

I notice there's a monitor with the caption "Goodbye from Thames" - was that used on air or was it perhaps something used internally?

Yes, C4 went from an analogue BT distribution network, that went via each regional ITV company (for ad insertion) to each primary regional transmitter, to six macro regions all originating from Charlotte St, to each cluster of regional transmitters via new BT provided digital (34 Mb/s) circuits. A lot of replugging to be done.
It's quite likely that NTL had to be in attendance at a number of transmitter sites, and not just Caradon Hill for the TSW/WC changeover