Carlton and Granada merger -LATEST NEWS

Oh God! How Boring. ITV1 North West, ITV1 North East etc. To be honest, I like the Granada, Tyne Tees name etc. What’s up with ITV1 Granada? Granada Television is still in Manchester. Its still going to exist forever and ever so I hope its not changed to ITV1 North West, North East etc. The only one I like is ITV London. Now that sounds better than Carlton!

As for North West Reports well I'm sorry but no way!! Leave it Granada reports for please sake! NWR just sounds daft. Even just calling it ITV1 North West news sounds better than NWR.

Gang, I'm all for this Merger etc but this is silly beggars. The way ITV1 looks on Screen is fine. I hope GMG North regions keep their respective names.

BTW, if I had it my way, with the HTV situation, I would have Called Wales as it is now and called West, ITV1 HTV on the Idents. Having ITV Wales and ITV HTV sounds fine. As for Carlton, Just call it ITV Westcountry and ITV Central, then get rid of the Carlton regional name.
Anyway, Before I rant anymore I better press submit!

ITV shareholders have forced Michael Green to resign as Chairman of ITV - Charles Allen next?

It is being rumoured that it is part of a Granada take-over bid which has been denied by Granada but it has happened but all in name!

It is a takeover bid!
Granada has never hidden its desire to own it all ..and indeed engineered the Green 'resignation' . Like BSB/Sky in the early 90s ...for 'Merger' read 'takeover' ...there is always a dominant player and this time it was always going to be Granada....lets hope they lose it in the long run.....( they should have stuck to bingo halls)

For Green's demise, see this thread.

So has anything happened in the last two weeks?

Is the proposed merger still going ahead?

A bid to block moves by Carlton and Granada from calling their planned merged television company ITV plc failed at the High Court today.

Grampian Television and Scottish Television wanted an injunction barring Granada and Carlton using their majority shareholding in ITV Network to vote for the new use of the name from December this year.

Full story: http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2192095

I just saw the Media Guardian story related the the above and came to post the link: http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/story/0,7497,1088420,00.html

It says ITV plc will come into existance on February 2.

But really, if SMG object to Carlton and Granada using the itv name, why didnt they adopt the itv brand like all of the carlton and granada regions did.

Such as this quote:



Why would it confuse Scottish & Grampian viewers, when the regions have been known as Scottish TV and Grampian TV for a number of years now.

Am I right in thinking though that presently Carlton and Granada must pay SMG, UTV and Channel for use of the ITV brand outside of Channel 3 related activities. Surely they'll have to do the same with ITV PLC?

I think that they do, as Carlton and Granada had alot of trouble trying to introduce the ITV Digital name. Plus I seem to recall UTV wern't happy when they launched the ITV Sport Channel, as they never carried it on DTT in NI. But I would assume that ITVplc would have to get some form of permission from SMG, UTV and Channel to use ITVplc, or that they would have to pay a fee to these companies for the use of the ITV brand. As these three companies have a lot of rights over the use of the ITV name, as they're much a part of it than Carlton and Granada.

Interesting piece on the future of regional programming from the Observer:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1096112,00.html

But the BBC's Newcastle-based region also stretches into a fair bit of North Yorkshire, doesn't it? Yet they use a name that gets away with seemingly including northern North Yorkshire under the "North East" banner, so why can't ITV1?

EDIT: If I ruled the world, I'd disband the Border region. Southern Scotland would either have a fully seperate, stand-alone news programme, or recieve central Scotland's news, but with a sub-opt (like BBC South (Oxford)). In either case, it could come from either new studios in, say, Dumfries, or from a small studio in Glasgow, down the corridor from the main Scotland Today studio (again, like BBC South (Oxford)).

This would mean that Tyne Tees would in fact have to become "ITV1 North East & Cumbria", thus standardising with their BBC counterpart. But they could keep the Carlisle studios, for a BBC-South-(Oxford)-style sub-opt (which would also report Manx news), giving them one over the BBC.