Carlton - what's the point?

Once upon a time, a TV mogul called Lew Grade had a TV company called ATV. He didn't care what the network wanted. He made programmes people wanted to watch and then got the broadcast regardless.

Being a shrewd operator, he made programmes for the Yanks in the UK (prehaps TVS ought to have followed this example instead of buying into the networks) and gave us such stalwarts as Crossroads, The Muppetts etc.

The big bad IBA decided the share structure wasn't right for the 1980's and forced Lew to rename the business and operate the francise as two distinct regions. So in came 'Central' and a big posh studio centre in Nottingham. Apart from that and flogging Elstree to the BBC, nothing else changed.

The IBA became the even badder ITC and the evil witch Maggie wanted to do away with ITV as it was. Central scaled down in Birmingham and pulled production to Nottingham. In an even more cunning trick, it split the regions into three and managed to get the franchise for £2k + a share of NAR.

Down in London town, the young upstart Carlton held 20% of Central Television, and having paid a small fortune for London, was on the look out for profits.

Central provided the answer, but really Carlton was only intrested in the facilities and was eager to ditch the Central name. It repeated the trick with WestCountry, and HTV.

So, to my point - Carlton has hacked Central into a local news outfit, producing no real network programming. The first re-vamp of Crossroads was quite good, but even the 2m viewers it was pulling in wasn't good enough. That posh studio complex looks a bit empty these days.

Carlton, in my opinion, have done nothing for the ITV network over than heartache. The shows which are any good, are all decended from the taken-over statons. The regions do news very well - but again all from a strong tradition.

Isn't it funny that over 60% of network programmes are made by Granada group companies and the rest appear to be from independents and from the vanquished Thames?

Farewell Carlton, when it becomes ITV plc, I won't be sad to see you go.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can pin the whole blame on Carlton. It's a popular thing to do, but I think we'd be in the same situation now if it were Thames and Granada.

Whilst I take your point, Huddy, I think what you say is very much an over simplification.

I have to agree with Matt's point of view on this occasion.

Up until October 2001 - despite the previous name change from Central to Carlton. I actually think Carlton treated the region pretty well.

We kept the unbeatable team of announcers who were local and based in Birmingham with real personality, and their commitment to programming both regional and network was actually strong. This has of course changed these days, Nottingham no longer producing shows like Crossroads or Family Fortunes - but in reality, that was pretty much a recent thing.

It is sad that Central no longer produce many (if any!?) network programmes. Inspector Morse was a fine example of a long running Central programme, and of course many CITV programmes were made by Central back in the early days. Although Central programming did decrease throughout the 90s.

I think Central was still as strong as it was since the 90s here up until pretty recently. Sadly, it seems that London intervened just too far this time and have really put the nail in the coffin for Central. But whether it was Carlton that did this? Who knows?

When Granada is happy to make the programmes (and have the better facilities for it...Nottingham was the only real Carlton owned production facility) and other independent production companies are willing to do the same...who is Carlton to argue when they can continue to get the advertising revenue in the regions and make substantial money off the Central back-catalogue?

Quite, blaming Carlton is (or at least was, a couple of years ago) as fashionable thing to do. The renaming of Central [and Westcountry] to Carlton was cynical, to say the least. However the heart of Central was still in place until a year ago, last October, fantastic announcers and generally very good presentation.

I believe (and I’m not expert), that Central designers are still living on (until recently, if the ITV News rumours are to be believed), with revamped news coverage. The three sub-regions seam to get a new look very frequently, compared to other regions.

It really is a pity that Central has been marginalised, great presentation, and more importantly [for the uninformed majority ] great programmes. It would be easy to blame Carlton, other than the renaming Granada and Thames would have done much the same, at least Carlton try [or should that be, tried] with Christmas and local idents.

It wasn't cynical at all, it was a quite rational business decision

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and if there's one thing it's taught me it's that the Carlton branded Westcountry wasn't actually that bad; it did equate more or less into just the same old thing with another name. The deregionalisation would have happened with or without Carlton.

Carlton are often touted as being the hated name which destroyed ITV. But what about Granada? They have been in ITV since (virtually) the start, and they are now just as bad (arguably worse: Carlton renamed stations but otherwise they more or less carried on as before, Granada kept the names but behind the scenes removed everything that underpinned them).

The demise of ITV can be laid at the feet of the Thatcherite government which brought in the 1990 Broadcasting Bill, and that blame can be extended to the Labour government who in 1997 could still (just about) have reversed things, but instead only accelerated the dismantling process. The actual companies themselves (which are businesses at the end of the day) just adapated to the new less restrictive framework they now operated in and as a result plunged into a neverending spiral of consolidation and downmarket plunging.

If you want 'quality', 'commercial' and 'ITV' to appear in the same sentence, the old framework which held all the companies up to standard and ensured the network was more than the sum of it's parts (under which it flourished incidentally) had to be maintained. And the light touch deregulated regulator whose only ambition was to deregulate further was not the way to do this.

The ITV duopoly could easily have come down to Central and LWT rather than Carlton and Granada if things had turned out just a little bit different, but just because those companies are held with higher regard in anorack circles it doesn't mean ITV would have turned out any differently; in all likelihood it would be pretty much identical to the way it is now.

It's apparently been said that the future of Lenton Lane rested on the success of Crossroads and that if said show failed it would be the end of the studios.



Carlton Central still occasionally make CiTV programmes (Bernard's Watch for example is/was made in Nottingham because I'm sure they got the original kid out of the junior workshop) but apart from the presentation and linkage and so on of that service, I can't think of anything else that they've made recently apart from Bernard. As for the rest of the network overall - um, nope can't think of anything apart from Crossroads and Family Fortunes, neither of which are on.



Do you think they tried to put all their eggs in one basket as it were with Crossroads? I'm not sure of any other high profile productions made by Carlton Central since that ended.



Must make a packet out of that, particularly the Thunderbirds stuff and the films and whatever else is in the archive, can all be flogged internationally and to satellite telly. Bet they got quite a bit from Challenge when they bought up loads of Central's old gameshows.

Overall though, I do think that even if Carlton hadn't won the London franchise with effect from 1993 (ie, it stayed with Thames) and if ATV had survived both 1980 and 1991 then we could have been looking two months ago at a proposed merger between ATV and Granada, the two oldest names on the network. I don't know why, I just can't vision Thames being involved somehow, I reckon they'd have been bought out by one or the other

Totally agree. I for one have hated what Carlton have done to ITV. But I think the rot began much earlier. In a recent interview with HTV West's director, he mention that the channel and others were in financial dire straits well before 1992. Mainly because they had to put so much money into bidding for their franchises. Thanks Mrs Thatcher!

I don't think it's an eggs and basket case, it's rather that with more and more production based in London all studio facilities outside of it are finding it increasingly harder to stay viable with a more limited number of programmes made from there.

Crossroads, if it had worked (although I have to say I never had any doubt that it would flop spectacularly) would have been the big budget resource heavy programme that Lenton Lane needed to justify it's continued existance.

With Crossroads gone, nothing of similar scale has replaced it, nor is it likely to, and the remaining production there makes it harder and harder to keep the studios running as they are.

That's what was meant when it was said that the end of Crossroads likely spell the end of the studios.

Doesn't ITV have a quota by law that says it has to have at least 25% of its annual programmes made outside the capital though? Fair enough, Emmerdale and Corrie are made outside London but surely that doesn't reach 25%?