Carlton Television

But don't assume that if the changes in 1991 hadn't happened then ITV would not be a single company now.

All ITV franchisees are businesses and always have been. The desire to cut costs and build profits/teritory were always there. With the changes that took place in the area of broadcasting consolidation leading to a single ITV was inevitable no matter who was running teh companies involved

what would ITV be like if LWT was top dog?

Care to expand a little more on the evidence for the sake of debate?

Quite the oppostie infact, TV-am only lost because of the actual system, both TV-am and Sunrise/GMTV had both passed the quality threshold but as Sunrise/GMTV offered the most money they got the licence, which was that the whole Franchise round was based on.

TV-am took no stick from the Unions and stuck up to them, mainly thanks to Bruce Gyngell and was probably the first ITV company not to cave into ridiculous demands, such as over manning, which Bruce nor Margaret Thatcher didn't like either.

The staff went on strike, those who did weren't allowed back in and within 6 months they were all sacked and thus TV-am installed new technology like they wanted to and reduced costs, which is how Thatcher wanted every ITV station to be run as. As de-unionised as the Miners and the Printers by the late 1980's.

Never forget that the day after TV-am lost their franchise Bruce Gyngell got a letter of apology from Thatcher to say that she was 'mystified and heartbroken', not often anything like that happens I can assure you.

oh no I know that, what I meant was that I read that GMTV seemed to be forever short of cash in its early years and had to constantly beg the ITC to lower its payments. I recall someone saying that Bruce Gyngell said that there was no way GMTV would be able to keep up payments and he was proved right. It wasn't until the late 90's that it finally made a profit.

It was stated by the ITC that they considered excluding HTV and YTV (along with Tyne Tees) on financial quality grounds.

For them to have made comment, it is clear that it was a close-run thing.

Tyne Tees MD Ian Ritchie was quoted at the time of the merger with Yorkshire that he felt they would have lost the franchise if the merger was not a "strong possibility", which adds further weight to the theory that the only reason both YTV and TTTV won was because the ITC knew the merger was on the cards. Even the boss of NETV commented on the day of the results that he thought the two companies would be merged "by 1993".

As for Granada, NWTV lost out on programme quality grounds. This was always considered a slightly dubious reason, since NW was backed by YTV and Mersey TV and had put in what was clearly a much stronger programme package than Carlton, who did win their licence.

Although it is less clear-cut that Granada got through by the skin of their teeth, the inference of the YTV situation was that the real reason NW lost was because of the financial situation of their backers.

If YTV had lost, ironically they would have been in a stronger position to set up shop in the North West, and at that stage Granada would have had a real problem on their hands, what with them bidding only £9m and so on.

Bruce said himself in the media news press conferences at the time in October 1991 (these are all on YouTube) that he thought the new ITV Breakfast company Sunrise (later rebranded GMTV after Sky complained) would be bankrupt by 1994 - a life expectancy of no more than two years.

Interesting then that TSW wasn't renewed because the ITC were concerned they wouldn't be able to afford it in the long term - by comparison, Westcountry's much lesser bid seemed the more sensible proposition in terms of maintaining the service.

But it didn't really matter in the end, with Westcountry taken over by Carlton and swallowed up into ITV plc before it had chance to establish itself. To quote TSW's Harry Turner, it really was a "ludicrous charade of a franchise system".

TSW just tipped over the scales of what was acceptable from a financial point of view.

They bid 16m for a franchise slightly smaller in terms of revenue than the north east, where TTTV bid 15m, which by Ian Ritchie's own admission was too much for them to sustain by themselves.

TBH, given what happened to TTTV after 1993, I think the ITC got it right with TSW unfortunately.

We're all aware of how for many years ITV existed in the form that it did only due to strict regulation. Without which, ATV would have been doing all the things many people hate Carlton for, Rupert Murdoch would have infiltrated ITV via LWT and the regional companies would almost certainly have swallowed each other up in time for the arrival of Channel 4. So yes, the franchise round itself wasn't the problem but the secondary legislation which ended the ban on ITV companies merging or taking each other over.

well thanks to Rupert Murdoch he saved LWT:

can I ask Is STV the only company, that keep the other Company TV name

IE STV keep Grampian tv for 10 years. and most of the service are still up there, like Newsroom, ad section ,

In the short term yes, but his removal was essential for the preservation of quality and PSB on the ITV network. Look at Sky and you'll see why.