Just out of interest, on the Border TV theme, there is a thread from 13 years ago (about the change of the Berwick relay from Border to Tyne Tees ahead of DSO) predicting the demise of the station as an independent.
https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/bye-bye-border-21586/
I would imagine the difference between careers at Border (or Channel) and Thames / Central / Granada couldn't have been more different.
The larger companies would have been better for being able to specialise in an area, and promotion would have been easier.
At the smaller companies, it would have been a much wider and varied job, but probably for promotions it would have been "dead man's shoes".
You stated that regional provision is cheap. I have cited numerous occasions where ITV companies have failed due to the cost of such provision.
I recall a series of programmes made by Tyne Tees in the early 1990s, which debated with a studio audience the performance of the local provision. I recall it was stated that the cost to the company of its regional programming exceeded the company's profit figures. I would imagine that was the case for all the smaller companies.
How that equates to being "cheap as chips" is beyond me.
I have stated that the cost of local production is/was as cheap as chips, I did not say the cost of providing a regional ITV service was cheap. You say it was not fair that the salaries of staff (ACTT) staff at Border were the same as at say Thames. I say the cost of of ACTT salaries at a regional company made no real difference to the overall cost of local TV production there. I am not surprised the overall cost of local productions exceeded the overall profit figures for the company - why would they not?
Are you aware that the monthly local political programme that goes out in the TTTV area once a month is recorded by the same crew, in the same broom cupboard, on the same day as all the other regional political programmes for example? Cheap as chips.
You stated that regional provision is cheap. I have cited numerous occasions where ITV companies have failed due to the cost of such provision.
I recall a series of programmes made by Tyne Tees in the early 1990s, which debated with a studio audience the performance of the local provision. I recall it was stated that the cost to the company of its regional programming exceeded the company's profit figures. I would imagine that was the case for all the smaller companies.
How that equates to being "cheap as chips" is beyond me.
I have stated that the cost of local production is/was as cheap as chips, I did not say the cost of providing a regional ITV service was cheap. You say it was not fair that the salaries of staff (ACTT) staff at Border were the same as at say Thames. I say the cost of of ACTT salaries at a regional company made no real difference to the overall cost of local TV production there. I am not surprised the overall cost of local productions exceeded the overall profit figures for the company - why would they not?
Are you aware that the monthly local political programme that goes out in the TTTV area once a month is recorded by the same crew, in the same broom cupboard, on the same day as all the other regional political programmes for example? Cheap as chips.
Yes, the monthly programme made now is cheap.
Because it's a token effort
.
Completely different to the days when companies were making between 5 and 10 hours of non-news local programming a week, which included programmes of similar quality to that seen on the network in many cases.
Was a 3-hour outside broadcast to show a live football match, cheap? Or locally-produced soaps and dramas shown only in the region? Or hour-long local versions of programmes like The Tube? I'd say programmes like that were quite expensive, actually.
My bold. I'll pass your encouragement on to those who actually make it, I'm sure they'll be interested that you think their efforts are not really worth it.
You started your argument stating that it was unfair for local ITV companies to have the same ACTT staff costs as for say a London company. Now you are trying to expand it onto whether a local ITV franchise 'back in the day' was financially viable. Football OB? - paying the staff the same if they are sitting in the OB garage as at a football ground. Same for soaps, same for drama - all rostered, base staff costs.
TT
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Last edited by ttt on 2 July 2019 2:28pm - 2 times in total
It's interesting to know, then, that the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon, or Coronation Street, is "cheap as chips", using your argument.
One big difference between the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon (which is now presentation only, as Wimbledon are now host broadcasting themselves) is that the BBC are pretty much entirely reliant on freelance technical crew and have been for many years now, so they have no staff costs during downtime (unlike regional ITV companies with staff crews that weren't 100% utilised) The BBC only need pay crew for the shows they work on, when they work on them. Increasingly the same is also true for production team (though Sport has a base level of core work that justifies a reasonably healthy staff core)
It's interesting to know, then, that the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon, or Coronation Street, is "cheap as chips", using your argument.
There's a total disconnect in your argument between the costs of individual programmes and their actual cost of production taking into account the wider costs to the company making it.
As to the monthly political programme, being a token effort by ITV plc is not the same as being a token effort on the part of those involved in actually making the thing.
That said, the threadbare nature of the production is there for all to see. It has absolutely nowhere near the journalistic quality that TT's "Point of Order" weekly effort had in 1990.
You've never heard of 'total costing'? During the period you're referring to it was in widespread use in ITV.
I'm surprised you regard Wimbledon and Coronation Street as local productions. I would regard them as major tv productions (or event in Wimbledon's case) with large costs involved.
CTV running a "black" service would have been like signing their own death warrant. Post strike the chances are every single franchise would have been threatened by the unions with further actions if they provided anything to CTV. That would have killed the channel outright.
Inspector Sands makes a very valid point that CTV might never have committed to a plan of establishing a studio and playout centre in the UK as the strike could have finished the next day. However, if CTV had a high quality bi-directional video link to the UK then networking programmes to the UK from the Channel Islands would have been a very easy task for CTV to do. Would they have refrained from networking programmes at the behest of the unions or would they have gone ahead with it regardless?
Take into account that the IBA was actually the broadcaster until 1992 and ITV companies were programme contractors. The unions would be spitting nails if CTV decided to run a 'black' service on the mainland, but after the strike ended the IBA could tell the unions where to stick it if they had the audacity to dictate that programme contractors must not provide networked programmes to CTV.
Quote:
The next franchise round may have also led to the IBA deciding not to have a separate channel islands franchise instead merging it with the southwest a'la BBC.
I'm not confident that this would be the case. There was a franchise round coming up and the unions knew this and how further industrial action would put severe pressure on the IBA to implement major reforms to the ITV network and dismiss programme contractors effectively held to ransom by the unions.
If a bi-directional video link between the Channel Islands and the UK existed and the UK based unions were genuinely proven powerless to inhibit networked programming originating from the Channel Islands, then it could easily have resulted in a project to create a permanent playout centre at the CTV studios. The role of CTV would have been redefined from an outpost of ITV for the Channel Islands into the ITV playout centre for films and pre-recorded material, and during future strikes.
In fact, CTV would be seen by everybody, except the unions of course, as heroes and not villains for keeping ITV running during the strike and the Thatcher Government would have loved them.
I think we can be fairly confident that in 1979 there was no high quality bi-directional video link from their Jersey studios to the UK.
There was not one from the UK to Jersey, which is why they had to rely on off air reception from either Westward (or Southern) for their network programming.
There are many articles about the SABRE array which the IBA installed on Alderney to do this when UHF colour started.
With that in mind, there is no way that Channel could provide a service to the UK, without doing work that they couldn't afford to fund, and would have had a risk of any goodwill they had disappearing.
No unionised firm would have supported a strike breaking service being set up.
The GPO would not have assisted, and without them it couldn't be done.
It is a non starter, and any idea that the overstretched Channel TV could have set up an operation on the mainland, whilst struggling to fill their own airtime is cloud cuckoo land stuff.
Last edited by commseng on 1 July 2019 1:56pm - 2 times in total