City-TV from Thames Television

Does anyone have any information about Thames TV bid for the Channel 5 licence as City TV in the early 90's?
The ITC rejected the idea and the franchise application was eventually withdrawn.
I was tying to find out what their service would have consisted of and how it would have worked on screen. There's very little information online (that I can find anyway!)

Was CityTV not the American/Canadian station who Channel 5 News originally copied?

Yes, their City TV bid was based on the Canadian model.

In terms of what they had planned, I suspect the only way you'd find out is to look at the bid itself, if it's publicly available.

There's a bit of detail here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/channel-5-on-hold-as-thames-bid-fails-1564453.html

You could always put in a Freedom of Information request to Ofcom - I recommend using http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

Make sure your request is worded such that all details will be revealed - from experience they'll use the wording of a question to not reveal anything where possible.

There used to be a copy at the BFI Library. From memory, the IBA didn't licence the station due to lack of funding.

The proposal was based on Citytv's successful station in Toronto - focussing on News, Movies and Music programming. The plan was initially to base a Citytv in London (at the old Thames studios in Euston Road) with a second station opening in the North (Manchester) a couple of years later.

Here's what the news on the original Toronto CityTV looked liked in the early 1990s, giving you an idea what Thames' proposed channel may have looked like:



CityTV eventually exported its brand and format to Barcelona, Spain (defunct) and Bogota, Colombia (still around). Wikipedia also states that a station in Puerto Rico adopted the CityTV brand and format for a short time.

It's strange to think the Thames brand might not still be around today had they not lost their licence as I suspect one way or another ITV becoming one company was inevitable. It would be interesting though to learn more about CityTV - didn't realise Thames had bid to become C5.

Only a passing mention of C5 but another article from the last days of Thames - didn't realise it was them who launched UK Gold.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/thames-faces-end-of-an-era-maggie-brown-found-sadness-and-bitter-disbelief-at-euston-road-1566074.html

I tried to do a bit of research into early C5 at uni last year but there really is very little information available compared to the other broadcasters, presumably because unlike them its had very little impact on British culture. I read through what I think must be the only academic book written on the channel called Channel 5: The Early Years and it has some interesting info on both C5 auctions. One of the bids in the first auction was from a professor (I think) who wanted to use the frequency to test new technologies or something like that rather than provide a television channel. He didn't return to the second auction a few years later.

Can't really remember any more info on the City TV proposals but I think the book did give a bit more insight into how it was going to work and how they would make use of existing facilities.

Interesting article. Yes, Thames teamed up with the BBC to launch UK Gold in November 1992 and then UK Living the following September.

UK Gold came from Euston. I used to work with a former Thames transmission controller who was working late on UK Gold on 31/12/92, so while everyone else stopped working and had a couple of drinks after midnight he had to keep working!

UK Living launched from Teddington, using equipment brought over from Euston and one of the smaller studios (3 I think) for it's live afternoon show.

Strangely even though they were sister channels UK Gold never moved to Teddington, instead playout was taken out of house to Molinaire until it became part of UKTV and moved to TV centre


In the end it did kind of get Channel 5. Thames became Pearson TV and they were one of the main original shareholders of Channel 5. Pearson TV moved from Teddington to Tottenham Court Road in 1997 and Channel 5 came from brand new Pearson playout facilities there (in fact some staff working on C5's TX were still at the company since the days of Thames). A large proportion of C5's original line up came from the production companies of it's owners including Pearson/Thames

The company that bought Thames (Pearson) would eventually be one of four investors in the consortium that launched Channel 5 in 1997. Barely a victory, but somewhat worth noting.



A very nit-picky clarification: While UK Gold was very much a BBC/Thames project, Cox Cable held a majority of the shares at launch, and were later joined by UAEH/TCI. UK Living had the same investors as UK Gold minus the BBC.

Most of the share ended up with Flextech, which allowed them to relaunch with the BBC new UK TV series of tv channel