Some sister companies of broadcasters

My - that totem sign has dated badly.
Half of the companies listed, are no longer trading.

Granada existed before they got into telly ! They started in the 1930s doing cinemas. My first ever visit to a cinema was a Granada one in Chichester Sussex, 1973 to see the Bond film, Live and Let Die (Ironically (or perhaps not !) prompted
to see it after watching a review on Granada TV's Clapperboard childrens' programme !)

There was also Granada TV rental in the 70s and 80s (nope, they still tuned ITV to button 3, and not 1 on their tellies) and Granada motorway service areas, which as you point out struggled on into the 90s....

They also attempted (unsuccesfully) to sue Ford for naming a car The Granada . Bit cheeky seeing as Bernstein had himself stolen the name from his favourite Spanish city.

See also ABC, a cinema company who diversified into TV.

Granada owned the Victoria & Albert Hotel in Manchester next to their studios. They used to put their stars up in it when they were filming in town.

HTV had an art collection as an investment, but I'm not sure that's altogether rare for businesses.

No, and Richard Attenborough had to sell some of his art collection to keep Capital Radio afloat in its early days.

Granada also had a theme park business - as well as their studio tours park they also took over Park Hall Leisure which owned Camelot and The American Adventure. The Park Hall businesses were sold off in the mid 90s in their mad scramble to fund ITV buyouts, and the Studios closed to the public in, I think, 1999.

Border Television owned a company called called Green Star who operated some of the rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the 70s and 80s.

UTV had an art collection business which I believe was only recently disposed of.

Border had a very successful chain of radio stations at one point, until they were sold to Capital. UTV also had a big radio arm


As for hotels, the BBC owned what is now the Langham Hotel opposite Broadcasting House. I don't think it was open to the public though, just for staff?


Some of the Wood Norton site is still a BBC premises

I think Border as a whole was bought by Capital who very shortly after sold the TV arm to Granada.

In 1979, LWT (Holdings) plc, the parent company of London Weekend Television, acquired a controlling interest in Page & Moy. In 1988 Barclays plc – parent of Page & Moy's largest client, Barclaycard – purchased 100% shares in the business.

The nature of TV particularly in the early days was that the companies with sufficient funds to bid for a license were already successful in other fields.

Yorkshire was launched by a TV rental company, Television, who won the franchise but were forced to merge with another applicant, a consortium of regional newspapers, trade unions, co-ops and universities who the ITA felt had more talent but a weaker financial position.

Incidentally there is no truth that either Central Trains or Anglia Railways had any connection to the similarly named ITV companies, despite both using logos remarkably similar to the respective TV companies.

Anglian windows used a knight as a logo for a while too. Didn't Southern Electric have a logo similar to Meridian's?

There have been quite a few train companies that have co-incidently used the same name as a TV company, see also Thames and Southern trains

I always thought there must be more than just coincidence in the logo and it's typography.



The Anglia one isn't quite so close to the same font but is certainly similar to the Knight era logo.

But as I say, not related although I suspect some people may have assumed a link.