When Granada bought LWT

Thames' news service was very poor, especially up until 1982 at which point the IBA forced them to collaborate with LWT and produce a consistent 7 days a week service. 1968 to 1981 the 'local news' prog was called "Today" I think, no news really, more of a chat show. The only thing notable about it was the famous Sex Pistols incident with Bill Grundy in 1976.

so Thames lost it because of there poor "local programmes" just like the ATV

the system works!

No Thames lost purely on money, both them & Carlton had the same business plan but Carlton won on money grounds. Thames relied on the "good services to the network" bit of the bidding too heavily & lost.

The history with Thames & Carlton goes back to the mid 80's when Carlton tried to buy shares in Thames but the refused & sold them too (I believe although I may be wrong) Thorn EMI Group (One of the largest if not largest companies in the UK) which angered Carlton.

Regarding Thames taking over the network, there may be a possiblity but I could hardly see the name "Thames Birmingham" used, more than likely they would have come up with their own name for ITV if they had continued, although who's to say that any companies taking over ITV in future will keep the name? NBC UK anyone

Has anyone else noticed that most of the itv companies names have been changed at companies house from 29/12/06?

For example Border TV is now ITV Border Ltd and Granada Media Group is now ITV Productions Ltd, which was the copyright name at the end of Soapster thingy.

I suppose that's a sensible progression of the consolidation process for ITV plc. The copyright notices were getting abit inconsistent with the over-arching Endcap of ITV Productions. I think they have to retain the different franchises as subsidiaries however. So we'll still see the likes of "(C) ITV Yorkshire Television Ltd" at the end of Emmerdale, but that sounds alittle more corporate than "Yorkshire Television Ltd" at least.

As an aside, I also noticed that they are not being so quick to change the building exteriors to match the ITV logo from last January. I passed ITV Westcountry yesterday and they are still sporting the garish yellow & blue version.

I noticed the copyright at the end of the Soapstar Superstar last night - it was a Granada Television (Manchester) production last year.
Hope they dont change Corrie's - not that it would make any difference but it just feels right having Granada as the production company.

Granada used to be a great production company, but have totally lost their way, they are greedy and selfish and not care a jot for the viewer, it's all money money money, screw the viewers!

That was only Charles Allen's era as he was not a TV man but a Money man. He destoyed the heart and sole of Granada and its successive taken over companies and ITVplc.

Remember that Granada did not change the name of its stations, unlike Carlton, but kept the name and their idents until Charles Allen took full control (that's when his power madness came to a head and destroyed a great British network)

Give ITV a chance now that it has a new Director in the shape of Mr TV (number 2 - behind Greg Dyke!!!) Michael Grade. (although on par in brilliance and TV knowledge with Greg Dyke mainly due to his heritage!)

Shaps' era is just about to come on the screens and it looks good and maybe with Michael Grade at the helm, some of the bad press may disappear and ITV might, once again, become a good tv station.

All it needs is for OFCOM to be strong, hold its position with children's and regional programming and even extend the number of hours for each, then possibly ITV may have a future, unlike in its recent past (since the formation of ITVplc).

And I am one who dislikes what ITV became, but possibly with some foresight with the new programmes starting this season and with the start of Grade's era possibly, only possibly my thoughts about ITVplc may mellow.

When the ITV productions end caption came into use, for a few days This Morning changed to (C) ITV 2006, but soon changed back to the Granada version.

At the time it looked good for pres fans fo see the Granada stations retain their own branding, for YTV and Tyne Tees to still have separate regional presentation, for the GMG North stations to have breakbumpers unseen elsewhere, for Meridian and Anglia to still have the regional name on the breakbumpers, for LWT to have it's own unique ident etc etc but in hindsight what Granada were doing is arguably much worse.

Granada-owned stations may well have been allowed to retain regional branding and the curious little variations on the corporate look between them on screen, but behind the scenes everything that underpinned them was being demolished at breakneck speed. On the other side of the fence, Carlton may well have operated all three of it's stations under the same brand name with the same presentation (although they did backpedal a bit with their later aquisition of HTV) but Carlton London, Central and Westcountry did at least continue to function as (fairly) autonomous stations with their own with their own continuity team and with the individual stations retaining their own management to a much greater degree than the Granada stations and with local control and scheduling of output surviving much longer than it did at any Granada owned operation.

Believe me, regardless of the name that appeared on the screen, Westcountry and Central were more alive in 2001/2 than Meridian and Tyne Tees were.

Yeap I remember at the time just how unimaginative GMG's presentation was, and how we wished we had Carlton standards of continuity and ident, at least we had something interesting to discuss about, now of course there's nothing interesting to talk about regarding ITV.

Sorry for digging this up but i was pondering the other day about what would have happened if Carlton had bought Granada when they had the chance?(it was discussed earlier but i want to develop the question further) Imagine: Carlton has acquired Granada and then subsequently acquired all of the ITV franchises, (not just the big ones) what happens next? Heres my question: do you think Carlton would rebrand everything Carlton or ITV1? IMO i think Granada did much worse things then Carlton to the regions. Like previous posters have said Carlton did rebrand Central and Westcountry Carlton but they did keep the regional announcements running. Maybe everything wouldve still ended up based in London with no regional announcements but i think Carlton wouldve been so up themselves they wouldve rebranded the whole ITV network as Carlton. Well what do you think. If Carlton had bought everything would we have ended up with an ITV1 Network or a Carlton Network?