Granada Plus/ITV Gold

Has anyone heard what is happening with Granada Plus? Is it going to be replaced with ITV Gold?

Nothing has been confirmed yet other than GSkyB is going to be put into review, ie they will probably close Granada Plus like you say. Though I hope they keep the same stuff on Plus like Classic Corrie and Emmerdale from 2000. Though what they are going to do with all the other programmes which are made by the BBC. You can't have Canned Carrott on a station called ITV Gold! I don't know what will happen to Men and Motors either as that isn't that bad to be honest, I don't see any reason for it to close as the ratings are good for the channel.

Plus Jez since when did you change your ITV region to Granada? I thought you were in HTV land?

To me it seems more likely that the channels will remain, but SKY will sell its interests in GSB.

What I'd expect to happen is that GSkyB will be disolved and ITV plc/Granada will get Plus TV and Sky will get Men&Motors (both were scrapped of the Granada brand name long ago which suggests an end to the GSkyB partership).

I wouldn't care to venture what Sky would do with the channel, they may bring it into the Sky branded fold or they may operate it under it's existing branding. On the other side of the wall, I'd definately say that what is now Plus TV will end up being an ITV branded channel. Otherwise, I'd imagine life would continue pretty much the same for it; after all it's succesful as it is now and there is no need to change the programming.


Of course you can - and what about all the ITC programmes (some of which were actually credited as being made 'in association with ATV') which originally aired on ITV in the 60's and 70's which now turn up on BBC2 (all Gerry Anderson sci-fi falls into this category)?

I had heard that if ITV Gold took over they would replace the BBC progs that Plus show with more programmes from the archives of ITV, just like when Plus first started in 1996. So they could show more progs from Granada, LWT, Thames, ATV, Central, TVS, Yorkshire.

I remember when Granada Plus first started they showed mainly progs from the Granada and LWT archives, then they started showing YTV progs (e.g. Emmerdale) and now they seem to show anything from BBC stuff to imports.

I wonder what will happen with Emmerdale and Corrie - will they remain as they are or will they go back, and if so how far.

I presuem they'd stay as they are. I can't see any chance of either catching up as they're 5 times a week now (sadly IMO), and Emmerdale will start falling back now the producers have gone into overkill with the Sunday ep (IMO that should be dropped ASAP- 6 times a week is too much, IMO 3 times is ample)

Aren't all of Jasper Carrot's programmes Celador productions ? It's just that they went out on the BBC originally.

But I was thinking if this new ITV Gold channel is going to be showing stuff from the 70s/80s, it would be nice to have some Corrie/Emmerdale from this era too. Emmerdale IMO is far too recent, they have reached 2000 now, I stopped watching Emmerdale on there when they got to about 1997 as it was too recent.

I agree about Emmerdale being on too often, 3 or 4 times a week should be the maximum, although from ITV's point of view it gets high viewing figures so they are obviously happy to leave it at 6 days a week.

Only the most recent ones, over the last 10 years ISTR are Celador.

As far as Jasper's ITV career is concerned, they could show again 'An Audience With' from 1978 again, along with his other LWT stuff.

BTW, he did make a regional series for BBC Midlands in the mid 70's as well.

Anyone know if it's still around, 'cos I've never seen it !

(Anyone see last night's Carrott Gold? Classic 'Nutter On The Bus' & 'Tony Butler' skits on there!)

Surely when ITV3/Gold goes live, they will restart their run of classic Coronation Street? It would make sense as technically it's a new channel...

Yes it would be great if they started Corrie from mid 70's?

But it might be over kill on ITV channel where you can catch Corrie at 09:25 on ITV2, 12:30 on Plus (ITV3), 13:00 on ITV2, 19:30 on ITV1, 23:00 on ITV2. Also when ITV+1 appears there will be even more opportunities to catch Corrie!

The schedules are already cluttered up with enough Corrie - do we really need yet another channel with more repeats of repeats? What viewing figures do these repeat channels get?

Yes but if they were episodes from the 1970s rather than repeats of the previous evening’s ITV1 episode then it would be different.

It would be good if they started Corrie from the beginning but out of the current cast they would only have Ken in it (from episode 1) and Emily (from episode 15). If they started from the mid 1970s they would have people like Elsie Tanner, Stan and Hilda, Ena Sharples still in it, and also have a lot of the current cast like Deirdre Hunt/Langton/Barlow/Rachid, Rita Littlewood/Fairclough/Sullivan, Emily Bishop, Ken Barlow, Vera Duckworth.

Or they could have the 9am and 12noon episodes from the 1970s for example, and then the 5.30pm and bring back the 9pm showing, and have the 1990s eps there.