ITV - what if

What do you think would have happaned if one english region had not been taken over by carlton or GMG?

Say if yorkhire had not been taken over. Would yorkshire stand alone, while everywhere else came from London? Or would they merge also into ITVPLC

Suppose a new company bid for a licence next time (the south say) , what would they do?

Channel TV has never been taken over by anyone, they are still independant. Same for UTV.

but they are whole different countrys. HTV is ITV Wales (not from London).

The Channel Islands are part of the United Kingdom, as is Northern Island.

I would say it would work exactly the same as Channel and UTV are now. Exactly as they have always been, just with ITV branding such as the blue and the generic studio and news title sequences. The reason Channel hasn't been bought out is because ITV make more money out of them as a single unit anyway, so buying them would be a poor business decision.

HTV Wales/ITV Wales is transmitted from London though, the only difference is we have out own anouncers and idents, and more regional programming than the English ITV1 regions.

I've noticed Border has a lot more of regional programming than the other regions.

Is that Border Scotland?

It could have turned out quite differently if different events happened, such as if Thames' franchise was renewed, then we would have a different situation, or if Cartlon and United News and Media merged, though this would have ended up being merged with Granada anyway, so not much could have happened that would be different.

It would be more interesting to see what would happen say if Granada never bought LWT, as they wouldn't have a step into London like they do now, or even if Granada was bought up, though personally I couldn't see that happening as the Granada empire was huge at the time.

Say if Thames did become a big Media empire, things would be different, as everything would be based from Euston Road rather than Kent House, as a 7 day News service was in the planning anyway, no matter who won the Weekday licence, and it would be likely that Thames would be the stronger half.

I think ITV is rather fortunate in the way of land, especially in London, as Carlton had no TV Studios of their own and GMTV don't own any, so they were probably fortunate enough to remain at LWT/Kent House. If say Thames was still on the air and if TV-am was still on (imagine if TV-am was majority owned by ITV) then they would have problems, as all three broadcasters made loads of programmes from their facilites, where as Carlton, LWT and GMTV rather simply use The London Studios.

just a quick note, the Channel Islands aren't part of the United Kingdom, they are a crown dependency.

As is the Isle of Man, which lies in the Border TV area (though this can be disputed as Granada also covers parts of the IoM). This means that Border covers three nationalities - Scottish, English and Manx.

No matter what combination of companies won the 1991 auctions there is no doubt that they would have all merged eventually as soon as it was allowed.

Look at the history, as soon as they could the bigger companies were buying up the smaller ones - Yorkshire and Tyne Tees, Meridian and Anglia, Carlton and Central, Granada and LWT. If the rules had changed 5 years earlier then the companies around then would have done just the same

No matter which way you look at it, from a businees and organisational point of view, a single ITV makes far more sense than lots of seperate companies.