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ITV Franchise Losers

(June 2001)

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:-(
A former member
square eyes posted:
Well the handover of teletext broadcasters doesn't compare to the transition of a TV company, that is what I was interested in.  


Oh, I dunno! It was quite an important moment really - one of the original two developers of the whole teletext system being relegated to the scrap heap because of the 'highest bidder' rules.

I grew up with Oracle: my family had its first teletext set (a Panasonic Quintrix which had a habit of losing the cyan output so teletext appeared in red, yellow and green only!) back in 1982 and I remember spending hours and hours going through the whole service - marvelling at the wonders of the Blockheads and having all the ITV regions' listings on separate pages... Them where the days!

Sorry, back to the subject: I remember staying up to watch the end of ATV back in the early moments of 1982 and then later that morning the start of Central. Real tv history!
CA
cat
It is actually quite stupid calling it highest bidder rules.
I'm not critisising you Andrew, everyone uses that term, including myself... but if you think about it for a second.
TVS and TSW bid higher than their rivals (too high) and still lost, so why everyone calls it Highest bidder is a bit odd!
SE
Square Eyes Founding member
So why did they lose, was it poor programming plans, the business plan, or did somebody at the ITC just not like them ?
:-(
A former member
cheshirec posted:
It is actually quite stupid calling it highest bidder rules.
I'm not critisising you Andrew, everyone uses that term, including myself... but if you think about it for a second.
TVS and TSW bid higher than their rivals (too high) and still lost, so why everyone calls it Highest bidder is a bit odd!


No problem C! As you say, it's just common - but innaccurate - usage.

The ITC website itself has an interesting piece about this:

The general principle was that the applicant who passed the quality threshold and who submitted the highest cash bid for a given licence would be awarded the licence. The ITC did, however, have the discretion to award the licence to an applicant other than the highest bidder in 'exceptional circumstances'

On 15 May 1991, 37 applications for the 15 regional licences and three for the National Breakfast-Time licence were submitted to the ITC. The licences were awarded on 16 October 1991. Four of the incumbent ITV companies were not awarded licences; eight of the 16 licences were not awarded to the highest bidders and the ITC did not invoke ‘exceptional circumstances'.



(Edited by Andrew Wood at 11:03 pm on June 20, 2001)
AE
Ashley Elford
square eyes posted:
Well the handover of teletext broadcasters doesn't compare to the transition of a TV company, that is what I was interested in.  
So what about the change of TVam to GMTV ?
SE
Square Eyes Founding member
Yes but again, TV-AM didn't hand straight over to GMTV, GMTV appeared the following day, unlike the instant transition of TVS into Meridian, TSW into Westcountry and Thames into Carlton.
VI
Viakenny
square eyes posted:
Yes but again, TV-AM didn't hand straight over to GMTV, GMTV appeared the following day, unlike the instant transition of TVS into Meridian, TSW into Westcountry and Thames into Carlton.


Do u think TV-am aired through midnight? Of course not! But ITV stations now air for more hours, that's why the instant transition between TVS and Meridian, TSW and Westcountry (4 years before being bought by Carlton) and Thames and Carlton (the star [*] only appeared in 1999)
SU
SpiringUnhacked
Viakenny posted:
square eyes posted:
Yes but again, TV-AM didn't hand straight over to GMTV, GMTV appeared the following day, unlike the instant transition of TVS into Meridian, TSW into Westcountry and Thames into Carlton.


Do u think TV-am aired through midnight? Of course not! But ITV stations now air for more hours, that's why the instant transition between TVS and Meridian, TSW and Westcountry (4 years before being bought by Carlton) and Thames and Carlton (the star [*] only appeared in 1999)
OOPS! A * in [ and ] = [*]

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