ITV abandons the South Bank

From Wikipedia:

On 28 January 2013 ITV plc finally bought the freehold to the now renamed London Television Centre for £56 million from what had now become Coal Pension Properties.

The official name of the building remains The London Television Centre (with the studio business branded as 'The London Studios') with that being the logo in reception and around the building.

It's rather disingenuous for them the keep calling it the "home of ITV for 40 years". However, that links in with their continuous attempts to whitewash the regional (federal) origins of the Channel 3 structure.

Not really, it's always been the home of some part of ITV.

It's one thing to expect viewers to care that the studios are closing, but if you expect a major explanation of ITV's history every time it's mentioned, I think they really would be bored

People seem to forget that is the tradition of TV studios - sets were rather quickly assembled and disembled and studios used for multiple shows in a week. Perhaps in recent years as studio filming reduced, demand fell and hired help was dismissed there was the luxury of sets being able to stand in studios for longer than they may have been required, but now with the supply of space having fallen I think the remaining studios will be looking to make turnaround times as efficient as possible to maximise revenues from their bookings.

So did the name The London Television Centre and the studios business The London Studios both get created at the same time, which I'm guessing was around 1991 when LWT was spinning stuff off into separate businesses

I’ve answered my own question. Yes created 1991

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01222154

Wasn't it part of the way to make it easier for them to keep things going if they lost their franchise?

Being the home of "some part of ITV" is no different to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Edinburgh, Belfast or any other "part of ITV". For more than half of its existence, Kent House was nothing more than the home of a weekend ITV franchise holder, albeit one producing some of the most popular programmes.

To be fair they were generally speaking the home of weekend light entertainment for decades - LWT may have been the London Weekend Franchise but it more than played it's role in the network too. Obviously it wasn't until GMTV and then This Morning moved in that the studios played a significant role in ITV daytime as well - a role obviously deemed more important to the current management at ITV considering the plans for the studios that replace them.

Yes. If LWT lost the programme contractor status, they could still trade (and keep some staff) as a facilities provider.

I'm sure I read an interview with Greg Duke where he said the name 'The London Studios' was used instead of the original 'The London Television Centre' because it was causing some confusion in the industry because of the other Television Centre over in W12.

How actually true that was, I'm not sure. Surely most in the industry when talking about the two studio centres would have used ' TVC' and 'LWT' names?

Thanks for your replies earlier as I was curious when I watching an episode of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush (as you do!) and the front entrance had the London Television Centre on the door.

It still is called The London Television Centre, its in the postal address of everything based there and its what the building is referred to in the planning application

It will always be LWT in my eyes, just as YTV is in Leeds, these other names just go in one ear and out the other.