ITV Regions - The What If?

Granada would have survived. You may remember ( or maybe not as I have no idea how old you are Mr Whataday ) that they let it be known (and it was widely reported ) that if they lost the franchise they would take Coronation Street to Sky . There was quite an outcry at the time- and questions in the house!

Talking of Carlton, does anyone remember one of their programmes, London Bridge? It also went out on Carlton Select.

Even after the franchise auctions of 93 things could have turned out very differently had one decision taken on a summer's afternoon in Norwich gone the other way.

Remember when Granada bought up LWT? It was a hostile bid that one, and LWT fought to retain their independence. At much the same time, a friendly bid for Anglia by MAI was going through. A deal was drummed up whereby the then-completely broke Yorkshire-Tyne Tees would be split up, and Anglia would take over TTTV and LWT would get YTV. It failed because Anglia decided after some deliberation that the TTTV side was in too bad a financial situation to justify the takeover, and we know the rest of the story.

But just think, if the deal had gone through. YTV-LWT would have been one of the two dominant companies in ITV (the other Carlton-Central). Anglia would have been safe for a few more years. But most importantly, the Northern Macro would never have come into being. Granada would have ended up a comparative minnow (MAI would have probably ended up buying HTV, leaving Granada with nothing to acquire until the law was changed to allow more than two franchises to be owned by one company in 1996) and the whole management landscape of ITV would have been very different today. The TV section of Granada may even have ended up being bought out, the small stations would have been more fragmented than now and hence probably more cantankerous to change, and the management would have been even more London-Centric than now.

All that change from one decision.....

As much as I detest the merger and the loss of the ITV regions, the biggest sin Carlton ever commited was dropping Prisoner: Cell Block H when they took over. Even having the best idents on the network for a while couldn't make up for this most evil crime.

They didn't drop it until 1998 - although it was admittedly shunted around all over the place and generally treated very badly. I think they only showed 30 or 40 episodes during the year before they dropped it.

Meridian and UTV also both dropped Prisoner (Meridian held out until August 1999 when the decision was forced on them by UNM rationalising the evening schedule).

As for UTV, I don't know whether this is true or not but the story is that UTV were also forced to drop it - the other stations had bought all the episodes to the end by 1997 and so were OK, but UTV hadn't and when they tried to buy the rest found that they couldn't due to a clause in C5's licence which stopped any more rights being sold until they had finished it.

Westcountry was the last region to get to the end of it, finishing in late 1997.

They did drop it completely at first. There was a huge outcry from us fans and they grudgingly put one episode a week on, like you said, shunted all over the shop (as late as 1:30am some weeks) Thames were brilliant with it. Two regular episodes a week at the same time. Thanks to Carlton I never did see the end of it. I know Channel 5 showed it all, but it was on at 4:40am!

You could have taped it? I think it's quite likely that C5 will pick it up again. After Prisoner finished, they first just extended their sports coverage, but then found that they still needed a filler in that weekend late slot - which turned out to be a double bill of another Aussie soap of similar vintage - Sons and Daughters (taking up the same length because S&D is about 23 minutes long without commercials). Whilst I actually got into it, it's not as lucrative as Prisoner was. Prisoner almost always had 2 commercials breaks, 1 minute long each. Not much advertising, but S&D doesn't get any, not even in the gap between the two episodes.

Therefore, when they run out of Sons and Daughters episodes (I'm pretty sure they haven't bought them all, but even if they have they will get to the end in 2 or 3 years anyway) it wouldn't surprise me if C5 put Prisoner back on - both programmes must surely cost roughly the same, so I'd expect them to go for the one which they can sell advertising for.

Oh well, we've still had it better than Australia in recent years. In it's home country, Prisoner is respected as being a half decent 70's and 80's soap, and not unfairly ridiculed as being cult crap as it is here. Despite that, it hasn't been shown (outside of pay TV where it is still being run) since 1996. And the channel which comissioned it in the first place (and whose logo still appears in the credits on present day reruns), Network 10, hasn't even bothered to hold onto the rights to it.

Trust me I did try taping it. I was religous about it at first. But you know how it is, the video tapes ITV Nightscreen instead. You forget some nights and so on. When Channel 5 first got it, they screened it at 11:40pm. Why the change to 4:40am? I thought Cell Block was a big cult hit.

It was actually screened at 4:40AM at the start (they started 2 days after they launched, on 1st April 1997). It was moved to the evening slot in June after pressure to show it at a more sociable hour.

C5 expected a doubling in viewers in order to maintain that slot. That didn't happen for two main reasons; firstly, because of their 9PM movies, everything after until Live and Dangerous was in a floating slot - Prisoner could be on anywhere between 11:15 & 12:00 and secondly, that several ITV stations were still showing it in 1997 and they often found themselves in direct competition with ITV, who were showing a 'new' episode. To be fair to C5, they did give it a chance, but the ratings they wanted (and cruicially, were getting with other programmes) just weren't there. It was eventually cut back to 3 days a week in the Autumn, then was sent back off to 4:40 at the end of the year, where it stayed (save for a little spate of being on at 4:10) until it finished.