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ITV What If?

Waiting their turn (April 2013)

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FB
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Theory:

Instead of potential companies fighting it out to win the franchises. What would ITV have looked like if each franchise had been given a fixed 10 year licence to broadcast and successors were privately chosen by the ITA under a strict series of criteria e.g Financial and quality thresholds.

Under the system, successful programs made by one company would be offered to their successor so the Men Behaving Badly sage would have been different.

EXAMPLE:

1968 to 1978: Yorkshire Television
1978 to 1988: Ridings Television
1988 to 1998: White Rose Television
1998 to 2008: ITV1 Yorkshire


Like the other contributors I'm not a fan of "what if's" but I'll add my thoughts anyway.
What business would consider running for no more than ten years?
You've got planning time up to running a service, possible TUPE employees and factor in redundancy at the end of the business time. What about any shareholders? They'll want a return and would never pitch in if they thought they'd have no profit at the end.
SO
Steven O
There was a good "what-if" in the Scotsman back in 1989,, in a article covering a television industry conference in Glasgow which debated what was then the Broadcasting Billl (later to become the 1990 Broadcasting Act) and also what was seen as a London bias in the media. The delegates were asked to consider what would happen after 1990 if London's broadcasting establishment decamped en-masse to Glasgow.

Basically:

- Thames and LWT would become Clyde and GWT;
- TV-AM would move from Camden Town to Cambuslang;
- Channel 4 would set up shop in the Gorbals;
- Presenters on ITN would make jokes about obscure Glasgow landmarks;
- and Londoners would find that every diary contained a useless map of the Glasgow Overground at the back.

Of course no-one could have foreseen the transfer of most BBC operations out of London in recent years...

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