LWT

Coming from the other side of the Atlantic, I don't really understand why BOTH Carlton and LWT exist in London. Why can't these two licencees just merge and become one station?

Please answer this question for me, cuz it's been boggling my mind for some days now.

Hi. And no, manny-g, your eyes don't fool you.

London, being the most lucrative region in Britain, is apparently too big (in the government's POV) to have a single ITV company. Thus the regulators have always awarded two licences here, weekday and weekend, and thus there is a law preventing one company from owning two ITV licences in the same region (although the only applicable region is London).

Word is that this rule will be repealed in a few years, which will remove one of the stumbling blocks to any possible Carlton / Granada merger.

(Edited by stickguy at 3:22 am on July 14, 2001)

WHOA. Stickguy! It's you!

Thanks for the insight!

This was covered in a thread a short while ago, look in the archive section, it explains everything there. It also has a lot to do with the amount of advertising revenue - enough for the huge number of people in london, which can sustain two companies.

james

i totally agree why two companies but as explained above there always will be

In the dim and distant past the Midlands franchise was also split at weekends for the same reason. I think it was due to the belief that ITV companies were 'a licence to print money' and that the Midlands and London areas were potentially too profitable for one company to exploit.

The Midlands franchises were merged at some point during a franchise round I believe, but London has remained separate to this day.

However when Carlton beat Thames they worked with LWT on a joint News service (LWT and Thames had separate News depts) provided by LNN (London News Network) based at LWTs studios. Carlton and LWT also moved to share programme transmission and presentation services, also provided by LNN from LWT premises.
(Carlton launched without studios, and planned to commission all programmes from independent producers. This changed when Carlton bought Central and gained a lot of big studios in the Midlands, and programme making departments...)

In 1987 Carlton bought 19% of Central Television. In 1993 bought 20% of ITN, in 1994 Central Television, in 1996 Westcountry Television and in 2000 HTV.

So both GMG and Carlton have a hold in London?

That's right! Granada owns LTW, Carlton owns, well, Carlton!

I think I'm right in saying that Granada owns some of GMTV too, or it might be Carlton!

There's a separate licence too for a morning broadcast?

But that's for the whole of Britain

It's been that way since the early 80s, as I understand it. Before then, the ITV stations - or, for that matter, the BBC - didn't broadcast at all in the mornings.

The GMTV ownership is split equally between Carlton, Granada, SMG, and Disney, although I think 5% of Disney's stake is in trust for foreign ownership reasons.