At the end of 'The trouble of Mr Bean' there was a Central endcap right before my eyes. However it was a endcap from the 'gils sans' era so wasn't that spectacular. EDIT: I know it's not that exciting but just thought you's like to know being that when it was on at christmas, you were dissapointed that they never had a endcap.
It's fabulous that Mr. Bean is back on ITV. It's been many years since I last watched it, and it's just as funny as I remember. Thank God there's a bit of comedy coming back rather than constant reality TV!
I hope ITV get round to showing more episodes, they've showed 4 episodes in the last 3 months, 2 of them have been shown twice on Sunday teatimes. Ratings must be okay if ITV have shown some episodes twice, come on ITV, surely they don't cost that much to show!
(Plus I went to get them all on DVD and No I don't have an R1 player, I only have a DVD Recorder and have got 7 episodes on DVD)
I believe Carlton for a short amount of time, owned the production arm of Thames and it's back catalogue.
Of course "Carlton" was never a big name in production, whereas Central was - producing many shows for the network (how things have changed...) so they used the Central brand.
Certainly there was a period in about 1998 when Thames programmes (with Thames production lines) were followed by "CENTRAL Production" production caps after them. The Bill was a fine example of this.
I believe Carlton for a short amount of time, owned the production arm of Thames and it's back catalogue.
No, they have never owned any part of Thames TVs programming.
After it went off air it reverted to being just a production company (albeit with stakes in Astra and UK Gold/Living) then it got bought by Pearson who built their TV arm around it - including companies such as Grundy, and Alomo. Then Pearson sold out it's TV arm to the RTL group, and Thames became the UK arm of its production company; Freemantlemedia. Recently theyu've reduced the number of brands associated with it and merged to become Talkback Thames
All along the rights to its programming have been with the company and its owners (Pearson and now Freemantlemedia)
Quote:
Certainly there was a period in about 1998 when Thames programmes (with Thames production lines) were followed by "CENTRAL Production" production caps after them. The Bill was a fine example of this.
That was because at the time only the ITV companies could provide programmes to the ITV network, So Thames' programmes had to be commissioned by one of the ITV companies (IIRC both Yorkshire and Central did this). Just in the same way that before 1993 Mr Bean was made by Tiger Aspect Productions but was commisioned and broadcast on ITV by Thames .
These days production companies can have their programmes commisioned directly by the Network Centre hence Talkback Thames (as they are now known) programmes don't have an ITV company attached to them
All post-1993 episodes of Mr Bean were all credited towards Central for their Presentation, hence they were all 'A Central Presentation/Production for ITV', though they were all available from Thames Video well after 1993, as late as 1998/9.
Though IIRC weren't ITV using the International copies? I think Tiger Aspect owns the whole rights to the show now, as they are the ones who've released it on DVD, not FremantleMedia (Thames)
All post-1993 episodes of Mr Bean were all credited towards Central for their Presentation, hence they were all 'A Central Presentation/Production for ITV', though they were all available from Thames Video well after 1993, as late as 1998/9.
Though IIRC weren't ITV using the International copies? I think Tiger Aspect owns the whole rights to the show now, as they are the ones who've released it on DVD, not FremantleMedia (Thames)
Sounds about right, presumably Thames/Pearson/Freemantle programme sales departments distributed it, but now don't. This would explain why its recently started appearing on TV again
