Has the "Multichannel Era" killed off quality Television?

That's a rather romantic way of looking at it.

Thames' owners treated it as a cash cow, and they spent most of the 80s trying to get the best price for it. When they lost the franchise they threw no end of tantrums trying to scrape back programming rights which they had previously signed away to the network.

LWT was driven by cutting programming for religion, the arts and current affairs to spend more money on its shiny floor shows. Towards the end of the 80s they were planning on becoming a publisher broadcaster (similar to what Carlton became) by selling off LWT Productions. With the new franchise looming, they decided against that and instead they made 700 people redundant and streamlined the entire organisation to the bone.

Once LWT won its franchise, there was a very ugly spat with Granada over the hostile takeover bid. LWT didn't want this, but this wasn't because they were afraid Granada would lower programming standards, it was because LWT wanted to be the big ITV company. It frantically tried to take over Yorkshire, Anglia and Scottish TV rather than be swallowed up by Granada.

As I said before, it is foolish not to see the greedy businessmen behind the pretty ident.

Also as well, I don't know why LWT or Thames would be considered any better than Granada. Certainly in the early nineties Granada were a hugely respected company, and had produced many of ITV's most acclaimed programmes. If you were going to pick anyone to run ITV, most people would have considered Granada the best bet.

If that was the case then, there should have sold out to Carlton in the first place. Worse still when it was floated on the stock market no one wanted the shares, not even Carlton, thus the manangement ended up buying share. I wonder why there wanted the rights back?



That wasn't ALL of LWT, that all down to John Birt you know the guy that got of if Stanley Baxter at LWT and the BBC. There were also some real spat about he was doing even with the other ITV companies.

Everyone HAD to slim down, not just LWT, that was the way the industry was going, Central and even Scottish did big time and there own there franchise for a song. That 25% of non ITV produce programmes made that very clear.



One has to wonder why there never went for MERIDIAN.

John Birt had nothing to do with Stanley Baxter being dropped by the BBC. His last programme for the BBC was in 1986, when Birt was still at LWT, and when he arrived at the BBC he was Deputy Director General, concentrating entirely on news and current affairs. He would have had nothing to do with what they did or didn't do with Stanley Baxter.

And John Birt left LWT years before the franchise renewal. Plenty of time to change direction.

John Birt appeared in 1987 and started his cost cutting process that year, etc.

In 1987 there was suppose to be a franchise renewal for the new 1989 one but that was dropped when peacock commission suggested an open auction for ITV. What do you do if your were LWT. start spending more money on something your not even sure what going to happen or wait and see?

I don't know where you've got that from, on the first morning of TVam Angela Rippon says they were going to be there for "at least the next eight years", so clearly by that point it was known there wouldn't be a franchise round until the nineties. Doing one in 1987 would have been higly unlikely, in the history of ITV there had never been a franchise round that soon after the previous one, the newer companies would barely have had time to get on an even footing.

And John Birt arrived at the BBC with a specific job description to work in news and current affairs, and it was written extensively at the time that he found it a very big job that consumed all his time. He had no time or inclination to start discussing how the light entertainment department spent their budget.

Unless the next process was suppose to have stared in 1989, with the next period from 1991? Actually there has been a franchise round that quick, 1964 and then again 1968.

The only real winners were those who sold up when the ITV franchises were worth millions. Central in particular, who were paying a four figure 'fee' for access to (one of) the largest franchise(s).


If Granada had sold the North West franchise, retained their productions and all their other businesses I think they'd be a stronger business than ITV plc is today.

What the Peacock Commission actually suggested (which the Thatcher government ultimately ignored because it didn't generate the outcome/suggestion they wanted even though they commissioned the commission - they wanted the suggestion to scrap the licence fee) but the key suggestions were basically to do all of the following ASAP:

Privatise Radio 1 and 2, introduce indie quotas (40% initially) for the BBC and ITV, franchise-out the overnight service in a similar fashion to the ITV Breakfast TV-AM system, Channel 4 to sell its own advertising and do the competitive tender thing for ITV franchises plus some other stuff.

Some of the principles were later introduced in the 1990 Broadcasting Act.

I can't find a free source for the full text of the Peacock Commission but there's five pages of a report of some kind on it here:
http://www.media-ucn.co.uk/Seminar%20Readings/Soc%202004/Term%202%20readings/Sem%2010%20Pub%20sph,%20peacock,%201990%20act/Goodwin%20on%20Govt%20reaction%20to%20Peacock.pdf

In the early years they were more 'reviews' of licenses rather than explicit franchise rounds. There was a review in 1964 in response to a report which heavily criticised ITV, and the franchises were simply advised on how to improve. The review in 1968 had more impact as there were huge changes to the network. A further review in 1974 took place but all stations were waved through on account of the cost of colour television, which they were all heavily investing in.

The re-alloaction of the Belmont transmitter from Anglia to YTV was as a result of the 1974 review I think ?

And by 1981, IBA had to install a number of small power transmitter around the North Norfolk Coast to keep viewer happy. Ie there wanted Anglia back and there dam well got it!