Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I've seen this referred to as a casualty of the Broadcasting Act. Can anybody explain how this could possibly be so given that Central were one of the few franchises to not only survive but actually survive in a far better financial position?

I don't know what you actually mean?

How did Central end up financially better off after the franchise round?

(I think that was what you said, many apologies if I'm wrong....)

Didn't they make a really cheap bid?

At First I thought WillPS was on about blockbusters, why there stopped making it,

Yes as said Central made ( not a cheap bid) Ridiculous bid of £2000 a year, I thikn there only paid the Treasure about £10'000 before the system was scarped. The only other company that did this was Scottish television. both found out before hand no one was bidding against them.

Then Carlton brought them over in 1994, ( which did lead to re-untied of ATV and Central back into a single ownership.

Not true. Border also got away with a nominal bid, with no competition. Of course they were a very small company and there wasn't a huge amount of money to be made there in any case.

Of course, most of the North of England would have ended up going the same way as Central and Scottish if Granada hadn't made the frankly stupid attempt at a land-grab, firstly going for Anglia then finally for TTTV. If they hadn't done that, Mersey TV's bid would never have got the financial backing from TTTV and YTV and Granada and Tyne Tees would probably have got away with a £1000 bid as well.

£24 million pounds per year's worth of programme-making in the North burned because of Granada's expansionist adventure -- something completely unnecessary as it would have been so much cheaper to have simply bought Tyne Tees in 1993 if that's what they had wanted to do.

Oh yes, There paid £52'000 per yes. More details are here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ITV

I wonder why those station never got any proper rival bids? yet place such as Wales, Top of Scotland and south west ( some of the smallest station had a real fright)

I would guess for Central although profitable and big area it is, it at the time was rather high mateinance with 3 sub-regional news areas to look after for, with 2 of them being Network production centres. You could say the same for TVS, difference here being that Central were a damn sight financially stronger. Border's reason probably being the opposite in that it's the smallest ITV station on the mainland and isn't as profitable as others, with little or no network output. Although I must admit I'm quite bemused as to why no-one went for STV either, but that's all in the past.

You had 2 groups of bidders really, ones like Granada and Carlton who went in bidded in places basically for money, and those like Mersey TV because Phil Redmond was rather dissatisfied as to what Granada were offering.

Not quite, ATV became Central albeit with a different shareholding structure.

What you're thinking of is ATV's video library which was broken up when it became Central but (with a few exceptions) ended up being reunited when Carlton bought out Central

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Thing is though there was nothing to say that any replacement for Central had to keep any of that. There would have been nothing stopping a company from scaling all that stuff back -- as long as the overall bid met the quality threshold that would have been sufficient. Granada's bid for TTTV for example explicitly stated that the studio complex in Newcastle was not going to be retained, and most editorial control was to be moved to Manchester.

Indeed, whoever took over Central would probably have had to buy at least or rent at least part of Central's property portfolio for it to make any sense, and nobody could have possibly got a better deal on Central's studios than Central!

Sorry for the confusion regarding my question. What I meant was, I've seen comments somewhere on the ether that Blockbusters was a victim of the Broadcasting Act, but I can't understand how that could possibly be so given Central were arguably the biggest winner of the system, both surviving and paying almost nothing for the privilege.

Regarding the landgrab which followed the relaxation of takeover rules, I often think about how much Granada would be worth today if they had sold their TV business and concentrated on their other interests rather than selling off all their other interests to fund further ITV buy-outs.

Does anybody know of any interesting non-broadcast related side-interests ITV companies had?

Granada had hotels, motorway service stations and theme parks amongst other things

Border owned a company called "Green Star" who operated rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach

UTV continues to own an Art Collection

TWW - Dolland and Aitchison Opticians, apparently.