Nobody's perfect... but

I think that Lord Thompson meant that an ITV franchise was a licence to print money,not just STV. He was certainly right about the 5 core companies, plus STV. Some of the regionals struggled a bit, but then the good old ITA was on hand to ensure fair play between the network and regional contractors.

This is a very interesting thread! I personally would say that Granada were once the perfect ITV company. Fantastic networked programmes of high quality and intergrity: World in Action, Cracker, Prime Suspect and of course Corrie. Their regional output was also of a terrific standard and they also produced a large amount of ITV Schools material as well as certain programmes for the BBC and other broadcasters.

I admired TVS for their loyalty to the southern region though I agree that in their regional programmes they may have been to focussed on the coastal areas.

TSW were admirably regional but almost to the point of fanaticism - it annoyed many living in the region that they routinely dumped popular networked programmes in favour of worthy but ultimately unpopular regional offerings.

ATV were terrific, but IMO their shortcoming was that the believed they should have been a London frachisee and not the Midlands franchisee. (And before anyone else points it out, i know they were originally a London franchise holder...) The problem with ATV Midlands was that they weren't Midlandsy enough...

So for me, Central was the perfect ITV Franchise Holder. Fantastic stuff for the Network, high quality studio productions at Lenton Lane, wonderful OBs like New Faces ("And now from the Birmingham Hippodrome ...!") and their fare share of gritty drama, current affairs and regional output. All this, plus one of the finest brand identities ever to grace the TV screen.

Granada was an interesting one. They did indeed produce some remarkably good programming but it could be said that they abused their powerful position to put out some awful rubbish in the 1970s which, although completely regional in nature (Grumbleweeds, Wheeltappers springs to mind) and more and more baffling the further you lived from Manchester, were forced on the other regions as networked programmes. If someone like Tyne Tees had produced programmes like that (and they had their equivalents as I recall) they'd have been laughed out of town if they'd presented them for networking.

I have to say that as a child, if the Granada logo came up before a programme, I lost interest.

aw come on, Tickle on the Tum was an epic Granada show....