OLD ITV muilt regional...

I have Enquire: back in the day when there truly was 14 independent TV station

how did individual station deal with muilt regional programmes:

the reason I ask out side NON-Networked times there could show what ever there wanted, but some time there showed the same programmes
one being Tiswas and Saturday banana ( to name a EG )

did the other Station sign a control to broadcast it on there regional area or was it a much less formal agreement!

You are obsessed by ITV!

a reasonable question, though.

I'm pretty sure I read an old manifesto of a regional company (I believe it was HTV West) which said something along the lines of that the company's operations were funded by advertising and the sale of its programmes to other members of the ITV Network.

In response to the original question, in short, the answer is yes.

Before 1993, the ITV networking arrangements were incredibly complex - the joke was that nobody in ITV even understood the system properly.

But, very basically, there were three kinds of programmes.

*Those which were available across the whole network. The big five companies bought and sold programmes amongst each other with the "large regional" companies like STV, HTV, Anglia and TVS getting some opportunities to make network output. The smaller companies had deals to ensure access to the network output at an affordable cost. In effect, the Big Five subsidised the network schedule and the smaller stations didn't pay their full whack.

* Quasi networking amongst regional companies. Basically, this was where regional companies "sold" programmes directly to each other. For instance, Tyne Tees used to "sell" Farming Outlook to the Scottish and northern regions while STV and Grampian took a lot of each other's output.

*Programmes made for transmission within an individual region which were never seen anywhere else.

It was all very complex. The kind of thing which could only happen in a monopoly.

After 1993 the network centre took care of national programmes and each region took care of its own output - simple as that. But there were still examples of deals between the regional companies for individual programmes. For instance UTV and Grampian (when it was still independently owned) both bought High Road from STV.

Interesting info, always wondered how it worked before 1993

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as an aside did the accountants responsible for these arrangements move on to generate the Rail Settlement Plan .

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One question aberdeenboy:

This is something that I could never quite work out with the old arrangement: was Tyne Tees considered a "large regional" or not? They did seem to get a fair amount of networked programming out there, but in other ways did seem to come under the category of a "small regional" and indeed there was some evidence to suggest that it was considered the boss of the small regional companies (arrangements with Highway, Get Fresh/Ghost Train etc). In terms of population the region is comparable to say Anglia, but because of its less well-off nature the turnover was always closer to Westward/TSW than any other.

As far as I know, Tyne Tees wasn't considered a large regional. Children's and schools programmes, incidentally, were covered by yet another arrangement!

The big five, of course, were Thames, LWT, Yorkshire, ATV/Central and Granada, The "large regionals" were Southern/TVS, Anglia, STV and HTV. This was as much to do with their ambitions to make network programming as their financial strength or the size of the region.

In the 80s, LWT and TVS tried to work together to turn TVS into a "sixth major" at the weekend. It's all very complex. Thank goodness these arrangements have gone!!!

So who played out networked programmes back then? Was there a nominated station or did the local station play all its own-made shows to network?

The programme company that made the show played out the programme. So for example Yorkshire would play out Emmerdale to the network, Granada played Corrie etc etc.

Also Tyne Tees was considered one of the larger of the non big 5 companies. Because of its population it was often used to test out products by advertisers.

Well that's what always made me think. TTTV was always both much larger, and more ambitious than any other small regional (plenty of network drama series produced over the years, and in the eighties they built up a sizeable niche in music programming and gameshows as well as the kid's stuff). They always came across to me as either a small regional with ambitions to be a large one, or on the borderline between the two.

Border also had ideas way above their station (pun unintended), but on a smaller scale of course. Always seemed to get far more onto the network than some considerably larger companies -- indeed it often seemed in some seasons that they were more successful in this regard than the like of HTV.



Yes I remember TVS's ambitions -- such a pity it all had to end in tears the way it did. Southern, despite their size, never seemed to be bothered -- they seemed to be closer to a small regional in terms of ambition.

Speaking of which, the other thing that always amazed me was that none of the three South West franchises ever seemed to be too bothered about network programming. Possibly Westward were the most prolific in this regard, but the South West was a relatively large region in relation to the four other small-small regionals, and wealthy in general, and Westward/TSW had a decent studio complex, so it always seemed strange that they weren't interested.