The People's Channel

He was the man who introduced TVS' 1987 identity too. Nice to see James Gatward give his thoughts on it all too.

Yes indeed a good show tonight. I learned a lot of things I wasn't aware of before, good classic clips from the likes of TV-AM as well. and also yes Carlton didn't come out of it lightly did they!

I also wasn't aware that it was practically a rule that only 'the big 5' were expected to make programmes, I just thought the others wern't putting a lot of effort in.

Don't think he mentioned the loss of TVAM though

Well it's taken two Granada arse liking episodes to get to what I can only describe as a fantastic programme this evening.

Two things, fair play to ITV1 for putting forward the point that yes some or indeed most of us think ITV has declined since the good old days of regional TV.

Secondly, I am in firm agreement with Greg Dyke's views regarding the state of the current ITV set up (profit rather then programmes) and let's hope he does succeed in taking over ITVplc some time soon.

I really enjoyed this progarmme tonight. Plenty of interesting points including Brian Tesler's take on using James Gatward as the start to all the franchise bidding.

Although ultimately Carlton does deserve a kicking. Technically Carlton was a different beast to Thames as it was set up as a programme buyer rather than a programme maker. Whilst they didn't have many programmes over it's 10 years (up until the end of 2002) neither did new starters, Meridian (although enjoyed success in first two years with some notable network commissions) and Westcountry.

I actually warmed towards Carlton (in the Central region) before Granada stuck their oar in. Their presentation was very warmly compared to the generic Granada stuff that came in with the Heart business of 1998/99

I think ultimately tonight's show had something for everyone for us tv pres buffs. Although I have "seen" most of this in media books. It's nice to see it being told on TV. Shall we ignore the past two programmes!

Tonight's programme was a joke. I don't care what percantage or how much Charles Allen is putting back into programmes - the channel is a hot bed of **** with very little going for it.

I found the commentaries of Greg Dyke and Michael Grade to be very self congratulating. They seemed to too often forget the mistakes that ITV have made. They overplayed their innocence over Maggie's reformation of the whole franchise thing too. Intelligent commentary coming from Dyke when he said Thames should never have lost.

But seemed like ITV were blaming bad fortunes on those franchise rounds. Bollocks - they were the master of their own destiny.

Agreed with all the stuff about the unions though.

I've already forgotten them Russ!

The whole series is a joke, it seems that Mr. Bragg couldn't decide if this was a programme aimed at general viewers or the management so we end up with a sloppy self-congratulatory set of programmes, which is not always accurate and as Russ says alot of it has more or less been taken from certain media books.

If anyone wants to read a real account of ITV over the last 50 then you should read any of the six volumes of Independent Television in Britain. Vol 1/2 written by Bernard Sendall, Vols 3/4 by Jeremy Potter and Vols 5/6 by Paul Bonner and Lesley Aston. Although extremely expensive (about £50 per volume) and the majority out of print so you might have problems tracking them down. They all give accounts of how ITV really was including the franchise rounds of each of the periods.

Yes they did but it was a totally local service with no network stuff, including extended regional news and French news.

if channel tv (part of itv) did not shut down during the strike, then the "whole of itv" did not shut down.

crap series - i gave up after the first 2 eppisodes.

Exactly. They obviously didn't mention it because of the fact that the region is at the moment independent from ITV PLC. The same resaon why UTV wasn't mentioned either.