ITV in '93: 30 Years since the last Franchise Shakeup
#1

As of 2023, it will be 30 years since the last ITV franchise changeover occurred, and the 1990 Broadcasting Act began to take effect, turning ITV into the single company we all know and love. The general consensus of people online, when they discuss these changes, are negative. They are focused on the loss of franchises, and the eventual loss of regional independence as the companies bought each other out. With this anniversary, I want to consider whether these changes were good for ITV in the long term. 

As of 2022/23, ITV is still a British, self owned media company. It continues to produce popular drama and entertainment programming, as well as great documentaries. And with ITVX, the company is looking toward the future away from linear television. Would this have necessarily been possible with the companies all being independent with their own self interests? I don't think so. 

I also don't think ITV has really gone downhill quality wise, I just think that with the programmes being made by the same studio, its easier to point out the bad programming. Your Yorkshire Televisions, or your Granada's may have made dud programming in their time, but you could say 'That was a bad programme by this company'. Nowadays, you associate the bad with one company. And as one company, you can afford to make stuff of higher quality, while also making shows that are guaranteed to get a good viewer share. 

In short, I think the negativity of the changes to ITV in 1993 are overplayed, and that there were a lot of good things that would come out of it. Look at LWT and Carlton starting LNN, which it never would have done with Thames. Scottish Television gaining more of a foothold in the network from recomissioning former TVS shows. It wasn't all bad!

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#2

(20-12-2022, 07:36 PM)Blubatt Wrote:  As of 2023, it will be 30 years since the last ITV franchise changeover occurred, and the 1990 Broadcasting Act began to take effect, turning ITV into the single company we all know and love. The general consensus of people online, when they discuss these changes, are negative. They are focused on the loss of franchises, and the eventual loss of regional independence as the companies bought each other out. With this anniversary, I want to consider whether these changes were good for ITV in the long term. 

As of 2022/23, ITV is still a British, self owned media company. It continues to produce popular drama and entertainment programming, as well as great documentaries. And with ITVX, the company is looking toward the future away from linear television. Would this have necessarily been possible with the companies all being independent with their own self interests? I don't think so. 

I also don't think ITV has really gone downhill quality wise, I just think that with the programmes being made by the same studio, its easier to point out the bad programming. Your Yorkshire Televisions, or your Granada's may have made dud programming in their time, but you could say 'That was a bad programme by this company'. Nowadays, you associate the bad with one company. And as one company, you can afford to make stuff of higher quality, while also making shows that are guaranteed to get a good viewer share. 

In short, I think the negativity of the changes to ITV in 1993 are overplayed, and that there were a lot of good things that would come out of it. Look at LWT and Carlton starting LNN, which it never would have done with Thames. Scottish Television gaining more of a foothold in the network from recomissioning former TVS shows. It wasn't all bad!
I think you meant to post this in your blog?
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#3

No, I want to have the discussion: Were the 1993 franchise changes all bad?

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#4

(20-12-2022, 07:36 PM)Blubatt Wrote:  In short, I think the negativity of the changes to ITV in 1993 are overplayed, and that there were a lot of good things that would come out of it. Look at LWT and Carlton starting LNN, which it never would have done with Thames. Scottish Television gaining more of a foothold in the network from recomissioning former TVS shows. It wasn't all bad!


You don't know whether LNN (or some other take on LNN in an alternative reality) would have happened with Thames had they kept the franchise. Also if TVS had kept its licence it probably wouldn't have seen Nigel Pickard up sticks and take various formats with him to STV.

Neil Buchanan bought Art Attack from TVS and ultimately made it through his own company for the next 15 years or so, it ultimately lasting longer than TVS itself did by some considerable margin. Some other TVS shows survived as well.

One thing we can all agree on though - a single ITV was always going to happen, even if it would have happened via another avenue compared to what actually happened.
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#5

(20-12-2022, 08:34 PM)Neil Jones Wrote:  You don't know whether LNN (or some other take on LNN in an alternative reality) would have happened with Thames had they kept the franchise.

Indeed. I'm sure LWT even mentioned plans for a joint 7-day London news in their franchise submission in '91, so it had clearly been thought of for a while. I think even if Thames had won the franchise, they and LWT would have still eventually joined forces for at least the news.

(As an aside, am I right in thinking Frank Bough was initially considered to host London Tonight? ISTR he was and then he was hit by some scandal or other. I could just be imagining this, of course!)

Quote:Neil Buchanan bought Art Attack from TVS and ultimately made it through his own company for the next 15 years or so, it ultimately lasting longer than TVS itself did by some considerable margin. Some other TVS shows survived as well.

He did, and there ended up being multiple foreign-language adaptations of Art Attack (all filmed at Maidstone!) before he ultimately went and sold the whole format to Disney. Can't imagine that having happened if TVS had kept their franchise.
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#6

The biggest gripe most people had with the franchise change was that Carlton never lived up as a replacement to Thames, and it is something I agree with. However, I think one of the biggest reasons for that was due to a change in how ITV commissioned programmes.

You had the Big 5 who determined and carved up the schedule, which was rightly deemed as unfair and uncompetitive, and in its place you had the Network Centre, which not only allowed other ITV companies a fair shout at offering programmes, but you also had to work with independent producers after 1993.

I guess for a newcomer like Carlton this was a double edged sword. You could still pay for Thames’s most popular programmes and enjoy the success that came with them, but on the other hand it’s harder to get your own new shows dominating prime time like your predecessor. An ever changing commercial environment also meant that it was harder to take risks, and a lot of Carlton’s original commissions from 1993 didn’t really do well.

As said, LNN would have happened in some capacity. I guess what it did do as well putting London ITV News into one place, it simplified network transmission in one fell swoop. Getting GMTV, Carlton and LWT to share the same facilities was a good idea. Had both TV-am and Thames retained their licences, I’m sure this would have happened but not instantly.

The process of awarding the licenses was controversial, but in hindsight, TVS losing their licence was probably for the best. If they were going to pay £60,000,000 to the treasury per year before a single programme was made, then their output really would have suffered. From what I’ve seen online over the years, it seemed that Meridian simply picked up where TVS left.

I’d have been intrigued to see how TV-am would have been like after 1993, but again after a few blips GMTV simply became TV-am v2.0.

The system was controversial from the outset. Yes, there were changes, but did too much change? I don’t believe so. The most popular programmes continued. All of the companies survived the change. The Treasury did get more money, but nowhere near as estimated, and in some cases the value of the contracts reduced anyway. ITV would have ended up similar to what we have today anyway. You’d have probably ended up with a Granada-Thames merger had the franchises not changed, rather than a Granada-Carlton one.
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#7

TVS bid based on their projections for the ad revenue. As it turned out (it is said) the predictions were near enough correct. Although it become moot anyway because pretty much everybody bar Central and STV (who were both paying next to sod all as it was) went to the ITC cap in hand and had those payments reduced, in some cases by more than half. Indeed GMTV bid something like £35m (TV-am went for something like £16m) and GMTV ended up paying less than TV-am had bid in the first place. Which made a mockery of the whole system in the first place.

GMTV of course ended up copying TV-am in all but name. By I think it was 1994 it was virtually identical to TV-am. If TV-am had survived into 1993 it would have looked exactly as it did before, with dated titles, graphics, clock and whatever else, because they were spending sod all in 1990 before the new bids, so I suspect it would have stayed like it did looking like a time capsule, for a while at least.

Of course its open to interpretation whether TVS leaving ITV was for the best; we'd probably have a lot more material on the likes of Challenge and ITV3 more of its archive would be out on DVD as well (though as we've seen before the issue with the archive in this reality isn't entirely unsurmountable), though whether that's a better outcome is up for debate.
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#8

Frank Bough presented 6 o Clock Live on LWT until summer 1992, that was before the first tabloid revelations, but more came out that August. I hadn't heard he was up for the London Tonight gig, I'd have thought he wasn't as serious and credible a presenter as they were after anyway.


Yes LWT did suggest combining things like news and playout. Thames might well have gone along with it too as they'd have had to save money. The other factor is their HQ in the Euston Road. They stayed there for a while as they wound down the company and UK Gold continued to be transmitted from there. However they were going to sell the lease to either Associated Newspapers or the BBC in 1994 but the owners took it back for redevelopment. So they'd have been looking for a new home after a couple of years of the license anyway. Shacking up with LWT would have been an attractive option
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#9

(20-12-2022, 09:27 PM)Kojak Wrote:  
(20-12-2022, 08:34 PM)Neil Jones Wrote:  You don't know whether LNN (or some other take on LNN in an alternative reality) would have happened with Thames had they kept the franchise.

Indeed. I'm sure LWT even mentioned plans for a joint 7-day London news in their franchise submission in '91, so it had clearly been thought of for a while. I think even if Thames had won the franchise, they and LWT would have still eventually joined forces for at least the news.

(As an aside, am I right in thinking Frank Bough was initially considered to host London Tonight? ISTR he was and then he was hit by some scandal or other. I could just be imagining this, of course!)

Quote:Neil Buchanan bought Art Attack from TVS and ultimately made it through his own company for the next 15 years or so, it ultimately lasting longer than TVS itself did by some considerable margin. Some other TVS shows survived as well.

He did, and there ended up being multiple foreign-language adaptations of Art Attack (all filmed at Maidstone!) before he ultimately went and sold the whole format to Disney. Can't imagine that having happened if TVS had kept their franchise.
Disney would've acquired Art Attack anyway. In 1993, TVS was sold to International Family Entertainment. In 1997, IFE was sold to Fox Kids Worldwide (a joint venture of Fox and Saban). In 2001, Disney took over Fox Kids, and as such, now own the TVS archive.
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#10

Franchise issue aside seeing that ITV logo alongside the ITVX logo on the homepage and it really does still stand up IMO 30 odd years on.
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