[W. Knight]

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.

Not too sure if that'll be Disney or Warner though, if TVS did keep their license:
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One thing that's overlooked in the discussions, IMO, is the emphasis of outside media juggernauts buying the entire network, according to the news at the time. Mediaset wanted to have a slice, RTL was eyeing up for it... Like this BBC2 report:
youtu.be 

Although it did later happen (to the now-indie Thames and later C5 anyway), but the main network wasn't as 'up for grabs' as the press might have thought. The mergers between regions in mid-90s might have helped preventing that.

[James2001]

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!)


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.

Only you have to take on board the fact that IFE probably wouldn't have acquired TVS had they kept their franchise.

[Stooky Bill]

Only you have to take on board the fact that IFE probably wouldn't have acquired TVS had they kept their franchise.

I don't think they'd have been allowed to, there were rules limiting foreign ownership of terrestrial broadcasters.


All the 'what ifs' etc aside, its odd to think that it's been 30 years since the big changes..... and that's about 6 1/2 years longer than Thames existed

[Neil Jones]

Only you have to take on board the fact that IFE probably wouldn't have acquired TVS had they kept their franchise.

I don't think they'd have been allowed to, there were rules limiting foreign ownership of terrestrial broadcasters.


All the 'what ifs' etc aside, its odd to think that it's been 30 years since the big changes..... and that's about 6 1/2 years longer than Thames existed

Well don't forget next month its 40 years of breakfast TV - Jan 17 for the first broadcast of Breakfast Time and Feb 1 for the first broadcast of TV-am. Neither of which are still going but their influence is still present today.

And of course September 2025 will be 70 years of ITV (in London anyway), and Thames was born out of the new company formed between ABC and Associated-Rediffusion, both companies that had started in London in 1955.

[JMT1985]

The 1993 changes saw a big change as to how programmes were networked on ITV - up until 1993, Thames Television and London Weekend Television since 1968 were in charge of operating the networking of shows on ITV, that all changed with the new network control in 1993.

This led to a truly awful Christmas schedule on ITV, nicknamed the Christmas that ITV forgot. ITV saved all their big shows for the autumn schedule, leaving nothing to air during the festive season, with Christmas night having three back to back movies.

That action got a slap from the ITC and a "must try harder next year" warning.

[Humphrey Hacker]

A unified ITV was on the cards from the mid 1980's in my opinion. The Peacock Report opened the door for satellite and cable stations to make their mark on British television. Sky in particular proved that there was room for a pan-national genre based network:

www.youtube.com 

[Neil Jones]

Well the Peacock Report was expected to recommend the scrapping of the licence fee, which was the whole point of Thatcher's government commissioning it in the first place. However it went the other way and suggested that keeping it was the "least worst" option.

However some of the other recommendations it made eventually found their way into the 1990 Broadcasting Act, the two keys ones being ITV franchises should be put out to competitive tender (which they were), Channel 4 should be able to sell its own advertising (which it ultimately did) and Not less than 40% of the BBC's and ITV’s output should be sourced from independent producers (this was revised IIRC to 25%).

[Stuart]

I think the most surprising thing about that Newsnight report was the view of the advertising executive who couldn't get his head around how to charge for a subscription model which could also work in addition to advertising.

As with the reporter, he was stuck on the idea that it would be PPV for each programme (which certainly exists now for certain events), but didn't envision a more basic 'subscription per service' along the lines of Sky, BSB or ONdigital. They worked together with advertising, not seperate.

Clearly things have moved on in the last 37 years, and you wouldn't have expected any of them (or us) to think of the way we now stream much of our content, or even that it would be HD/4K.

Nobody can say what it will be like in another 37 years, but someone in 2060 will smile at our limited vision today.

[robertclark125]

It's easy to forget that Oracle ended on ITV and C4, with Teletext UK, backed by Associated Newspapers, being the new franchisee. Back then, could we have envisaged that teletext would be taken over by news websites?

[Blubatt]

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.

Not too sure if that'll be Disney or Warner though, if TVS did keep their license:
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Now wouldn't that be a big what if. I never knew Time Warner were going to takeover TVS. If it had happened, that might have led to a very different ITV today. As it goes, any speculation on 'what ifs' is moot at this point. I also based my initialy opinion on Thames not doing 7 day a week news on the the companies not really working together prior, rather than based on LWT's franchise plans.

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Well the Peacock Report was expected to recommend the scrapping of the licence fee, which was the whole point of Thatcher's government commissioning it in the first place.  However it went the other way and suggested that keeping it was the "least worst" option.

However some of the other recommendations it made eventually found their way into the 1990 Broadcasting Act, the two keys ones being ITV franchises should be put out to competitive tender (which they were), Channel 4 should be able to sell its own advertising (which it ultimately did) and Not less than 40% of the BBC's and ITV’s output should be sourced from independent producers (this was revised IIRC to 25%).

If I read correctly in the past, the only recommendation it made regarding the BBC was that it privatised Radio 1 and Radio 2, and made the BBC comission more outside production companies