[Stuart]

If anyone is interested it seem one twitter/ youtube account is uploading every junction of Thames last day today.
www.youtube.com 

I do like videos like this  


[*]Nostalgic Commercials
[*]Sometimes amazingly cheesy
[*]Remarkably unrepresentative promo of what GMTV was going to be like at the start


Lovely find, thanks!

[John]

“1993 was indeed a bad year for ITV. Carlton, whose PR was a man who went by the name David Cameron, had a terrible reputation”
And Carlton rejected the 1998 English & Pockett idents.

[Roger Darthwell]

Here are the final editions of TSW Today, TVS Coast to Coast and Thames News respectively:
www.youtube.com 

This video can only be viewed on YouTube.

www.youtube.com 

www.youtube.com 

[James2001]

[*]Remarkably unrepresentative promo of what GMTV was going to be like at the start

Though GMTV wasn't like it was at the start by a few months into 1993 either

[Neil Jones]

[*]Remarkably unrepresentative promo of what GMTV was going to be like at the start

Though GMTV wasn't like it was at the start by a few months into 1993 either

Bruce Gyngell said that he predicted the new company would be bankrupt by 1994:
youtu.be  (from 6:20)

But ultimately it didn't make a profit until 1995 - a pre-tax profit of only £1m.
www.marketingweek.com 

GMTV builds on shaky ground
It may not be much, but GMTV has made a profit three years into its franchise. I…
  Source: www.marketingweek.com

but there's an interesting quote in the above article that I don't think I've heard about before - "If we [GMTV] lose the 4m that Channel 4 gives us every year we’re in schtuck. We bid for the franchise based on getting the Channel 4 rebate." - so things could have been far worse and Gyngell's prediction could have rung true.

[James2001]

And didn't they only make a profit because the ITC cut their franchise payments to less than TV-am bid? Says in that article they paid £12 million to the exchequer the previous year, when they originally bid 34.6 million (and TV-am bid 14.1 million). Which made a mockery of the whole franchise auction. They probably would have gone bankrupt like Gyngell said if they had to keep paying the 34 million every year.

And that's despite the fact they had less costs than TV-am to begin with thanks to renting facilities from LWT rather than having their own.

I imagine if any company had failed on account of not being able to pay the fees they'd bid, it would have really made the ITC and the franchise system look even more farcical than it already did (especially after TVS and TSW were rejected for "bidding too much"), so no wonder they cut loads of companies payments a couple of years in. Not that it's stopped equally farcical franchising systems being introduced since- especially for rail (as someone who frequently travels on the ECML I can especially attest with three failed franchisees in less than a decade!)!

[Stooky Bill]

He's posted these videos a few times before but they're still a fascinating piece of TV history as ever (although the video quality is a lot worse this time round), here's announcer Mark Lipscomb's video of the transition from Thames to Carlton from inside the Thames TX suite.
twitter.com 

Great he had the foresight to film it. If it happened today everyone would probably have been doing the same.

[James2001]

Looks like he just did a screen capture while watching a previous upload of the video (you can even see the scroll bar at the bottom!) rather than uploading the original file.

Are there any recordings of the ITN bulletin as it went out on other regions? I've only ever seen the Thames and TSW versions where Carlton and Westcountry cut away to their introductory programes at midnight (whereas TVS didn't show it at all, just a shot of Big Ben), presumably they cut back to Dermot in the studio after midnight on the other regions.

[JMT1985]

Looks like he just did a screen capture while watching a previous upload of the video (you can even see the scroll bar at the bottom!) rather than uploading the original file.

Are there any recordings of the ITN bulletin as it went out on other regions? I've only ever seen the Thames and TSW versions where Carlton and Westcountry cut away to their introductory programes at midnight (whereas TVS didn't show it at all, just a shot of Big Ben), presumably they cut back to Dermot in the studio after midnight on the other regions.

I have been told that my family back in Northern Ireland said they never saw the ITN News, instead UTV aired a live New Year's Eve show hosted by UTV talk show host Gerry Kelly, and they never bothered to air the bulletin, as it would disturb their show.

[Neil Jones]

Here's an interesting and related video, since it's 30 years since Oracle bowed out:

"In this edition we watch ORACLE being switched off to make way for Teletext Ltd., who won the auction to provide teletext services on ITV and CH4. We join ORACLE at 2330 on New Year's Eve 1992 and watch all the way through to 0010, after Teletext Ltd. starting broadcasting."
www.youtube.com 

(sourced from a SVHS tape sourced from Kaleidoscope - it says here)