[Humphrey Hacker]

That BBC report has always annoyed me. TSW did not lose because it offered "nothing special", that was nonsense - if they had bid nine million, for example, they'd have won, as their programme quality (in common with all the other incumbents) was quite sufficient to meet the requirements.

Not necessarily, it wasn't always the highest bidder that won, though that was the original plan in the first place.  If it had then then things would have been a lot different and we'd see problems down the line.

The obvious example here was CPV-TV, which bid the most for London daytime, but we have since found out that their news provision was going to be provided by TV-am.  But there was no plan for what they'd do instead if TV-am didn't win.  Purely on the case of not having the highest bid, TV-am loses.  So CPV-TV suddenly has no news provider.  This may be easy enough to resolve, but going  to another provider and not the one you said you were going to use doesn't look good (unless of course it's due to  circumstances beyond your control).

TSW I believe was failed because of an unrealistic business plan and they apparently wouldn't be able to afford £16m a year, so Westcountry TV, come on down.  Not that it mattered in the end anyway regarding those payments because they all went cap in hand to the ITC and got them reduced.

Did CPV plan to use Eggcup Towers?

[Milkshake]

Did CPV plan to use Eggcup Towers?

Yes they did, infact most of its operations would have come from there. ITC even went back to CPV-TV and asked for extra/more information... Nothing was forthcoming so CPV was a dead duck from the start.

TSW I believe was failed because of an unrealistic business plan and they apparently wouldn't be able to afford £16m a year, so Westcountry TV, come on down. Not that it mattered in the end anyway regarding those payments because they all went cap in hand to the ITC and got them reduced.

What I never got was Why didn't ITC just let TVS and TSW won but reduce there payments to better level but a higher level than the competition?

[Humphrey Hacker]

Did CPV plan to use Eggcup Towers?

Yes they did, infact most of its operations would have come from there.  ITC even went back to CPV-TV and asked for extra/more information...  Nothing was forthcoming so CPV was a dead duck from the start.

TSW I believe was failed because of an unrealistic business plan and they apparently wouldn't be able to afford £16m a year, so Westcountry TV, come on down.  Not that it mattered in the end anyway regarding those payments because they all went cap in hand to the ITC and got them reduced.

What I never got was Why didn't ITC just let TVS and TSW won but reduce there payments to better level but a higher level than the competition?

@Milkshake. We must be thankful for for small mercies

[Neil Jones]

Yeah but the point is that "failing because they bid too much", wouldn't have applied if they'd bid less. That's not the same as being excluded on the grounds of being of lesser quality to the competitor which was the implication of the BBC's comment, and which belied a misunderstanding of the rules - if a company passed the quality threshold and bid the most then they won. None of the incumbents failed on programme quality - the ones that did fail, did so on business plan, a bad example of which can't be described as offering "nothing special".

What is a "special" business plan anyway? We're going to make ten gazillion pounds an hour? We're going to give all our money to starving kittens?

The whole point of the blind auction was simply to effectively raffle them off for a whole wodge of cash. The previous system where applicants needed to show good programming ideas and fine financial controls went out of the window.

In other words... what you did before (for the incumbent) isn't the only factor. If you say you can cough up £45m a year for the next 10 years you'd better able to and you'd better be able to prove it as well. It was all (primarily) about the money in the first instance (as I say the "quality" was added later), if and if there was a doubt that you couldn't fork out £450m over the life of the deal, then adios.

Its up for debate whether had TSW bidded closer to £10m they'd have won, but at the end of the day you have to make decisions based on you know and believe at the time. If some other information comes to light that it would have been nice to know at the time to influence that decision, that's unfortunate, but sucks to be you. In the event TSW were very bitter about the whole saga and felt very hard done by (and took it to court and the House of Lords), but whether the outcome would have changed is debatable.

As for "special" business plan... well the whole point of any business is to make money. Simple as. Otherwise you don't have a business, you have a charity.

[Stooky Bill]

What I never got was Why didn't ITC just let TVS and TSW won but reduce there payments to better level but a higher level than the competition?

Because that would be unfair to the competition. If they could lower the amount bid by someone who was too high they cold also  increase the payments to a bidder who was too low. 

And that would make the whole competition pointless

[Neil Jones]

I don't disagree with any of this. I was simply making the point that the BBC's comment was a gross misrepresentation of the reason for the rejection of the TSW bid. As you say, they didn't need to do anything "special", they - just like every other bidder - only had to pass the quality threshold and bid the highest. That was the end of it - especially where smaller franchises were concerned, where any idea of "special circumstances" was almost meaningless.

Thats why I never understood Granada's attitude either, bidding low and assuming the competition would be ruled out because Granada - pure arrogance. If NWTV had been half-way decent - bye bye Granada.

Well as I say its pure conjecture as to what would have happened had TSW bid lower, it still doesn't guarantee they'd have won. The language of the BBC would probably have been the same for the losing company regardless of who won that region.

The whole process was flawed from the outset anyway so...

[Humphrey Hacker]

A couple of points:

It struck me then that there wasn't much coverage of Oracle losing its licence. To me Oracle was far better than Teletext.

From what little I know about CPV it seemed that hubris that Frost seemed to generate at LWT and TVAM may have played a role in CPV's failure to win the London Weekday licence. As stated above the lack of a back-up plan from CPV regarding what would have happened if they had won and TV-AM had lost shows that there wasn't much actual planning.

Can I suggest a book called "Under The Hammer" which is a fascinating read about the behind the scenes machinations surrounding the franchise round:

www.amazon.co.uk 

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[Neil Jones]

A couple of points:

It struck me then that there wasn't much coverage of Oracle losing its licence. To me Oracle was far better than Teletext.

From what little I know about CPV it seemed that hubris that Frost seemed to generate at LWT and TVAM may have played a role in CPV's failure to win the London Weekday licence. As stated above the lack of a back-up plan from CPV regarding what would have happened if they had won and TV-AM had lost shows that there wasn't much actual planning.

We've sort of gone off on a tangent here but it must be remembered that originally in the 1990 Broadcasting Act there would be no teletext licence after 1992. It was only after Oracle lobbed for it (they were happy to bid for it) it became a possibility, though the ultimate irony is they lost the licence they were trying to save for themselves

The actual closure of Oracle and handover to Teletext was put on YouTube a couple of years ago, as a tape that's ended up at Kaleidoscope for whatever reason is an SVHS recording which you can recover the teletext data from easily (you can do it from VHS as well buts its more cumbersome):
www.youtube.com 

Re: CPV-TV... well David Frost was on the consortium for that project, and what I understand seemed to have a knack of getting TV stations started and then them going downhill not long afterwards (LWT and TV-am are the two obvious examples here), so its probably a blessing in disguise CPV fell on its arse at the starting gun in all three regions they went for.

intention of the consortium was to create a centralised service for the franchises they went for with a generic presentation package apparently, which wasn't a new thing by 1991 (see ITV 1989)

[Humphrey Hacker]

A couple of points:

It struck me then that there wasn't much coverage of Oracle losing its licence. To me Oracle was far better than Teletext.

From what little I know about CPV it seemed that hubris that Frost seemed to generate at LWT and TVAM may have played a role in CPV's failure to win the London Weekday licence. As stated above the lack of a back-up plan from CPV regarding what would have happened if they had won and TV-AM had lost shows that there wasn't much actual planning.

We've sort of gone off on a tangent here but it must be remembered that originally in the 1990 Broadcasting Act there would be no teletext licence after 1992.  It was only after Oracle lobbed for it (they were happy to bid for it) it became a possibility, though the ultimate irony is they lost the licence they were trying to save for themselves

The actual closure of Oracle and handover to Teletext was put on YouTube a couple of years ago, as a tape that's ended up at Kaleidoscope for whatever reason is an SVHS recording which you can recover the teletext data from easily (you can do it from VHS as well buts its more cumbersome):
www.youtube.com 

Re: CPV-TV... well David Frost was on the consortium for that project, and what I understand seemed to have a knack of getting TV stations started and then them going downhill not long afterwards (LWT and TV-am are the two obvious examples here), so its probably a blessing in disguise CPV fell on its arse at the starting gun in all three regions they went for.

intention of the consortium was to create a centralised service for the franchises they went for with a generic presentation package apparently, which wasn't a new thing by 1991 (see ITV 1989)

Very true as they bid not just for London Weekdays but also Eastern and Southern England.

[Stooky Bill]

Re: CPV-TV... well David Frost was on the consortium for that project, 

Yes he was the P in CPV: Chrysalis Paradine Virgin. Paradine being his middle name which he gave to his production and management company 

He/TVam were part of a few failed bids around that time, the only one they won was INR2, as Virgin Radio, again of course partnering with Richard Branson. Before it got its own offices it was based at the TVam building and in it's dying days TVam gave away promotional Virgin 1215 branded radios 

When TVam was being wound up its stake in Virgin 1215 was sold, partly to Frost (who was a shareholder in TVam of course so presumably it was in exchange for that)

So of CPV had won an Itv licence, it would have had a knock on effect on British radio too, Virgin 1215 /Absolute would have been a totally different station. Chrysalis' TV interests became one of the biggest production companies and in 1994 got into radio when they launched Heart and later owned LBC, transforming that into nor eor less what it is today. Whether that would have happened had they been involved in Itv no-one knows, but both the big radio groups of today come from the parts of the CPV consortium