[lookoutwales]

Seeing as how the New Year often springs up memories of the 1981 and 1992 franchise handovers, thought you’d might like a little light reading on the whole business of franchise rounds, as it was then.

Spotted this on a Facebook group the other day - an in-depth thesis for City, University of London concentrating largely on the 1980 round in the South West, written by none other than Kevin Goldstein-Jackson, who of course, founded and led the TSW consortium which won the contract off the embattled Westward.

openaccess.city.ac.uk 

This was published shortly before TSW itself lost out to Westcountry.

[JexedBack]

I know quite a bit of the ITC archive is held by Bournemouth University, but are there any of the franchise bidder documents, which were sent to reference libraries for viewer comments, online to view?

[Neil Jones]

I know quite a bit of the ITC archive is held by Bournemouth University, but are there any of the franchise bidder documents, which were sent to reference libraries for viewer comments, online to view?

Ofcom will have them, but you won't have access to those under the Freedom of Information act.

Not sure what viewer comments would have made difference wise, after all if they all said Thames was the best thing since sliced bread and nobody had a bad thing to say about them, then what's the point of asking and changing the contractor anyway?

[Humphrey Hacker]

There is this from a website called "whatdotheyknow"

www.whatdotheyknow.com 

[lookoutwales]

Odd. I'd have thought the bids were already public knowledge (or at least out-in-the-open) - they were reported as such on the day of the 1991 results (i.e. TVS outbidding Meridian but losing, Grampian being outbid but winning etc.)

[JAS84]

They are, I know I saw them on a TV pres website, but that was about 20 years ago!

[Neil Jones]

Odd. I'd have thought the bids were already public knowledge (or at least out-in-the-open) - they were reported as such on the day of the 1991 results (i.e. TVS outbidding Meridian but losing, Grampian being outbid but winning etc.)

Not everything is public knowledge about them.
The winners and the losers and who went for what and where were published, sure, but the actual bids? Never published AFAIK and they're exempt under FOI. I know, because I put a request in a few years ago. Some other bits and pieces were dragged out over the years and FOI pulled other information out but I think there's a lot of undisclosed information.

The 'quality threshold' was a subjective evaluation by the ITC of the application submitted with the bid. The 'threshold' worked in one direction – high bidders could be disqualified for not reaching it, but low bidders could not be 'promoted' for having passed it. The ITC did not announce if the lower bidders had passed the threshold or not, and AFAIK that is still the case over 30 years later.

Anyway that entire franchise auction had had other issues and knock-on effects, so promising the earth and delivering nothing of the sort probably would be par for the course as it turned out...

[JAS84]

Apart from Thames losing, it's all moot now anyway of course. Everything would've still consolidated. Thames survived as an indie, so they're the one thing that would've been different. They'd surely have eventually been taken over by Granada instead of Fremantle Media.

[Stuart]

Apart from Thames losing, it's all moot now anyway of course. Everything would've still consolidated. Thames survived as an indie, so they're the one thing that would've been different. They'd surely have eventually been taken over by Granada instead of Fremantle Media.

It didn't really matter who the players were in the end. As much as it was touted as a 'merger' in 2004, it was a takeover by Granada.

I suspect that eventually STV would have settled for the right price. However, things have now moved on. You don't need a physical UK-wide transmission network through buying up all the franchises, you can simply peddle your wares online (rights permitting) and reap the advertising revenue.

I know ITVX ask for your location when you first register, but do they actually have any way of checking?

[Neil Jones]

I know ITVX ask for your location when you first register, but do they actually have any way of checking?

In theory you can track your IP back to a physical address, though whether its worth enforcing it for ITVX purposes is debatable.

Also browsers have Geolocation as a feature which does what it says on the tin.