[WillPS]

I seem to remember that the application said something like they'd try and work with the weekend company to share news and facilities. If that didn't work out then they wouldn't have been in breach of their license of course. They couldn't have been punished for not having a crystal ball.

This is precisely my point. There are further examples of collaboration between 1993 license bidders too - didn't Westcountry outsource their playout to HTV?

It's oft quoted that the reason CPV failed to meet the quality threshold was because of their reliance on TV-am, but that doesn't scan with the reality when you consider the successful bids - Carlton in particular.