Story of ITV: The 1991 Franchise round (2005)

Taken from the Melvyn Bragg Story of ITV programme in 2005, the talk is about the 1991 franchise round from those in the know and those who got their franchises back and the honest truth about Carlton Television. Apologies about the jump 50 seconds in.

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Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• ITV
• ITV1
• ITV50
• yt:crop=16:9

[cwilliams1976]

Carlton have been accused of failing to produce a single decent programme on ITV - I think that one point has been overlooked here... Carlton adopted Channel 4's approach in that it actually commissioned programmes from independent production companies rather than actually producing them so in a way Carlton could never have produced their own programmes. Meridian did the same as well.

[steviegTVreturns]

@cwilliams1976 The thing was with Carlton although that was their policy, I never remember seeing much of anything with their name on it, they did an effort in 1993 to fill in the gap left by Thames, but even then their most popular programmes were still on ITV, it was the likes of Rainbow and This Week that weren't. As soon as they got Central everything from them was a Carlton UK Production, the only long running one from Carlton I can think of is Police, Camera, Action.

[MJPExeter]

based on quality threshold then surely Thames shouldve won easily regardless of cash

[steviegTVreturns]

The ITC saw that both Thames and Carlton passed the quality threshold (how they did, I really don't know!), but Carlton had more money, so it went their way. Unless you believe the Death on the rock scandal caused Thames to lose their franchise, but who knows. ITV would probably be the same now if Thames had won.

[tsangari]

As much as I fondly remember Thames - which was my provider - I don't think I'd have missed it had it carried on broadcasting. It closed on a high for me - and so did Oracle.

[steviegTVreturns]

You're probably quite right there, even in the early 1990's people were saying Thames wasn't as good as it used to be, but since 1993 everybody looks back at Thames being a golden era of TV. Either way ITV would still be in the same mess even if Thames had survived. Especially with the amount of Studios available, it made more sense to have GMTV, Carlton, LWT, LNN etc all come from the same building, not seperate ones if Thames had won.

[donjabroni]

Another one of Thatcher's "wonderful" ideas for Britian. Thank God she's no longer in change.

[AidanLunn]

"merge into the single ITV we have today". The less said about that the better . . .

[AidanLunn]

@cwilliams1976 Oh hello cockwomble1976, tell me, are you still polluting Youtube with these useless facts or do you still enjoy wasting your time indoors making absolutely god-awful "mocks" to still pollute YouTube with?

[cwilliams1976]

@AidanLunn But then again ITV was set up in the year that the Conservatives were in power through the Act of Parliament in 1954!!!!

[cwilliams1976]

@thecheesepriest Channel 4 used to rely on advertising from ITV and also did produce some of Channel 4's programmes.

[cwilliams1976]

@steviegTVreturns And also the disagreement between Thames and LWT is no longer relevant

[cwilliams1976]

@MrBSergeant Channel have now been sold to ITV PLC in a bid to strengthen its regional identity which Channel have welcomed.

[cwilliams1976]

@steviegTVreturns I also think that given that Benny Hill died in 1992 and we have already lost Morecambe and Wise, could Thames really have continued to make entertaining programmes if the stars aren't very sadly around to continue to give us entertainment which Thames very clearly did?

[madcapoperator]

I would love to see this full program of this

[andymerrett]

Is there anything Thatcher didn't screw up?

[richuk123456789]

@cwilliams1976 In a nutshell, this round of Franchises lead the way for Carlton to kill off all the regional companies. it is now 2010 and i would still prefer 4 channels to top quality programming that the 100 odd crap ones i get through my Cable Service.