The Unification Of ITV

[Humphrey Hacker]

Reading "Under The Hammer" (which I recommend) I was struck by this thought. What would or could have happened to either stop or change the fate of the old regions?

Some ideas are:

1. Not necessarily a different government but a different policy
2.Either a revamped Peacock report or it never existed
3. Either Satellite television never has the impact it has had in the UK or maybe somehow BSB survives.

(I know this is diving into "what if" territory but I think it's a valid question)

[Neil Jones]

To answer the question in the topic description - yes it was. Next question?

1) Alternative universe is full of hypotheticals going back millions of years, if we didn't have an ice age we might have had the dinosaurs for a lot longer than we did, that means many other things would have happened later which may not even have lead to television at all (of it i did it would have been later) and what we now see as the 1970s could be as late as the 1990s.

2) It had ultimately no effect anyway (so far as the BBC was concerned as the whole point of commissioning the report was to recommend scrapping the licence fee) so its as good as never existing. Some proposals were taken forward but most were not.

3) Assuming everything else played out as it did, BSB would still have gone bump if they hadn't merged with Sky. Both companies were losing money and it was simply a case of merge to survive, or both would die. The difference being Sky had deeper pockets, and even the merged BSkyB company didn't make any profit until some point in the mid 1990s, and then lost even more money in the late 1990s/early 2000s when digital TV came along.

[Blubatt]

I have to agree with Neil, the unification of ITV would have happened eventually. And as I look on it now, I think the way that it happened was better than any other hypothetical. At least ITV companies bought ITV companies, at the end of the day. If a conglomerate like Viacom, AOL Time Warner, RTL, et al. bought the ITV companies, we'd have probably had a worse fate then we have now. ITV PLC is still independent, in a way. It is its own company, it isn't a subsidiary of a conglomerate.

[LargelyALurker]

Interesting question.

It's notable that the situation in the USA is quite different, with many local affiliate stations that aren't owned by the network (eg NBC owns 13 stations but has almost 200 affiliates according to Wikipedia. Why has the situation there not changed in the same way?

[XIII]

Merging was pretty much the only way ITV could survive in the digital age, the era of multiple companies providing programmes and competing against each other was becoming redundant by the 90s.

[JAS84]

Would always have happened. The only difference might have been if different companies won the licenses for 1993. Granada ended up winning out, owning everything except Scottish and Grampian. But suppose Thames had kept it's licence? That would've probably meant the regions being bought out in a different order as it means no Carlton. TVS surviving would've completely put United News and Media - Meridian's owner who later bought Anglia and HTV - out of the picture. If someone like Yorkshire or Granada was defeated, then it would've affected both their destiny, and that of the first region they bought out (Tyne Tees and LWT respectively).

But come 2004, we'd have probably still been looking at a unified ITV in England and Wales.

[Richard]

Don’t forget that Carlton already owned owned 20% of Central - it bought this stake in 1987 so if it had not been successful in London it may well have bought its way in, making things not so different from how they turned out. United Newspapers/UNM could well have done something similar.

What could have changed things, but not massively, is if UTV had bought STV (or the other way round) S nearly happened on a few occasions. This could have brought STV into the fold, or kept UTV out of it.

[Whataday]

But suppose Thames had kept it's licence? That would've probably meant the regions being bought out in a different order as it means no Carlton. TVS surviving would've completely put United News and Media - Meridian's owner who later bought Anglia and HTV - out of the picture.

It's always important to consider that Thames' owners had very little ambition in the future of ITV. They tried to sell to Carlton in 1986 so even if they'd won the franchise it's highly likely they would have sold up anyway.

Also, (taking an educated guess) TVS would have likely crumbled and been taken over by another company. And there's a good chance that would have been LWT considering the fairly strong links the two companies had.

[commseng]

If you look outside the television industry at the various local firms, and those in the media, what has happened to them?
Local radio, newspapers, even the local tv stations set up in the last decade or so, they have all merged together, with one or two firms controlling all but a few of them.
Global and Bauer dominate radio, with local content reduced to what they have to provide under the terms of their licence.
Local papers are following a similar path.
Would ITV have ended up unified if things had been slightly different, yes I'm sure it would, unless there had been a legal requirement for the old regions to remain. Then you would have still have had the campaign to change the rules, and possibly some stations having financial problems. What then? Allow the region to lose their ITV service on a point of principal?

[Roger Darthwell]

If you look outside the television industry at the various local firms, and those in the media, what has happened to them?
Local radio, newspapers, even the local tv stations set up in the last decade or so, they have all merged together, with one or two firms controlling all but a few of them.
Global and Bauer dominate radio, with local content reduced to what they have to provide under the terms of their licence.
Local papers are following a similar path.

It's still very depressing though

[Humphrey Hacker]

If you look outside the television industry at the various local firms, and those in the media, what has happened to them?
Local radio, newspapers, even the local tv stations set up in the last decade or so, they have all merged together, with one or two firms controlling all but a few of them.
Global and Bauer dominate radio, with local content reduced to what they have to provide under the terms of their licence.
Local papers are following a similar path.

It's still very depressing though

Very true. I've been involved with community radio as some users know and its the same story. The will is there as is the passion but people wanting to join have this idea they're going to be the next Chris Moyles, 99% of the time it doesn't work like that.

[DJGM1974]

I found this video a couple of days ago, and this seems like the ideal thread to post it in.

[VMPhil]

If only they'd taken on cwilliams1976's idea of an ITV regional tax.

[Neil Jones]

If only they'd taken on cwilliams1976's idea of an ITV regional tax.

And programmes that only run for like two seconds because every single break has 15 minutes worth of music, and every gap between a programmes and the next one would be 15 minutes...
I'm sure if there was a regional tax based on programme duration for ITV it would only ever be about 20p a year on that logistic.

[Humphrey Hacker]

If only they'd taken on cwilliams1976's idea of an ITV regional tax.

And programmes that only run for like two seconds because every single break has 15 minutes worth of music, and every gap between a programmes and the next one would be 15 minutes...
I'm sure if there was a regional tax based on programme duration for ITV it would only ever be about 20p a year on that logistic.

We should be grateful for small mercies.