On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 6:45 PM M-D November <[email protected]> wrote:
> Adam - it's not just you. Having done a semester in London when I was in > college, I remember (being baffled by) the handovers to LWT (from, I want > to say, Carlton) - trying to understand just what the smeg was going on > sent me down a research rabbit hole instead of, you know, doing the reading > I needed to do for class... > Yep - it would have been Carlton who took over the weekday franchise from Thames Television. Basically, the first commercial channel in the UK - commonly "ITV" - was actually a set of regional franchises that until had a degree of independence. Sure they all did local news, but they mostly each made programmes for the ITV network. In later years this was pretty consistent across the UK, but at times shows varied. Because London was so big and valuable, it was split into two franchises - the weekday and weekend ones. Carlton TV took over Thames following a blind auction. In due course there was consolidation and ITV plc (who have grown heavily into buying production companies in recent years, the US included) own nearly the entire network. Just STV in Scotland who have two franchises, stands alone. If you watch STV in Scotland you get almost entirely the same schedule however. On screen, different regional ITV companies specialised in different stuff. LWT was very entertainment heavy - lots of gameshows and big studio variety and entertainment shows. Their drama tended towards action/adventure. Granada in Manchester made Coronation St - the long running UK soap - but high quality drama like Brideshead Revisted or Sherlock Holmes (the Jeremy Brett ones). Thames made sitcoms, gritty dramas like The Sweeney and a lot of sitcoms. Benny Hill - which I believe got a fair outing in the US (I suspect less so today) - was a Thames show. As I understand it, the franchise holders had regular meetings to determine who got to get what onto the network. Bigger companies got more, and the smaller regions - say the smallest Border TV - would only get a single gameshow (Mr & Mrs!) and a poor slot for it. But even a small franchise like Anglia TV (logo - a rotating statue of a silver knight) might specialise in something. In Anglia's case, they made Survival, ITV's flagship natural history series. As a viewer, you kind of knew what you were going to get based on the animated logo each channel's shows would begin and end with. A bit like seeing an HBO or Netflix intro now I guess. Adam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGD%3DdsUiKHvB%3DFk0vC34-Q%2BWhyLztd-oLX6QFqeEkzxujQ%40mail.gmail.com.
