The 1980 ITV franchise auction

Worzel Gummidge did reappear on Channel 4 a few years later, though Southern was gone at that stage and IIRC it was set in New Zealand.

Was Spitting Image produced at Limehouse ? I always thought it was totally 'in house' at Central Broad St, or was it just post produced there ?

So the folk lore says ! Although I can imagine HMQ being a secret fan of 'Twice Nightly' over on YTV ?

However yes, the Kings Lynn BBC East/Anglia relay does indeed serve Sandringham.

The relays are really an echo from 1974, when the IBA reallocated Belmont from Anglia to Belmont.
I think Anglia mounted a campaign, and encouraged the affected viewers to lobby for those relays. Presumably the BBC who had the same problem, chipped in, by equipping them for BBC 1 East too. All three sites were commissioned by the IBA, and not the Beeb. (However the UHF transmitter network build was
a joint 50:50 effort between the two broadcasters, operating as a reciprocal landlord/tenant scheme)

When topical routines required assembly in London rather than being able to send everything up to Broad St, they used Limehouse. remember that the workshops were London based, even if the show wasn't!

Makes sense.

I do recall Steve Nallon and Steve Coogan saying that they travelled to Birmingham every week, so the voices were probably added in a dubbing suite at Broad St

Pretty sure it had moved to Nottingham (along with the vast majority of Central productions) by the end.

Its good but its not right



The public were ignoring the IBA and doing there own thing.

It was at Nottingham as soon as it became fully operational, from series 2 onwards. Famously all royal material was removed from the first episode as Prince Philip was opening the complex the following week.

There's stories of Chris Barrie sending letters to his parents on Crossroads Motel paper, as at one point his voice dubs were being recorded on the motel set, as the only stereo studio available.

More information here:

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~jamiebro/southern-franbat.html

That letter in full:

"I have delayed replying formally to Lady Plowden's letter of 28 December on order that we could consider the reasons and implications that lie behind the unprecedented step taken by the Authority when it, in effect, dismissed Southern Television.

Firstly I must express the sense of astonishment and, I must say it, of outrage and injustice felt by the staff, the Management and the Board of Southern. For the first time in the 25 year history of Independent Television a company has been summarily dismissed without previous warning or complaint, and we feel that we have the right to expect some form of comment from the Authority other than the expression of "gratitude for the many good things Southern has contributed to ITV" as Lady Plowden put it.

When the applications for the contract for the new South and south-east region were published we studied those of our rivals most carefully. Some, for various reasons, we did not consider to be strong opponents, others we felt should be taken more seriously. But throughout the long process that followed we did not feel it appropriate, or helpful to the authority in it's task, to make derogatory comments or innuendoes about other applicants, unlike some of them including the successful applicant. perhaps we should have done. Perhaps we should have expressed some professional doubts about a promise to produce regularly a total of 1,500 hours a year - far more than any ITV company has ever done. Perhaps we should have questioned the promises to produce programmes in virtually every programme filed - a wider spread of activity than is undertaken even by our largest companies. Perhaps we should have rebutted the innuendoes about the quality of our children's programmes, a quality repeatedly praised by the Authority - and we can certainly find no evidence that the promised performance of the successful applicant is likely to lead to any improvements in this field. Perhaps we should have questioned the expertise of the group that, after priding itself on it's professionalism chose a site for it's new studios, emphasising the advantages and the care which had gone into its selection, only to abandon it later in favour of the site we had recognised from the beginning to be far the most appropriate. We did not draw all these, and many other matters to your notice because we felt it right to put forward our own realistic and firm proposals, based on our record of complete fulfilment of all the promises we had made in 1967 when our contract was renewed.

When we were interviewed we were courteously, even gently, treated by the Authority. No sensitive areas were deeply or energetically probed, no strong criticisms actively pursued which would have given our representatives the opportunity to explain or rebut. We were not invited for a second interview. We must ask why, if the Authority was even contemplating the total removal of Southern, were we not, at our interview, pressed fully in vulnerable areas, and given the opportunity to meet any later charged in a second interview?

When we were told that our contract was not to be renewed we asked in what particulars we had failed. Lady Plowden said that it was not a question of failure, but that Southern was " a victim of the system". But the system was created by the IBA and was being implemented in a totally novel way.

We cannot believe that a decision of such importance affecting the lives and futures of hundreds of people, can have been taken purely on assumptions that a new group of people looked as though they might provide a better service, as against a company whose regional performance is acknowledged across the network as second to none, and which has made many notable contributions to the network and who, in the words of the IBA chairman, had not failed.

Surely, if there were any doubts it was wrong to destroy a long established and successful company, on the basis of a written document and one short interview.

The Authority performed an act of Arbitrary power based on a secret process of assessment, exercised without the opportunity for defence, questioning or appeal and we believe it had already been decided that there had to be at least one supreme sacrifice regardless of whom the replacement was to be. Using Lady Plowden's own words we have been "Victims". This can be no proper way to conduct affairs of this importance - it surely defies every concept of natural justice.

You referred to the remainder of the contract. It is our intention to maintain the quality of our service. If there should be any falling off in the overall service from the standards that our viewers have come to expect , it will only be as a result of this decision of the Authority, and will therefore be beyond our control.

C. David Wilson

Chairman, Southern Television Ltd."

I can see why Southern lost... the IBA wanted local ownership by then, but Southern was owned by companies based in London and Scotland. The same reason ATV got restructured into Central.


Interesting that two of the Breakfast bidders had the same name, AMTV.

Of course, Severn/Hafren not offering a Welsh service proved to be a moot point, as not only did they lose, S4C launched shortly after anyway.

It's also interesting that a bidder for South West is called West Country, since that's the name of that region's winner of the 1991 franchise round. Not the same company, I assume?

ISTR that Southern's application was a bit presumptuous to say the least (running to only a couple of dozen pages), especially given the competition.

Southern were quite right though to draw attention to TVS's plans for 1500 hours per year of programming. That's four hours per DAY, which would have meant at least 2 hours networked per day surely (some 15% or so of ITV's total network output), something that was never going to happen under the old IBA system. It seems TVS were overreaching from the start, which leads me to conclude that the only surprise was that it took eight years before the inevitable implosion at boardroom level.

Really TVS's bid should have been turfed out on that ridiculous promise alone. It reminds me of Phil Redmond's bid for the North West franchise a decade later in which he derided Granada's 9 hours per week of local output (a fairly standard figure for the time), and was promising to double this. Was never going to work.