26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

But in terms of the Broadcasting Act, the franchises issued were clearly for Channel 3, and not any other operations. Had they included all future operations of the ITV companies that would have been the opposite of what they were trying to achieve - deregulation.

Yes - the IBA franchises were advertised that way - but companies surely were not blind to wider opportunities?

Lets not forget that TVS did buy MTM in the 80's even though it went belly up so it proves that even before the free for all of the 90's ITV companies did have aspirations further afield than their transmission regions.

I think that might have been the case long before 1993 somehow as the companies exported their popular TV shows around the globe. Any ITV company that only focused on where their signal reached wasn't going to make their fortune by purely making shows about the Nell Gwynn tea rooms (unless there was a lot of bloodshed or something).

And even prior you had ATV/ITC, Thames/Euston Films and of course Granada had a huge empire of businesses outside of ITV. At one stage even HTV had its fingers in a lot more pies than just its franchise.

Exactly, even before the merger/takeover restrictions the companies had ideas above their station

Too right. From a vantage point of the late 1980s it was almost impossible to predict how things would turn out with individual regional ITV companies once satellite and cable became sufficiently mainstream. All that could be determined with confidence is that some ITV companies would see satellite and cable as an opportunity more than a threat. For example, Thames could establish a cable channel in London primarily to broadcast at weekends as well as an outlet for programmes from their back catalogue. Ditto for LWT on weekdays. Other ITV companies could launch satellite channels either on their own or in conjunction with other producers and TV companies.

If individual ITV companies operate additional satellite or cable channels then it raises questions about the degree of regulation that applies to them in comparison with their terrestrial analogue channel. Should they be treated in exactly the same way as some small obscure satellite channel or should they be subject to additional terms and conditions? Would having channels by both Thames and LWT available 24/7 on cable make a mockery of the weekday weekend split in London? What about if an ITV company establishes its own breakfast TV channel to compete directly with the ITV breakfast franchise? What if the ITV breakfast franchise decides to establish a channel to broadcast 24 hours? Should there be any policies relating to duplicating networked programmes on additional channels? If future franchise rounds are held then should they strictly apply only to Channel 3 or should additional satellite and cable channels also be included to a certain extent?

These scenarios don't appear to have been given too much consideration by the government when formulating the 1990 Broadcasting Act.

Gyngell wanted to challenge ITN for the news provider. He also spoke to Channel 4 about TVAM going up against Sunrise/GMTV.

I think the possibility of having hundreds of satellite TV channels was a long way off even by 1980s standards when there were plans to have four satellite channels on the BSB system (they later launched with six), and of course we all know how the BSB story ends.

I'm not sure on the technicals of the time but I dare say the signals weren't compressed like they are now and it would have probably required the launching of more satellites to get more services onto the platform, and by this point BSB was losing money like there was no tomorrow.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sat+tv+1980s&&view=detail&mid=7BFF8F4ADAAE0788EE027BFF8F4ADAAE0788EE02&&FORM=VRDGAR

From a technical perspective, no. From a regulatory perspective, possibly. Once Astra was launched then the rest is history.

AISTR Astra 1A only had 16 transponders