The 1980 ITV franchise auction

'Wessex' would have been based around Rowridge, which serves East Dorset, S Wilts ( both broadly 'Wessex' I suppose ) but also south and mid Hampshire, and south west Sussex, including the coast as far as Hove, oh and the IoW of course. Not a very definable sub region !

I don't know what you mean by technology, but all that could have been done was line feed some transmitters to provide the desired service. Large scale use of extra frequencies would have been a no no, even if the UK authorities might have found suitable allocations, ( very unlikely) the French and Belgian authorities would never have agreed

As for research, well TVS stuck a permanent cue dot on Hannington in 1988 in the lead up to the Thames V sub opt. I had a chap knock on my door in Winchester asking to see TVS on my telly, I showed him both the Rowridge and Hannington versions. I think he put me down as a weirdo

Bit confused here. Were The Economist suggesting that those who won in 81 would keep their franchises forever?



If NS had won then its perceived lack of national programmes would have led to the ITC taking their franchise in 91.

A large number of TV aerials in south Essex were pointed at the Bluebell Hill transmitter in the early 1980s in order to receive Thames / LWT. When Bluebell Hill switched over to TVS in 1982 some viewers in south Essex stayed with it but others realigned their aerial to receive Thames / LWT or Anglia.

If Network South had won then it's possible that they would have claimed south Essex as part of their territory via Estuary TV because of it's Thames and Medway estuary localisation, rather than the south east England localisation offered by TVS, and the large number of TV aerials in south Essex already pointing at the Bluebell Hill transmitter. Local news on Estuary TV could have covered Southend-on-Sea and Basildon from the outset in order to reduce the number of people realigning their aerials.

Towards the end of Southern's tenure, (and probably as an attempt to gain brownie points for their ill fated franchise application, they did actually include South Essex in their news bullitens, and the Day By Day logo (Despite the fact of course Bluebell Hill was still allocated to Thames/LWT at that point)

http://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/6IwWBy_B8DI/mqdefault.jpg

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Border didn't exactly produce many national programmes and Ulster next to nothing but they retained their franchises in 1991.

Nobody knows for sure how many hours of national programmes Network South would have produced because they didn't win.

I think the biggest concern for Network South would have been after 1992 it could have ended up as an inward looking company preoccupied with local programmes from its sub-channels with no interest in taking over other ITV companies. It would have been vulnerable to takeover from the likes of Carlton or Granada which would almost certainly have put an end to its sub-channels and local programmes.

As an aside I remember when YTV did similar with Belmont transmitter. They had a 'B' in the top left corner I remember

Not in that form: they were basically suggesting, quite early on, that what has happened would happen - that there would be multiple commercial channels via multiple methods and so the model of franchising a scarce and precious resource, through a public service model which was always a uniquely British hybrid, would no longer be sustainable.

Presumably the inference was that ITV would become one company, although from memory they don't go deeply into that.

As it is, they were slightly ahead of the game to the extent that there would be one more franchise round thereafter, but they were pretty accurate in the longer term - arguably, rendered more so by the fact that they supported the sort of politics which benefit deregulated broadcasting before a consensus had developed around them (which has now been partially breached, but not I suspect in terms of broadcasting policy, not least because the most fervent advocates of its breaching in other areas were mostly born after 1990).

Indeed, I've tracked down the relevant articles now (I have home access to their archive via my Westminster library account) and they had advocated that the franchises should be given to the highest bidder in 1980, and repeated that request in January 1982 - generally, the IBA as it was at that point represented the post-war interventionist model of "managed capitalism" which they had always opposed (an opposition which became more radical on the Right, of course, at just the same time that the likes of Tony Benn, while in government, were also rejecting it from the opposite end). Might upload them.

And, indeed, they say on 3rd January 1981:

"Such a regional beauty contest need never happen this way again." (and indeed it didn't, in that way.) "By the time these franchises expire, the new technologies of satellites and cable television will have infiltrated Britain, making nonsense of the regional jigsaw into which Britain's commercial television has been divided."

At the time, when Thatcher was very weak indeed and Murdoch was just eyeing the Times & Sunday Times, you could say they were willing these things to happen, and while in the long term of course their prediction was accurate it did not seem universally so at the time, because the Economist had held the views which became normative during their long post-war abeyance (the one time in that era it supported Labour, in 1964, it did so because the Tories were seen as too feudal, not capitalist *enough*). Incidentally, among the other articles brought up by a search of their archive for "Southern Television" is one from January 1971, when the struggling Daily Mail was planning the tabloid relaunch which was generally perceived as its last throw of the dice, suggesting that it might be better off throwing in the towel and merging with the Express as a junior partner (this comes up because, of course, Associated Newspapers - not "Associated Television" as they were called in a Guardian article posted in this or a similar thread - was a major shareholder in Southern throughout its existence).

Here are the relevant links:

12 July 1980 (Part 1) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/pfkfdphhcdwaqgy/The%20Economist%20-%2012%20July%201980%20(Part%201).jpg

12 July 1980 (Part 2) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/ey8d2sq163zbh9e/The%20Economist%20-%2012%20July%201980%20(Part%202).jpg

3 January 1981 (Part 1) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/ce9idntv396hd4a/The%20Economist%20-%203%20January%201981%20(Part%201).jpg

3 January 1981 (Part 2) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/a91m09yom7z9qi4/The%20Economist%20-3%20January%201981%20(Part%202).jpg

3 January 1981 (Part 3) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/oy021ykydp81d48/The%20Economist%20-%203%20January%201981%20(Part%203).jpg

28 March 1981 (Part 1) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/8sbn78pufhu8br6/The%20Economist%20-%2028%20March%201981%20(Part%201).jpg

28 March 1981 (Part 2) - http://www.mediafire.com/view/4tyvc7b682aux0l/The%20Economist%20-%2028%20March%201981%20(Part%202).jpg

23 January 1982 - http://www.mediafire.com/view/0a1zbeeskbaobii/The%20Economist%20-%2023%20January%201982.jpg

Because of the odd formatting of their archive, you'll also see some interesting and revealing period articles alongside those of specific broadcasting interest.

(Not sure when Tyne Tees lost territory because of transmitter changes, though. If anything, their territory increased significantly once UHF came in once it was agreed that they should have Bilsdale.)

I think the article meant Anglia, who had Belmont taken away and handed to YTV in 1974 (To compensate YTV for the Bilsdale/Emley overlap)

It's possible that Network South could have stimulated independent production in the south of England before C4 started.



It could have been phased in over a few years starting with on-screen identity, followed by local news, then eventually different programmes for the sub-channels.

As I have previously stated, the biggest danger to the concept would have been the takeovers after 1992.

This is entering the realm of philosophy but I have wondered if there was enough regional diversity and local community interests in the region during the 1980s to justify the project or whether the separate news for the south and south east as offered by TVS was sufficient for almost everybody in the region. IMO it was the ATV / Central region that had the most regional diversity and local community interests in the 1980s between the west midlands, east midlands, and south midlands / inner south territory. A region that could have been successfully split into three distinct sub-regions. Until the late 1980s viewers in the Cotswolds were watching the same local news, from Birmingham, as viewers in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

The north west region could have been successfully split into three sub-regions by local community interests but was served by just one transmitter.

Southern did specifically acknowledge that theirs was not a "natural region" in the way that many other franchise areas were - this was part of the reason why they made so much of their maritime connections and associations (about which there was a long, scholarly article a while back in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television) because the sea was one of the few unifying elements. So you're probably right that it wasn't varied enough.

If it differed from other areas it was, at least until Thatcherism had made its presence felt, in terms of what Jonathan Freedland - perhaps surprisingly positively for a Jewish writer - has called "Middle England, Tory anti-capitalism", hence the BBC's stronger showing there than elsewhere. It would be glossing it up, I think, to pretend that Southern's relatively low share in the 1970s had nothing to do with the religious background of the Grades & Bernsteins. In the mid-1980s, the TSW region (which a decade earlier had been shown by a different ratings compiler to sometimes be ITV's strongest) became ITV's weakest area while TVS' share notably increased. This probably reflects traditional Conservatism, as opposed to Thatcherism, being pushed further and further to the fringes of England. You might be interested in these divisions - Thames Estuary Toryism leading the way in terms of the embrace and acceptance of Sky, but shire Toryism way behind in terms of the embrace and acceptance of even the public-service-model ITV (early 1983 figures have TVS & TSW as the only regions where BBC1 had a higher share than ITV did). I am interested not least because I moved from the Estuary to the shires myself, although by the time I started to settle in the latter, most of the cultural differences had disappeared.

One region whose politics seemed to have changed for good but have now changed back is Grampian, which was often stronger for the BBC than STV was. This reflects the fact that it has always been more Unionist (and, with the exception of Dundee, proved to be so in the 2014 referendum) and that the north-east corner of Scotland which it initially covered was, until the SNP surge in 1974 and then the effects of Thatcherism, as true blue as any socially similar areas of England. This month, the Tories took it back, and partially saved their face in the process. It should be added that, even when the Tories had seats in Glasgow, it was largely because of the old "Orange Tory" Rangers working-class vote (same reason why they could once hold seats in Liverpool) - the once and, seemingly, future politics of north-east Scotland were/are pretty much non-sectarian and deserving of the description "middle Scotland", and right on cue, there were some occasions when Blue Peter made the Grampian Top 10 (hello aberdeenboy!).

To get back to the Southern subject, I notice that Talking Pictures have put the most appalling film effect on their version of Dick Barton (which was recorded entirely on VT, including the exteriors) - seemingly they're too embarrassed to show anything video-look.

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I'm more inclined to say that the demographics of the south and south east region favoured programmes with a local interest theme or upmarket and focused towards niche or specific audiences rather than mass-market popular entertainment commonly produced by the big 5 ITV companies. This could explain why BBC1 had a higher share than TVS did in 1983. A similar demographic situation also applied to the south west and the north of Scotland regions.

What hasn't been mentioned are the inland parts of the south of England that would have been covered by Thames Valley TV under Network South. This was (and still is) an area with less interest in maritime matters than the south coast. In the 1980s and 90s the Thames Valley definitely seemed to have a different identity than that of the south coast and the shires to the south. The Thames Valley may have had stronger connections with the parts of the south covered by Central such as Oxfordshire north of Abingdon, Buckinghamshire, and the Cotswolds than it did with the south coast. A new Thames Valley and inland south ITV region could have been a viable one.