Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Up until September 4th 1993, yes. The original setup (as of January 1st 1993) was that TTTV worked off YTV's feed; in September of that year the Leeds transmission centre was born, and at that point the situation was as you describe.

The Jan-Sep phase was a stop-gap, with minimal investment on either side (hence the rough output during this stage). During this time the link to the transmitter was from Newcastle, although the transmission unit had no direct to the network. The transmission controller was still stationed in the gallery at Newcastle but the other backroom staff had left at the end of 1992.

In September the transmission controllers were let go as well, and all switching was then self-opped by the announcer at Newcastle. This continued until March 1996.

It's my understanding that one of the motivators behind the C3NE rebrand in 1996 was that Studio 4 was getting to the stage where it was in desperate need of refurbishment, and a major upgrade was being planned across all studios in Newcastle. The decision was made fairly early, in mid-1995 not to spend any cash on it in its existing form, so it was closed. This was accelerated by Bill Steel's decision to take early retirement, and as he was still the Head of Presentation this vacancy wasn't filled, and Kathy Secker moved to the news department.

Studio 4 was upgraded, although it became an edit suite. YTV took over the presentation duties on the Tyne Tees side, and the integration of transmission for the two stations became much more tightly integrated from what I've heard, which I'm guessing laid the foundations for taking over transmission for Granada and Border later on.

Although that's not what the 'Independent' meant. It was about it's relationship to the government in comparison to the BBC. It would still have been called Independent Television if they'd decided to create one national channel/company

some times I wonder, what if ATV were allowed to keep Elstree and kept Its licences, I dare say the duel news would have happened but I dare say a much stronger ITV company would have taken control

I did much the same as Bill, giving a namecheck to Peter Davis at Central when he did v/os for "Watch It".
It was of course very much an 'in' joke to do so.

The pub anno thing was complicated - let's say there was a pub anno at the end of Taggart. The VT would be clean fed to the network until the last few seconds when it would be 'dirtied up' and the network would get the output from STV MCR. As soon was the words were finished, CCR would cut to a cleanfeed of the slide scanner showing the pub anno. Although the sources were frame sync, there would sometimes be field sync disturbances because of the differences in timing on the path between the pres mixer and the slide scanner.

This is really interesting stuff!

One thing I don't understand about the network is why the big 5 'just were' the big 5 - were they (or their predecessors) the first in with lots of programming?

Probably related: was there a procedure for contracting out things like CITV presentation, or was it just a done deal with Central?

I sympathise with the likes of TVS who badly wanted to reinvest their profits back in to the network but had no easy way in.

Pre-1993 it seemed every ITV License Holder effectively had a license to print money, and that lead to all sorts of weird unrelated investments like Border's Green Star Rides, Granada Hotels & Theme Parks and UTV's (still existent AFAIK) art collecting business!

its always intrigued me that the south coast franchise was never part of the elite group of franchisees given that IIRC it is/was the [one of, or the?] richest in terms of ad revenue

I once saw Central and TVS between them with separate errors mess up the junction into News at Ten.

Central were playing out to network a trailer for something coming on at 22:35, during the minute leading up to 22:00hrs. At 21:59:45 the trailer ended, and there was a wipe revealing Mike Prince in vision in the Central continuity studio. For some reason TVS didn't opt away, and at 21:59:50 presumably BT switched the feed to ITN's VT on pre-roll for the NaT open titles !

I would say it was down to Southern never making a real effort like the other Big 5, it wasn't until TVS that the are really started to make a big push.

They were the big 5 as they were the ones that took in the most advertising revenue, and also served the most densley populated areas of England. Saying that it goes back to when ITV was set up in the 1950's, those regions, then the big 4; Rediffusion, ATV, ABC and Granada were set up first, and then they built the rest of the Network around that, but it somehow seems that the shape of the Network was always dependent on the decisions of the 4/5 companies.

TVS wanted to be in the big 5, or rather make it the 6th in the big 5, simply because their bosses felt frustrated that they were denied access to the Network table, considering they took in the 3rd highest amount of revenue (equal to LWT) and had studios and talent worthy for the Network. In the end I think they came to some agreement with LWT, hence why programmes like Bobby Davro, Catchphrase and Cats Eyes appeared during the weekends. But this was also the reason why TVS went ahead and bought into the cash haemorraging venture MTM, they wanted a foot into America, but it cost TVS dear and ulitmately cost them their franchise.

You don't get any other set up like the old ITV anywhere else in the world, that's what made it great.

Being from the Granada region, I always thought he was a Granada only CA for most of the 1980's.

Well yeah he was only full-time for Granada, but there was a period (1982-1984) where you'd have thought he was a TTTV staffer the number of shifts he took on.

Bit like Jonathan Morrell in the early 1990s -- only ever freelance, but you'd never guess.

That reminds me - I'm sure Allan Cartner and Pat Doody did announcing work for Tyne Tees during the seventies, in addition to their shifts at Border. Allan of course later came to Tyne Tees full-time in the late eighties. While at Border he did his links both in and out of vision, but at Tyne Tees he always announced out of vision - something I could never quite understand.