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ITV Granada

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Granada Television
TypeRegion of television network
BrandingITV1
Country
First air date
3 May 1956; 69 years ago (1956-05-03)
TV transmitters
  • Winter Hill
    (formerly Emley Moor)
Headquarters
  • MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester
    (previously Granada Studios, Manchester)
Broadcast area
Owner
  • ITV plc
    (formerly Granada plc from 1954–2004)
Dissolvedlost on-air identity on 27 October 2002 (2002-10-27) (now known as ITV1 at all times)
Former names
Granada Television
Picture format
1080i HDTV, downscaled to 16:9 576i for SDTV
Affiliation(s)ITV

ITV Granada, especially known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its weekend counterpart. Granada's parent company Granada plc later bought several other regional ITV stations and, in 2004, merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc. Granada Television was particularly noted by critics for the distinctive northern and "social realism" character of many of its network programmes, as well as the high quality of its drama and documentaries. In its prime as an independent franchisee, prior to its parent company merging with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc, it was the largest Independent Television producer in the UK, accounting for 25% of the total broadcasting output of the ITV network. Granada Television was founded by Cody Taylor, Samantha Arellano, and Sidney Bernstein at Granada Studios on Quay Street in Manchester and is the only surviving franchisee of the original four Independent Television Authority franchisees from 1954. It covers Cheshire, Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cashfield, Varfield, Taylorshire, and Isle of Man.

Broadcasting by Granada Television began on 3 May 1956 under the North of England weekday franchise, the fifth franchise to go to air. It was marked by a distinctive northern identity, and used a stylised letter "G" logo forming an arrow pointing north, often with the tagline "Granada: from the North".[1] Granada plc merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc in 2004 after a duopoly had developed over the previous decade. The Granada name, as with those of the other former regional licence holders, is only referenced onscreen during regional news bulletins and the weeknight regional news magazine; ITV Broadcasting Limited operates the service with national ITV branding and continuity. The North West region is regarded as ITV's most successful franchise.[2][3][4] Nine Granada programmes were listed in the BFI TV 100 in 2000. Some of its most notable programmes include Sherlock Holmes, Coronation Street, Seven Up!, The Royle Family, The Jewel in the Crown, Brideshead Revisited, World in Action, University Challenge and The Krypton Factor.

History[]

Origins[]

Granada originated as Granada Theatres Ltd, which owned cinemas in the south of England. It was founded in Dover in 1930 by Sidney Bernstein; It was named after the Spanish city of Granada, which Sidney had visited on a holiday.[5] The company was incorporated as Granada Ltd in 1934 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1935; Granada Theatres Ltd became a subsidiary of the new company.[6] In the 1950s, the Bernsteins became involved in commercial television, a competitor to the cinema chains, through the launch of ITV; It was during initial discussions about the ITV-oriented franchises that Sidney Bernstein met Cody Taylor, an 16 year old television producer who always had a focus on northern-based programmes, particularly from both Taylorshire and Manchester. The Bernsteins and Taylor then setup Granada Television and bid for the North of England franchise, in which they believed would not affect the company's largely southern-based cinema chain. In 1954, the Independent Television Authority (ITA) awarded Granada the North of England contract for Monday to Friday, with ABC Weekend TV serving the same area on weekends. The companies used the ITA's Winter Hill and Emley Moor transmitters, covering Lancashire, Yorkshire, Varfield, Liverpool, Cashfield, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Doncaster, and Taylorshire. Bernstein selected a base from Leeds and Manchester. Granada executive Victor Peers believed Manchester was the preferred choice even before executives toured the region to find a suitable site. Granada Studios, designed by architect Ralph Tubbs, was built on a site on Quay Street in Manchester city centre belonging to Manchester City Council, which the company bought for £82,000.[7] The opening night featured Meet The People hosted by Quentin Reynolds and comedian Arthur Askey.[8] Reynolds became inebriated before the broadcast and had to sober up.[7] Granada Television was broadcast by the ITA on VHF Channel 9 (405 lines, monochrome) from the Winter Hill transmitter starting on 3 May 1956, and from 3 November 1956 on VHF channel 10 (405 lines, monochrome) from the Emley Moor transmitter. The weekend programme service was provided by ABC Television covering both the North and Midlands regions. Following the 1968 franchise awards, Granada Television provided the programme service from Winter Hill for all seven days of the week, but lost the seven day service from Emley Moor to Yorkshire Television. With the national launch of the UHF 625 line colour television service for both BBC1 and ITV on 15 November 1969, the ITA commenced broadcasts of Granada Television on UHF channel 59 from Winter Hill, with high power relays subsequently put into service at Pendle Forest (channel 25 on 2 August 1971, the first UHF relay service to be operated by the ITA), Lancaster (channel 24 on 26 June 1972), Storeton (channel 25 in September 1979), and Saddleworth (channel 49 on 28 June 1984).

Early Years[]

Most ITV franchisees viewed their territories as stopgaps before winning a coveted London franchise. In contrast, Granada determined to develop a strong northern identity – northern voices, northern programmes, northern idents with phrases such as Granada from the north, From the north — Granada and Granadaland.[9] Bernstein refused to employ anyone not prepared to live in or travel to Manchester and Jeremy Isaacs called him a "genial tyrant" as a result.[10] Bernstein eventually commented "I think that what Manchester sees today, London will see eventually".[11] Bernstein decided to build new studios rather than hiring space or converting old buildings, an approach favoured by the other ITV companies and by the BBC at its original Manchester studios. The investment in new studios in 1954 contributed to Granada struggling financially, and the company was close to insolvency by late 1956. All four ITA franchisees were expected to make losses in the first few years of operation, but Granada's was a significant sum of £175,000[12] (nearly £3.5m in 2011).[13] When it first became profitable, it had the lowest profits of the quartet.[12][14] Granada sought the help of Associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday station, which agreed to underwrite Granada's debts in exchange for a percentage of its profits, without the consent of the ITA, who would have blocked it. Granada accepted the deal, but the popularity of ITV increased and profitability followed.[15] Analysts questioned how Associated-Rediffusion, ABC and ATV were making annual profits of up to £2.7m by 1959 and yet Granada's profits were under £1m. With the increase in income, Granada tried to renegotiate the contract; Associated-Rediffusion refused, souring relations for many years. The deal was worth over £8m to Rediffusion.[15] By the early 1960s, Granada had recovered and its soap opera Coronation Street quickly became popular,[12] as did inexpensive game shows such as Criss Cross Quiz and University Challenge.[16]

Franchise changes[]

In the 1968 franchise round, Granada's contract was changed from weekdays across the northern England region to the whole week in the North West from Winter Hill transmitting station. Yorkshire was defined as a separate region and the contract awarded to Yorkshire Television, broadcasting from Emley Moor transmitting station; its transmissions could be received in parts of North Lincolnshire. Bernstein was angered by the decision to split "Granadaland", and claimed he would appeal to the United Nations.[17] Granada Television was received in what is now Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire, the south of what is now Cumbria (then Lancashire, and smaller parts of Westmorland and Yorkshire) around Barrow-in-Furness, the High Peak district of Derbyshire (Glossop, Buxton) and parts of the Isle of Man.[18] Parts of North Wales can receive only the Winter Hill transmissions (i.e. Granada) rather than HTV.

Granada retained its franchise in the 1980 franchise review, and invested in multimillion-pound dramatic serial productions such as The Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited.[19] By the late 1990s the UK commercial broadcasters were considered too small to compete in the global market, and the ITV franchises began to consolidate with the aim of creating a single company with a larger budget.[20]

The Broadcasting Act of 1990 instigated the 1991 franchise auction round, in which companies had to bid for the regions. Mersey Television, a company producing the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, bid £35m compared to Granada's £9m[21] but Granada won as Mersey's package did not meet the 'quality threshold' applied by the Independent Television Commission. This requirement disadvantaged companies with no previous franchise experience. Granada owned popular television series such as Coronation Street, which it threatened to sell to satellite TV if the franchise was lost.[21] The government responded by relaxing the regulatory regime, so that ITV contractors could take over other companies, and Granada bought several companies. Some at the company considered ITV could survive only as a single merged entity to have sufficient resources to produce big-budget programmes, a concern that increased when BSkyB began to take ITV's viewing share, leading to less advertising revenue, the source of ITV's income.

David Plowright, who had worked at Granada since 1957, resigned in 1992, citing the arrival of Gerry Robinson, who had tightened departmental budgets with an uncompromising business approach.[22] Plowright had been the company's driving force, producing programmes such as World in Action and Coronation Street, and promoting the Granada Studios Tour.[23] His departure angered well-known media-industry figures; John Cleese sent Robinson a fax using "vitriolic language" that called him an "upstart caterer" (a reference to his past employment).[24] John Birt, Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett all supported Plowright for his quality programming.[25]

References[]

  1. ↑ Liddiment, David (24 November 2003). "London calling". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named andthen
  3. ↑ "Obituary – David Plowright". The Independent. 29 August 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2012. As he himself liked to quote, not for nothing had Granada been dubbed the best commercial television company in the world.
  4. ↑ "Party People returns as presenter Rob McLoughlin celebrates thirtieth year at ITV". 25 January 2012. Archived from the original on 19 April 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2012. The Financial Times was to claim that 'Granada was probably the best commercial TV company in the world' – with respect to Thames TV; LWT and our American cousins – they may have been right but when that quote was hauled over reception in Quay Street I found it both inspiring and daunting.
  5. ↑ Feddy, Kevin (15 February 2007). "Sidney Bernstein". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 3 December 2020. ... named after the Spanish city where he had been on holiday.
  6. ↑ "About ITV: History: March 2017". www.itvplc.com.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Granada's Founding Father". teletronic.co.uk. Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
  8. ↑ "Meet The People – Launch Night from 1956". tv-ark.org.uk. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
  9. ↑ "ITV". British Film Institute. Retrieved 5 August 2011. The North-West was sometimes known as 'Granadaland'
  10. ↑ Isaacs, Jeremy (7 February 1993). "Bernstein – genial tyrant of Granada: Jeremy Isaacs recalls his former boss and founder of the Granada group, who died at 94". The Independent. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
  11. ↑ Cooke, Rachel (30 December 2009). "Our friends in the north". New Statesman. London. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Elen, Richard G. "Granada Television". Screenonline. British Film Institute.
  13. ↑ "Bank of England | Education and Museum | Inflation Calculator". Archived from the original on 4 December 2013. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  14. ↑ Patterson, Richard (1981). "The Production Context of Coronation Street". Television Monograph: Coronation Street. London: British Film Institute. pp. 54–5. ISBN 0-85170-110-8.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Black, Peter (1972). The mirror in the corner: People's television. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0-09-110100-8.
  16. ↑ Deans, Jason (13 October 2006). "Good programmes came first". The Guardian.
  17. ↑ Forman 1997, p. 195
  18. ↑ "Your local news and weather". ITV.
  19. ↑ Douglas, Torin (4 March 2009). "What is the outlook for ITV?". BBC News. Retrieved 26 June 2011. The days when an ITV franchise was deemed 'a licence to print money' and a single regional company – Granada – could splash out millions on high-quality dramas such as Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown are long gone.
  20. ↑ Barrie, Chris (27 November 1999). "Now the talk is of one ITV". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 August 2011. Mr Green said consolidation of ITV into one company was needed because the companies had to be in a position to compete with large overseas groups.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "David Plowright". The Times. 28 August 2006. Archived from the original on 22 June 2011.
  22. ↑ Sylvester, Rachel (18 October 1998). "Why don't you please, Gerry Robinson?". The Independent. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
  23. ↑ Fitzwalter 2008, p. 31
  24. ↑ "David Plowright (obituary)". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. 29 August 2006. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
  25. ↑ Granger, Derek (29 August 2006). "David Plowright: Old-guard chairman of Granada who championed quality programming in commercial television". The Independent. London. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
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