The ABS in the BBC always liked to think of itself as a ''staff association'' rather than a union and little of its industrial action was ever effective (the BBC had too many managers who could step in and run the equipment).The NUJ always lacked the support of its members when they threatened action - I recall a dispute over ''new technology'' (ie computers) which petered out and the BBC made a one-off payment which the majority accepted.Many employees enjoyed the status of working for the BBC and rather frowned on strike action.

Oh, FFS, not this conspiracy theory crap again - it really does get tiresome.

The franchise system for ITV HAD to change. The 1981 round was a fiasco in many ways not least the fact the losers weren't given a clear reason for their loss.

In the case of Westward it was well known that Peter Cadbury had fallen out with the IBA. In the case of Southern, there was no such issue.

The government of the time actually asked the IBA why Southern had been denied its franchise and was basically told 'mind your own business'. In other words it was a deal done in a smoke filled room and the IBA weren't prepared to be publicly accountable for their decision making.

That was clearly unacceptable and the Peacock Committee (formed in 1985) reported back with a number of suggestions on both ITV and broadcasting more widely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacock_Committee

* BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 should be privatised.
* All television receivers should be built fitted with encryption decoders.
* The television licence fee should be indexed to inflation and the BBC should become responsible for the collection of the licence fee.
* The licence fee should be extended to car radios.
* Pensioners dependent on benefits should be exempt from the licence fee.
* Not less than 40% of the BBC’s and ITV’s output should be sourced from independent producers.
* The transmission space used by the BBC and ITV overnight should be sold.
* ITV Franchises should be put out to competitive tender
* Channel 4 should be able to sell its own advertising.
* Censorship should be phased out.

Interestingly a number of these have come to pass in the subsequent years.

With regard to the 1990 Franchise round - Thames made exactly the same mistake which one of its 'parent' companies made in 1968 - one of arrogance. An assumption that it would win on the basis of what it had done - the same mistake Rediffusion made.

Thames could have bid higher - they made a decision to only bid £ 32m / year and were soundly outbid by Carlton who bid £ 43m

The biggest irony is Carlton tried to buy Thames in the mid 1980s only to be blocked by the IBA.

As for TVAM, again a simple under-bid. They bid £ 14m - their two competitors bid £ 33.2m and £ 34.6m respectively. On that basis TVAM were way off what others in the market felt the franchise was worth.

The 1990 Franchise round was the most transparent one ever to take place in ITV. There was no 'smoke and mirrors' or dubiousness about it particularly when you look at the awards:

3 franchises were unopposed so won by default (Border, Scottish, Central)
5 were the highest bidder of all bidders for the area (Anglia, Tyne Tees, HTV, Yorkshire, GMTV)

Of the remainder:

CPV-TV were disqualified on quality grounds from both London and South bids so

London went to the highest bidder - Carlton.
South went to Meridian as TVS (who were in financial difficulties) presented an unviable business plan.

Westcountry outbid Tele-west. TSW presented an unviable business plan.

LWT, Grampian and Ulster all saw their competitors disqualified on quality grounds, meaning they were retained by default.

Compare this with the 'closed' process used in 1968 or 1981 that was unaccountable and it's easy to see why as a PROCESS the 1990 one was infinitely better than what had gone before.

Compare this with the 'closed' process used in 1968 or 1981 that was unaccountable and it's easy to see why as a PROCESS the 1990 one was infinitely better than what had gone before

But the debate is are the quality of the programs better

AlanO
I won't quote your entire post, but I do agree with a lot of what you say.
However since you raised the subject of the bids, doesn't it seem a little odd that Central, and Central Scotland bid only £2,000 and retained their franchises, whereas Border bid £52 million. Was there such a difference between Border and Central Scotland? You might almost think that some companies had inside information on it's competitors?
It still mystifies me how London Independent Broadcasting lost on quality, but Carlton passed the quality threshold. Thames bid of £17million seemed pro rata roughly in line with LWT's £7.5 million.
Both companies had a good record for quality programming.

How would Border get hold of £ 52 million? I doubt they'd struggle to raise £ 5 million.

This thread could last longer than the strike!

Border bid £52k not £52m if I remember correctly.

What I dont get is why dont OFCOM look at each ITV franchise on an individual basic any more? for example they could still allow companies to individually bid for say London, West, NI or Midlands ect. This would allow actual competition again!

More like it, as Border was the poorest mainland contractor.

I stand corrected, yes £52,000 not £52 million, put it down to a 'senior moment'. I think my other figures were correct though.

Really?

How transparent were the quality threshold and business plan tests?

What specific definable criteria did the bidders have to meet on both?

How accountable were the ITC to the bidders who got disqualified for failing those tests?

Why did TSW seek the judicial review against their decision if the process was transparent?

And what exactly qualified the ITC to judge whether bidders' business plans were unsustainable anyway?

That's not even factoring in the ridiculous anomaly of Scottish and Central getting in on £2K bids because they were unopposed and North West Television bidding four times as much as Granada and losing on the quality threshold.

The 1991 system might have been better as a fixed process, but it was really no better at all at being a fair process simply because of how flawed the criteria involved in the decision making process was.

It was also more establishment then and the BBC offering its workers a huge pay rise could upset government pay policies of the seventies. However, the BBC did give in during the 1978 dispute with a 15 pc pay rise to save Christmas Day.

I don't know about current legislation but when the 1990 Broadcasting Act came about it allowed the successful applicants of the 1991 Franchise Round to rebid for their licence once the 10 year period was up providing they still met their objectives and didn't mind coughing up some more money to the treasury. This was to allow the companies involved to be in more stable grounds.

Carlton wasn't the highest bidder in London in the contest as this went to CPV-TV in terms of bidding but as you say they failed on quality so the next highest which passed was Carlton as both Carlton and Thames passed the quality threshold. Who knows what might have happened if David Mellor didn't get his quality threshold point across when the Broadcasting Act was being drawn up.

Carlton was determined to get into the ITV Network, they even bidded for the TVS region, they were the lowest of the bidders in that region but they did pass the quality threshold. Carlton was set up as the same as Meridian operated in that it was a programme comissioner rather than a programme maker.

In terms of Southern, have a read of http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~jami...n-franbat.html
this talks about Southern's chairman David Wilson letter to the IBA about how dismayed he was about their decision. There is also the response by the IBA in the same link.

I would recommend getting the book Independent Television in Britain Volume 5 by Lesley Aston and Paul Bonner. Theres a few on Ebay at the moment, it can be hard to get and really expensive and there is only going for about a £1 at the moment.

Anyhow the book looks at the life of ITV during 1981-1992 and looks at the franchise round in depth and a through look of views of people in the business of Thames/Carlton and how they believed they got to the decision.

Carlton's application against Thames was clever in that many of its programme proposals mirrored to some extent existing ones of Thames, with maybe a bit of a twist. Hence the quality differential became a difficult case to argue when the programme portfolio was so similar

Now you could argue that Thames had done it all, whereas Carlton, their past independent productions notwithstanding, were only promising. However, it was not past records that were being considered. This was even more true under the previous 'beauty contest' where the flashy star-packed promise always seemed to beat solid if unexciting performance.

And TVAM were right.
At the time Bruce Gyngell said that there was no way GMTV could sustain the service and pay what they had bid .
In such cases the IBA were able to ignore higher bids if they felt the business plan was unrealistic - and I believe they did do that in one case- TVS lost to Meridain I think despite bidding more.
However GMTV won and within a few years they had to return to the IBA/ITC to ask for a reduction in the franchise payments otherwise they would go out of business ( I don't think they were the only ones either). And they duly received that .
Gyngell was spot on and the IBA were completely wrong

Gus MacDonald (STV's MD) Gambled that no one else would bid, and he weas right!

IIRC Central put 2 bids in, one high and one for a popcorn amount (£1000 was a figure I read at the time).
At any time during the the process bids were allowed to be withdrawn, so when they were unopposed, Central withdrew the high bid and got the franchise for £1000.

Well, as you point out, CPV-TV would've taken the London weekday franchise from Thames instead of Carlton, and Channel, LWT, Grampian, Granada and Ulster would've gone too - so more than half the ITV Network would have changed identity on New Year's Day 1993.

As an aside, it's interesting to consider whether CPV-TV would've been successful if they had focused their efforts on just one bid for one franchise - either Thames or Anglia - rather than going for both and the TVS one as well.

The successful bid was £2,000 as the rules for bidding was for multiples of 1,000s and they thought a thousand wasnt a multiple on its own.

They basically copied what Thames did for two weeks in the autumn of 1984.

Not financially viable in an age of multi-channel competition on satellite. Only room for a couple of regional ITV players, STV (who it's looking like will have to occupy all ITV transmitters in Scotland to survive) and Ulster, who are actually a major media conglomerate in Britain.

This is why the idea of ultra regional TV is ludicrous in the minds of everyone who understands why ITV went to a practically national service.

One interesting thing I find about the ITV companies is their willingness to spend millions on brand new, labour-saving equipment, and then when the unions opposed this, retain old methods of doing things without so much as batting an eyelid.

I mean, in 1985, at least Yorkshire TV, Central TV* and the BBC were still using Letraset captions for opening titles and end credits, instead of electronically-generated captions. A very different story just two years later.



*Considering Central had just spent many millions of pounds bringing in whole new equipment to their brand spanking new Nottingham studios, and refurbishing the Birmingham ones, it must have seemed a little odd to anyone who wasn't a caption creator to use outdated methods in amongst a brand new studio with brand new equipment.

Even now it seems odd that programmes like S3 of Shine on Harvey Moon were using equipment and studios less than a year old at that point (summer 1984), and they were still using Letraset caption cards and using 2" VT! In brand new studios!

1956 is significant as :-

staff of the Independent Television Authority, a statutory body set up by the Televsion Act 1954, sought Union representation
and
the Certification Officer certified the ABS as an independent Trade Union, that had not been the case of the Staff Association;

in exactly the way that the John Lewis Partnership Council (on the one hand) and the News International Staff Association (on the other) are not Certified Trades Unions.