One such person was John Ranson, so much so that he kept many mementos of his years at ABC in Didsbury.

Amongst them is this ABC Television transmission schedule for Sunday 28 July 1968, ABC’s last day on air in the north and midlands before management upped-sticks and moved to London to become the dominant half of Thames Television on 30 July.

With a system as complicated as ITV, where there were over a dozen companies serving around 20 distinct advertising areas, swapping some programmes, timeshifting others, networking still more, there was a lot of admin work. The key to the administration of ITV was the use of transmission schedules, detailing down to the second what each company would be doing when. 18 seconds for an announcement here, 28 seconds of commercials there, programmes coming in from one company, programmes going out to another… the transmission schedule governed them all.

For ABC’s last day, John made sure to get a copy of the schedule to keep – he worked in the lines department, supervising the feeds coming in and going out along General Post Office co-axial links as well as ITA microwave connections, so he was entitled to have one. More than that, he popped round and asked staff on duty to sign it, turning it from a memento for him into an important historical document for us 50 years later.

The end of ABC meant upheaval for all staff, even those who would still be doing the same jobs in at the same desks in Teddington as the hours of broadcasting changed. This disruption would lead to strikes and lockouts taking the entire ITV network down in August, but for now it was time to say goodbye.

For administrators Pat and Deirdre, charged with collating this document, typing it up and producing Gestetner cyclographs for everybody who needed one – across the entire network – saying goodbye was done on the last page, with a jaunty drawing of Rediffusion and ABC saying goodbye while Thames emerges beneath.

From memento to historical document to a thing of beauty across 21 pages and 50 years, it’s worth reading in full just to see how complicated and planned television was and is, and how the people behind television usually are the people who love television most.

The post Inside ABC’s last day appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Then the lower rank of hotels started offering radio rooms, so the top hotels, keen to stay ahead, moved the radio into the guests’ room – usually built-in to the wall and offering a choice of three stations – the National, the Regional and a foreign entertainment station like Normandie, Luxembourg or Paris PTT.

When the lower rank copied this innovation in the late 1940s, the top hotels converted their radio room to a television room. One 405-line TV surrounded by semi-comfortable armchairs, usually rusted in to the BBC Television Service even after ITV began in 1955 and generally surrounded by dozing older people.

Of course, the lower rank of hotels again copied this, and a television room was something expected of all but the smallest and cheapest hotels by the 1960s. So the poshest of the posh hotels went one better and started to put television sets in the guests’ rooms.

Free from the tyranny of the majority, guests could now choose to watch ITV rather than the more staid BBC output of the television room. The very very top hotels even added 405/625 dual standard sets, giving guests a rare chance to see the new BBC-2.

By the late 1960s, people staying in the “best” hotels expected en suite facilities, a kettle or at least 24-hour room service providing a pot of tea on demand and a large, 18″ television in the corner. These televisions, as with ones starting to become popular at home, had pre-tunable selection buttons, offering each channel at a push (generally a very hefty push that made a satisfying clunking sound and set the TV rocking slightly). And like the ones at home, they had 4 buttons available.

The debate over what to do with the fourth channel – allocated spectrum when BBC-2 launched but never used – had been going on since the establishment of ITV in 1955. A second ITV service to compete with the first and break the advertising monopoly of the rich ITV companies was the argument most often made in Conservative circles. For Labour, the goal was a BBC-3, although the thought chilled the BBC themselves who had no idea how to pay for it. The Liberals considered an educational network to be the best use, while the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland, still to gain much in the way of representation, wanted a dedicated public service broadcaster for their nations. A tiny group of progressive socialists and patrician Tories thought the best use would be an “open” broadcaster, providing small independent companies an outlet to serve the minorities of the UK, funded out of ITV’s profits.

While these arguments trundled on in parliament, conference fringe events and the letters page of The Times and The Observer, another idea was put into action.

The British Travel Association had noted both the unused button and the fact that the top hotels had their television and radio pictures “piped in”, rather than picked up off-air. The hotels noted that the concierge services, providing advice on what to visit and offering tickets for the main attractions, were popular but often formed large queues of people who didn’t even know what they could see, let alone intended to buy tickets. And ABC TV in Teddington noted that they had studios and staff idle on weekdays and a use for the spare capacity would be very good for the bottom line.

The result was Welcome TV. Piped to the top hotels from ABC and presented by ABC announcers – Sheila Kennedy in the picture above, for instance – it provided a short package of British Tourist Authority films and event guides. Guests could be informed about when the changing of the guard took place, what to expect from the weather, and a run down of the top West End shows. Armed with this information, the guest could then go to the hotel concierge already informed about what was available, and the concierge could then sell theatre tickets, make restaurant bookings and provide a map – all with a healthy cut going to the hotel. It was win-win for everybody.

Alas, it didn’t really work. Despite keeping the information bite-sized and providing lots of opportunities to catch each programme, people were reluctant to switch on the television early in the morning – such a decadent, sloppy thing to do – and just as unlikely to pop it on of a lunchtime. By the time the evening came round, the guest had already decided what to do, or had at least queued at the concierge desk and asked him for advice. Then ABC became Thames and the spare capacity at Teddington was needed for a weekday service and so evaporated. The economic reverses of the early 1970s choked off the tourism boom and with it the generous funding for the new, statutory, British Tourist Authority, which replaced the British Travel Association in 1969.

Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting forgotten piece of television history and an example of how spare capacity in a broadcasting system will always be filled, be it with “pirate” stations or piped-in tourist TV.

Article source: https://www.transdiffusion.org/2014/12/15/abc-and-the-fourth-channel

The post ABC and the Fourth Channel appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Jack Hedley and Billie Whitelaw in the award-winning Armchair Theatre production.

Police Surgeon

Ian Hendry as Dr Geoffrey Brent attending to the wounded in the cop drama.

Our House

Hattie Jaques and Charles Hawtrey in Norman Hudis’s comedy about surreal boarding house residents.

The Human Jungle

Herbert Lom as the psychiatrist who can’t stay professionally detached from those he hopes to help.

Glamour all the way

Acceptable then, cringe-worthy now, the first Miss TVTimes contest is judged by Patrick Macnee and Adam Faith and won by Valerie Martin.

Redcap

John Thaw fights crime in the army as a member of the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch.

World of Sport

Saturday afternoons mean sport – and owning ITV’s largest Outside Broadcast fleet means ABC brings you the programme, fronted by Eamonn Andrews.

Public Eye

Alfred Burke as the private eye with no gun and no mobsters lurking.

Intrigue

Edward Judd fights industrial espionage.

The Phantom Lover

David Buck appears in a supernatural drama series Mystery and Imagination, in this story opposite Virginia McKenna.

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

CS Lewis’s timeless classic, adored by children and adults alike.

Photographs: TVTimes/ABC/ITA

The post Scrapbook appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

In week ending 2 October 1966, ATV had the number one slot with, inevitably, ‘The London Palladium Show’. The first BBC programme – ‘Till Death us do Part’ appears at position nine. ABC’s only networked entry is at number seventeen, with ‘The Eamonn Andrews Show’. This attracted 5.65 million homes to view, according to TAM, ITV’s ratings monitor.

For week ending 8 November 1964, ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’ with Jim Dale was ABC’s only entry into the network top twenty, at position 16 with 5.944 million homes.

So, does that mean that ABC’s programming was unpopular? Far from it. But ABC had to fight to get its programmes networked. Why? Because of ATV London.

ATV London’s relentless diet of peaktime entertainment, comedy and variety was very attractive to the regional companies. Cheap and popular, it guaranteed high ratings on a Saturday and Sunday night. Most companies (especially Tyne Tees, who could be depended on to show light entertainment at the drop of a hat) simply couldn’t afford to miss out on ATV’s offerings.

ATV ensured a take-it-or-leave-it approach by the simple mechanism of making the programmes live: there would be no second chance to get a feed of the show.

ABC, meanwhile, was turning out hour upon hour of nationally-shown material on videotape and film. The programmes were not only popular, but phenomenally popular and of a noted high quality. But they didn’t end up networked. Instead, they were shown as ‘ABC Television Network’ productions rather than ‘ABC Weekend’ productions during the week by the other companies.

If this system was bad for ABC, it was worse for Sir Lew. His ITC programmes were also sold individually and not networked, meaning popular ITC programming, including the Gerry Anderson supermarionette series, also failed to show up in the top tens.

Perhaps the system could have been made better by aggregating the showings of ABC, and ITC’s, output. But such a system would have been almost impossible to work, and would have a bad side effect. If an aggregated rating system had been used, ATV/ITC and ABC would have been neck-and-neck in the ratings. But this would have been to the detriment of the slow-and-steady ratings-earners like Granada and Rediffusion.

The American system of audience measurement – based on demographics and market shares – may have benefited ABC more than it does with the smaller stations in the US. But the process is slow and expensive, and as far as ATV, Rediffusion and Granada were concerned, it wasn’t broke so there was no point fixing it.

ABC still made a huge profit every year, so were probably not that concerned themselves.

July 1967 – Largest Television Audiences

ITV was in the midst of its ‘Golden Era’ in the middle sixties – a situation that would be dramatically reversed in the early seventies due to the costs of colour and the recession that swept in with Ted Heath’s new Government.

To illustrate who was watching what in July 1967, the ITA published the following lists of popular programmes for the month in the 1968 yearbook. The graphs show how close-fought the race for popular approval was – and how ITV held the trump cards.

Variety

Most popular: ABC Weekend’s “Blackpool Show” with 6.8million homes, followed at 5.1million homes by ABC Weekend’s “Opportunity Knocks” which was not networked in 1967. ATV’s “Palladium” was not running.

Children

Southern leads the way with “Danger Island” watched in 3.05million homes. ABC is next with the much-loved “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” with 3m homes. The BBC’s “Doctor Who”, “Junior Points of View” and “Boss (aka Top) Cat” finish the top 5.

Drama

The most fought-over sector is lead – inevitably – by Granada with “Coronation Street” on Mondays with 7.75m homes and Wednesdays with 7.15m. The BBC offers imported drama in the form of “Perry Mason” with 6.15m and “The Man from UNCLE” with 4.45m. ABC’s offering is “Callan” at 4.3m, matched by Rediffusion’s “Sanctuary”. The BBC takes the next 3 places with “The Girl from UNCLE”, “Iron Horse” and “Daktari”, while Granada rounds off the top 10 with “The Fellows” – something gritty and northern, no doubt.

Plays

Showing that the size of the audience is not related to the resources of the production company, Anglia walks away with 7.6m homes for “The Sleeping Partner”, part of their Summer Playhouse. ATV’s Love Story series wins 6.1m for the episode “Cinema Verité”, while Rediffusion’s non-networked Half Hour Story takes 5.7m for the episode “Dead Certainty”.

ABC comes fourth with an episode from the long-running Armchair Theatre entitled “Another Branch of the Family” with 5.55m homes. The BBC take 2.75m for their unusually entitled Wednesday Play “The Lump”.

Religion

Often the stronghold of the smaller ITV regions – the only opportunity for Border and Westward to get access to the network in some years – ATV takes the prize this time with 2.5m homes watching “Tree House Family”. ABC’s “The Song Break” makes a strong showing for this genre with 2.25m, followed by Southern’s “God’s Trombone” with 2.05m and the BBC’s “Songs of Praise” with 2m.

Scottish puts in an appearance with “The Wallace Collection” at 1.90, joint 5th with Anglia’s “Rejoice”.

The post Charting ABC appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The Associated Broadcasting Development Company became Associated TeleVision for London weekends and Midland weekdays. Granada Theatres developed Granada Television Network for Northern weekdays. Kemsley Newspapers and Winnick Entertainment formed Kemsley-Winnick for Northern and Midland weekends.

Then a problem appeared. Maurice Winnick admitted to the ITA that he did not have the finance available to run two ITV stations. The finance had never existed, but he had hoped it would arrive. It didn’t, and the potential losses frightened Lord Kemsley’s newspaper group (later to be bought out using ITV profits by Lord Thompson of STV) away.

Winnick insisted the he could, eventually, pull together the people and talent required for a new television channel. He was wrong, and, in any case, Kenneth Clark and the ITA staff had lost faith in his consortium. But what now?

Two days in the Midlands and the same two days in the North was not a plum contract. The ITA had to fill the weekends – ITV without weekends was ridiculous, while ITV with seven-day companies in major regions would hand the network to Granada – or worse, to ATV with a national contract (Monday to Friday in the Midlands, weekends in every major region) – but who would want such a minor role?

The Associated British Picture Corporation, with their chain of ABC cinemas, had campaigned long and hard against advertising-supported television. Television took viewers away from the cinema, and advertising-supported television would take even more revenue from the company. Even when Granada Theatres decided to use the old adage ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, ABPC held out.

Then Kemsley-Winnick fell at the first hurdle. Sir Kenneth was soon on the ‘phone. Would ABPC consider taking a contract? Would you help me out of a spot? What if the contract offered large returns for little risk – two days a week in two regions? What if I promised to pay you some of the £750,000 promised by the government should ITV fail?

ABPC had no choice – a business opportunity avoided by gut feeling was one thing. A business opportunity avoided despite there being a guarantee of breaking even at the very least was another.

ABPC accepted the contracts for Midlands (Saturdays and Sundays) and Northern England (Saturdays and Sundays). ABC Television, as the new venture was to be called, had five months to prepare for broadcasting to begin in the Midlands.

This is the story of that company. The story of the only organisation to never apply for an ITV franchise, yet get one. The story of a company that produced the best drama, the most popular programmes, and the classic presentation that gave rise to Transdiffusion. ABC produced a generation of producers, presenters, directors, designers and technicians with ‘quality’ written through them.

ABC, by accident and design, created and nurtured ITV. ABC was the trendsetter whose influence we still see, hear and feel today. ABC made television that still resonates now.

ABC Your Weekend TV.

The post A success story appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The fear of bias in television news (and never let it be said that the British ever didn’t understand the potential power of this medium) had led many to call for no news provision or news to be provided by the ITA themselves. News from individual companies, with their multiple shareholders and shareholdings and the stated political beliefs of the newspaper investors, could not, it was felt, be trusted.

The ITA would have nothing to do with the idea of producing programmes itself, no matter what the genre. Although the Television Act cleared the way for them to control as much, or as little, of the output as they desired, Sir Kenneth Clark had a vision for the network that had his ITA as the king over the water – a guiding influence, but never seen or heard.

Thus an independent company owned by all the players on the network was created. Independent Television News (a name that purposely let you put a mental comma in any one of three places) was formed with a board drawn from the ITV companies and a representative from the ITA.

ITN began planning for a large news service modelled on that provided by the American networks. In-vision ‘newscasters’, human-interest stories, filmed inserts and hard-hitting interviews from the hardest-hitting interviewers were to be the order of the day.

This suited the ‘BBC with adverts’ mentality at Associated Rediffusion. It also suited the ‘big names, big stories’ enthusiasm at Associated TeleVision. As the network prepared for its leap northwards into Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, it suited Granada’s down-to-earth ethos as well.

It didn’t suit Associated-British. Despite being given full possession of the facts at their hurried interview, shortly after the launch of commercial television, ABC baulked at the costs involved in running a news service – a quote of 77,400GBP a year (equating to about 900,000GBP at current prices) for two bulletins a day to a total of 17 minutes plus a 5 minute newsreel if required.

Stiff letters were exchanged between the ITA and ABC, and between ABC and the board of ITN. ‘Less film, more talk’ was ABC’s suggestion, while ITN’s contribution was to immediately start to fall apart under the unexpected pressure. The ITA’s tuppenceworth was to simply point to ABC’s ambiguously worded contract with a confidence its officers didn’t actually have.

The troubles lead to an unbelievable event in ITV’s history. Robin Day, chief newscaster at ITN, had to interview Sir Kenneth Clark (head of the ITA) about the potential collapse of the company he was working for, live on one of ITN’s bulletins.

This was a breach of the very Television Act that Clark was to quote from on air. As a (nominal) civil servant, he was not allowed to appear on television to talk about television. As ever, the Act did not stand in his way, and while breaking the letter of the act, called for the companies to stand by the spirit of it.

His impassioned defence of the Act, of the ITV system and of ITN as it was constituted brought ABC into the fold. They joined the board of ITN on 1 March 1956. But as a consequence, the debacle cost the head of ITN’s first Editor-in-Chief. He walked away and stood for parliament, becoming a well-known and accomplished MP, but never forgot the affair and vowed to return to independent television later.

He was Aidan Crawley, and he would be back to haunt ABC later.

The post Crisis at ITN appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

In the midlands, the only economic option was to bunk up with rival weekday company ATV. Neither company had set its heart on the midlands and neither saw its ultimate future to lie there. With no real centre to the region (Birmingham was the official centre, but Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby all claimed to be more vibrant) both ‘Associateds’ felt that, with large London production facilities available nearby, the midlands was just too close to support two more studio buildings.

The result of this apparent lack of faith was the birth of Alpha Television. Based in the run down industrial area of Aston, a former village subsumed into the sprawl of Birmingham, the joint company provided facilities to both companies with an agreeable economy of scale from the beginning.

If the idea of joint facilities – nothing new in London or the midlands – was broached by ABC when starting operations in the north, no record remains of Granada’s response. Quay Street remained a Granada-exclusive centre, and ABC never operated from there.

Instead, the area west of the Pennines was scoured in order to find a premises that matched 3 criteria:

1. That it was large enough to house 3 studios;
2. It was already owned by ABPC or at least available cheaply;
3. If it was owned by ABPC, they would not feel the loss through the change of use.

Didsbury was the answer. This well-to-do suburb of Manchester was well connected by road and rail, close enough to get to the important centres of the region, far enough from the city to be quiet. Above all it contained a building that matched all three criteria, more or less – the ABC Capital Cinema.

The Capital was large enough for one main stage with audience on the ground floor, one videoing stage on the first floor, with a presentation and news studio (no more than a room) tucked away to the side of the smaller stage.

The building, obviously, was already in the family; the remaining criterion – that the parent corporation should not be put out by its loss – was fulfilled easily. The cinema operations of ABPC, while not loss making, were beginning to feel the pinch as tastes changed. The Capital wasn’t losing money – but it wasn’t making enough for ABPC to notice the loss.

To the sound of anguished disapproval from local residents, Associated British Cinemas announced the closure of the Capital, Didsbury; at the same time ABPC announced the location of their new northern studios. The two announcements concerned the same building.

The comparatively small space provided by the Capital Studios compared to the likes of Granada’s Quay Street and Associated-Rediffusion’s grand plans in Wembley were soon apparent. Space in an office block in the centre of Manchester was purchased for the advertising department – a building that to this day retains the name “Television House” and a suite of offices that now houses – of all things – the Independent Television Commission’s northern office.

ABC also went on to develop small news studios and advertising offices elsewhere in its region (the ABC cinema in Liverpool gave up an upstairs office to ABC Weekend’s news department, while ABC’s famously pushy advertising executives moved into Permanent House in Leeds, uncomfortably close to both Granada and Associated-Rediffusion’s own northern sales departments).

But for all this, the towns of Didsbury, Aston and Teddington were to be forever linked in the minds of viewers to ABC Weekend TV.

The post Three Lions appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

When ABC Weekend TV upped-sticks and moved to London to become Thames Television, the famous studios at Didsbury were consigned to history.

Ironically, the last productions to be made at Didsbury were made by ABC on behalf of Yorkshire Television, who were had begun broadcasting from Leeds, reflecting the new geographical (as opposed to chronological) split in the north.

After production finally ceased at Didsbury – YTV having completed its Kirkstall Road studios – the building eventually ended up under control of a university, who used it for cinema and television studies.

All things end, and so it was with the Capitol Studios, pulled down to make room for senior citizens accommodation. One is left wondering if the new inhabitants are aware that they are sleeping, eating and socialising in the same space that once rang with the sound of Hughie Green offering opportunity a knock at someone’s door, Steed delivering a blow to an assailant, or even a man in a booth saying “ABC, your weekend television in the north”

Photos courtesy of Kif Bowden-Smith, Tim Disney and Hector Hill

The post From the north appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

But the new pattern of franchises advertised in 1966 by Lord Hill of Luton’s ITA to begin in the latter part of 1968 had a hurdle in them – the end of the weekday/weekend split except in London. Of all the companies who would be affected by this change, ABC was the one who would feel it most. Quite simply, its regions would cease to exist.

Howard Thomas and the board of ABC began to scout around for a new region. There was an obvious one: London weekends, the only area to keep the old split, now with the addition of the Friday evening.

The ITA required that the existing companies submitted a list showing, in order of preference, which regions they were interested in. Some were predictable, with Rediffusion choosing London weekdays or southern England. Some were knowing, like ATV ignoring London weekends in favour of a first choice of the Midlands seven days. Some were blindingly obvious – where else could Granada go?

And then there was ABC. First choice: London weekends, followed by Midlands seven-day against ATV and the new Yorkshire region. Patently, London weekends would be the reward, an example of good things coming to those who wait.

At the BBC, there were several employees who felt that the Corporation had lost its way. Proper programmes for the intelligentsia were disappearing under the onslaught of popular programming. BBC-2 was a ghetto, BBC-1 was a no-go area.

But ITV was rolling in money. London was swinging, and Rediffusion and ATV were swinging with it. All this money and no effort required. The viewers would watch anything put in front of them (they must do – have you see the Palladium show?) so why not ballet, Pinter and opera? Since these executives were crying out for more culture, it was obvious that the public were, too. And there was all that money available for the taking – ATV was making millions for two days.

David Frost, Michael Peacock and the former Editor in Chief of ITN, Aidan Crawley MP, put a consortium together, poaching BBC and Rediffusion staff, plus cultural icons from throughout the capital. Highbrow arts, highbrow drama, everything that ITV was missing.

ABC must have sniggered at this consortium at first. They knew that the weekends were a hard-fought time, that people did indeed want arts programming, but were prepared to get up early or stay up late for it. The money did not pour in, but had to be carefully harvested.

But Hill, it turns out, was easily impressed by a few famous names and some ambitious plans. ITV was successful but stale, and he planned to change this. But then he was stuck. How could the brilliantly-polished LTC – the Frost Consortium as it was inaccurately labelled in the media – and ABC be accommodated together in the new system?

LTC was clear – London weekends or nothing. ABC could slot into Yorkshire, but the creation of that new region was predicated on the idea that a local company of local talent backed with local money should step in. ABC could displace the much-loathed ATV in the Midlands. But then Hill would have to find a home for ATV – politically it was impossible to remove entirely a company with such a good export arm when the government of the day was crying out for foreign currency.

Like a cork in a sink full of water, one of the companies would bob to the top again, displaced. ATV had to be kept. Yorkshire wasn’t available to a ‘London company’. London weekends were spoken for. Granada was untouchable. Where next? What to do?

The ITA under Hill had been unhappy with Rediffusion. There was nothing major wrong with them, per se. They were a fine company with fine programmes and a fine reputation. But that was all – they had no flair, no unique selling point, that the ITA could see. And they were arrogant, strutting through ITA interviews as if the regulator didn’t matter. They didn’t listen – weren’t interested in listening – as they patently knew better than the ITA how to produce a solid television service.

The idea of replacing them must have been attractive to Hill. No more trouble, no more arrogance. But the London weekday contractor was the mainstay of the the network, the anchor of the system. Any company that replaced Rediffusion would need extremely deep pockets to build a service as solid as Rediffusion’s existing one. Londoners would immediately see a mistake had been made if a lesser company appeared. And Londoners included the politicians who ran the country and ‘owned’ the ITA.

ABC did not have the resources to immediately begin producing the schools programmes and current affairs that Rediffusion supplied to a grateful network. So Rediffusion was safe. But there was a precedent available. When the system was first formed, the ITA had been happy to merge different bidders, to change shareholdings and interests. A new franchise round, where all applicants, even those previously established, were to be under new contracts left Hill with a free hand.

What if a displaced company were to takeover the London weekday contract from Rediffusion, but keep the schools programmes and current affairs and back catalogue of the removed company. What if Rediffusion could be offered a price – a carrot – for agreeing?

What if ABC were to take the London weekdays contract, but be allowed to pick and choose the staff, talent and programming of its predecessor? If ABC was running Rediffusion’s service, a solid company would be created – but one with a renewed flair for daring and original programming.

ABC and Rediffusion were jointly offered Rediffusion’s contract, with Rediffusion given half the profits and 49% of the company. This sweetened a bitter pill for Rediffusion, but it was a slap in the face to Britain’s first commercial broadcaster.

Still, with 49% of the new station, they would have a large say in the direction it was to take, wouldn’t they?

The post End game appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The post All things end appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

This was bad news for Rediffusion. The 49% of the contract granted to them by the ITA may have given them some power in a merger. But 49% of a new company was simply an investment – nothing more. The sliver of a majority that ABPC would hold in the company would be enough to control it utterly. And they did.

To start, a name had to be found. The name ABC was good. It had a history and was well known. But the television market was globalising, and that meant confusion in the minds of international buyers between ABC UK and ABC US. Additionally, ABC would continue to be a brand in its own right – the highest-earning export programmes were hived off from the new company immediately, preserving the profits for ABPC.

So a new name had to be found, plans already having been made to change the name if they won the London weekend contract. Capital Television and Tower Television were seriously considered. The London Television Consortium, busy botching plans for London weekends, had chosen the name Thames Television.

But the rationalists at LTC felt that the ethos of the new company was better served by calling it what it was: London Weekend Television. The name ‘Thames’ came free, and ABPC grabbed it with both hands.

Studios needed rationalising. Thames would have excess capacity with Teddington, Television House and Wembley all available. LWT needed studio space badly as they had not considered the need at all when applying for the contract, other than to promise to build studios when cash allowed. LWT wanted Teddington. That caused ABPC and the ITA to panic… and Rediffusion was told to give up Wembley to the new weekend contractor. The staff went to LWT too.

ABPC began picking and choosing from the Rediffusion staff. The children’s department, the current affairs department and the schools department went to Thames. The rest were waved away – the presentation department decamping to Leeds, most others going to LWT. The rest of the positions were filled by ABC staff already in place at Teddington. Thus did Thames grow.

To a point, a company is what its majority shareholder or board of directors want it to be. But in day-to-day workings, a company is the people who work there. For Thames, that meant ABC people.

Very soon, ABPC itself was gone, swallowed up by the behemoth of EMI. EMI itself would merge with Thorn. Over the coming years, shareholdings would change and Thames would at one point find its majority shareholder to be BET, of all people. Eventually, the company was listed on the stockmarket, owned by institutional investors and Thorn EMI. Now it is just a brand name used by Pearson Television.

But through all of the changes of ownership and composition, ABC remained dominant. ABC people trained their successors to be ABC people. Former staff of ABC, when asked many years later who they work for instinctively start saying ‘ABC’ before correcting themselves. Today we would call this a corporate culture. Back then, it was just ABC.

A merger was out of the question. ABC’s profits from exports were high enough that ABPC was unwilling to give up half of them for Rediffusion to take.

The post Perpetuum Mobile appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.