Game Of Thrones: An ITV Story

Southern Rhapsody

In much the same way as the former Trident partners TVS and LWT embarked on a undercover arrangement from 1982 onwards, like Trident there was a transmitter overlap at Hannington but unlike Trident LWT's part time operation meant that it was more able to give their Southern neighbours more help. LWT was more like ABC and ATV in that it provided many networked programmes but it was also encumbered with the requirement if the IBA to provide a news service. (It had been told that this was a requirement of the re-issuing of their licence.)

LWT balked at the idea. As a part time broadcaster they felt that a news operation was a waste of time and money. TVS willingly stepped in. Unbeknown to Brompton Road TVS used their Canterbury studios (used to broadcast Southeast Extra, a Friday night show) to give LWT a base and journalists to provide a perfunctory service. This allowed LWT to continue to make its highly regarded political chat show "Weekend World" as well as the long running 'World Of Sport" without having to spend much money.

This clandestine alliance would later prove to be the catalyst for a major change in the structure of ITV.
 
Capital Carnage

London was inevitably the focus of the budding trauma. With ABC, ATV, Daybreak, LWT and ITN all based in the City they had the lions share of profits and prestige. ABC and ATV simply hated each other. Both were responsible for providing big names and big programmes for the network and each were constantly trying to outdo each other.

This was highly prominent on Saturday nights. Both ABC and ATV wheeled out their big guns to go up against the BBC who had a formidable lineup. Dr Who, Roy Castle's Generation Game and the hospital based soap Angels faced Cilla Black's Match Game, Play Your Cards Right (ATV) and Frost on Saturday (ABC)
 
Border Skirmishes

Granada and STV may have technically covered different regions, even different nations but that still didn't stop the turmoil in ITV.

The trouble centered around the smattering of land that was in the overlap between the transmitters at Winter Hill, Carlisle and Selkirk. Granada (and until 1968) ABC broadcasted from the first and STV had the latter two. While viewers in the are may have felt lucky to have 2 ITV channels to choose from (aerial installers in the area benefitted greatly from installing dual setups) there were those north of the border who had a intense dislike of what they saw as "foreign" programmes being broadcast to the nation..

The issue of nationalism also applied to Wales. TVW and HTV who again due to transmitter placements found themselves with two nations to cover. Whilst the arrival of S4C in 1982 relieved HTV of the burden of programming welsh language programming (Their 1983 promotional message was "HTV speaks your language") There were those in the principality who felt that TVW's reach into South Wales was a threat to Welsh language and values)

As strong as these feeling were they paled into insignificance when contrasted with UTV. Of all the stations that had to walk the proverbial tightrope UTV had proved themselves to be the most adapt. They had to be. The turmoil that benighted the province led to many in the company calling it "the split personality station". More often then not there'd be a police warning regarding a bomb in Belfast city centre and then 2 minutes later Coronation Street.

UTV also found themselves having to deal with the "threat" of Irish broadcaster RTE. Technically speaking the state broadcaster couldn't transmit within the province but that didn't stop enterprising engineers both along the border and the east coast providing feeds from the republic.
 
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