Independent Television

Channel 4 started broadcasting on November 2, 1982. Initially it reached some 73 per cent of the audience in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland; a fierce political campaign had won Wales use of the transmitters there for a separate Welsh language channel, Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C). Initial audiences for Channel 4 were low, but the channel and the producers it commissioned were wholehearted in their interpretation of the channel’s remit: new approaches were tried and new directors, artists, and writers were employed. This brought powerful results in fiction. The film dramas commissioned under the banner Film on 4 are widely regarded as having been the start of the revival of the British cinema industry. In the factual programme area, some minorities in British society were heard on television for the first time. With IBA support, the founding chief executive, Jeremy Isaacs, steered the new channel to a position five years later where it had become a highly regarded contributor to British culture. The channel’s programme commissions had also helped to create a British independent production industry, which was to have a significant voice in broadcasting matters in the future. Under successive managements from 1988 onwards, the channel largely retained its distinctive character, even when, in 1990, it was granted the right to sell its own airtime in competition with ITV.

For ITV there had been turmoil with the awards of the new contracts that were to start in 1981. The contracts of ATV, Southern Television, and Westward Television were terminated and their franchises awarded to Central Independent Television, Television South (TVS), and Television South West (TSW) respectively. A new breakfast-time (see Daytime Television) broadcasting franchise was created and given to TV-AM. The IBA processes that had led to these changes were criticized in the press and within the industry as unnecessarily secretive and apparently arbitrary. The report of a further committee on broadcasting, the Committee on the Financing of the BBC, chaired by Sir Alan Peacock in the mid-1980s, pointed to a new approach to ITV franchise awards. The committee recommended that groups or companies aspiring to be or to continue to be ITV contractors should bid money for the privilege of having a franchise and that, subject to programme quality, the highest bidder should win. Under intense lobbying from the new independent producers, who were no longer content just to serve Channel 4, Peacock also recommended that the BBC and ITV should commission 40 per cent of their programmes from independent producers.

When the government White Paper Broadcasting in the ‘90s was published in November 1988 it did contain a requirement that ITV franchises would, subject to safeguards, go to the highest bidder. It also proposed to abolish the IBA and replace it with a “lighter touch” licensing body rather than a broadcasting authority. This was to be called the Independent Television Commission (ITC). The subsequent Broadcasting Act of November 1, 1990, also offered the opportunity for a fifth channel, also to be a commercial one.

On October 16, 1991, the ITC, composed of the old IBA staff under a new chairman, George Russell, announced that it had awarded licences to 12 of the 15 existing regional ITV companies but the other 3 and the breakfast franchise changed hands. Thames was replaced by Carlton Television for the London weekday licence, Meridian Broadcasting replaced TVS in the South, and Westcountry Television took over from TSW in the South-West. TV-AM was replaced by Sunrise Television (later to call itself GMTV) for breakfast-time programming. The new companies were set up in 1992 to start broadcasting on January 1, 1993. Meanwhile, a new independent ITV Network Centre was set up, which would commission programmes for networking throughout the United Kingdom from ITV companies and independents, thus ridding ITV of the system that had been accused of being an inter-company cartel. In 1995 the ITC awarded the licence for Channel 5 to a consortium consisting of United News and Media (owners of Meridian Broadcasting), Pearson Television, CLT (the Luxembourg-based owners of commercial radio and television interests in Europe), and Warburg Pincus (venture capitalists). Channel 5 began broadcasting on March 30, 1997.

Independent television as a whole was to see even greater, and more radical change over the next seven years. A loosening by the government of the ownership rules in 1993 allowed the London weekday company, Carlton Television, to take over the Midlands seven-day franchise-holder, Central Television. Granada, the Manchester-based station, which had provided programmes for ITV since the network's inception, launched a hostile bid for London Weekend Television and, amid much acrimony, was successful, taking it over in February 1994.

Further takeovers and mergers in the following years meant that by the end of the millennium the ITV network was, in effect, under the control of just Carlton and Granada. They started a multi-channel terrestrial digital service called On Digital in head-to-head competition with Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB satellite service. By April 2001 On Digital was struggling for survival and was relaunched as ITV Digital. However, it still failed to gain sufficient audience to make it viable and went out of business on May 1, 2002. Its transmission system was later acquired by the BBC, who used it to set up a service called Freeview to carry its own digital channels and some from other sources, including ITV.

A government White Paper in December 2000 prepared the ground for an entirely new regulator to deal with the increasingly convergent communications industry. After much debate—primarily about whether foreign owners should be allowed to take over independent television stations in the UK—the Communications Act 2003 brought into being a new regulator, called OFCOM, to take over the supervision of radio, television, telecommunications, and some other related areas of use of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The foreign ownership issue was resolved by requiring foreign investors to apply to OFCOM before attempting to take over a station. If OFCOM has any concerns about the application, it can refer it to the minister responsible at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

In general, OFCOM's remit shifted the emphasis of UK broadcasting regulation away from content towards competition and the economic aspects of the industry. The broadcasters had always sought to take responsibility for the content of their programmes. Now they were able to. However, any flagrant breach of the more relaxed content rules could still result in a major financial penalty or, if repeated, a loss of licence.

OFCOM took over from its predecessors on January 1, 2004. One of its first actions was to agree the final consolidation of ITV into one company. That company, ITV plc, assumed all ITV network responsibilities on February 2, 2004.

See also Satellite Television and Digital Broadcasting.