II.

Origins

The development of independent television (ITV) was prompted by political concerns at the end of the 1940s about the power of the monopoly of broadcasting then held by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). As early as 1945, a series of articles in The Economist had attacked the broadcasting monopoly as having the faults of “timidity, conservativeness, greyness, dullness”. In 1949 the Labour government set up a committee of inquiry into the future of broadcasting, under Lord Beveridge.

The Beveridge committee, in 1951, rejected the breaking of the BBC’s broadcasting monopoly, but one of its members, the Conservative Selwyn Lloyd, produced a minority report advocating competition from commercial radio (see Independent Radio) and television stations. This report became a rallying point for like-minded Conservative figures. The lobbying force for a commercial alternative to the BBC mostly consisted of vested interests. Foremost among these were companies such as Marconi and Pye who made transmitters, studio equipment, and receivers for radio and television. Interests that wanted to have a stake in the competing media included newspapers, film companies, and cinema owners, and, of course, the advertising industry.

It was advertising, however, that was to cause problems for the initiative. There was particular concern about sponsored programmes. The only commercial television of which British politicians had knowledge was the US model with its almost universal sponsorship; this aroused deep antipathy, particularly within the Conservative Party. Then, in October 1950, Norman Collins, who had run the BBC’s most popular radio service (the Light Programme) before taking over as controller of the infant BBC Television in 1947, resigned from the BBC over a controversial appointment and became the standard-bearer of the lobby behind the minority report. He was able to convince sceptics that there could be a British form of commercial television in which the programmes would be like the BBC’s, only more popular, and would be carefully separated from the advertisements.

A parliamentary White Paper in May 1952 had proposed “some element of competition” in broadcasting. The following year, a further White Paper, much influenced by the lobby group led by Collins, proposed a system of private enterprise under public control in which direct sponsorship of programmes would not be allowed. Even this aroused strong opposition and the National Television Council was set up to oppose the introduction of commercial broadcasting. The commercial television lobby in turn formalized itself as the Popular Television Association. The postmaster general, Earl de la Warr, at this time responsible for broadcasting, steered the legislation through the House of Lords (see United Kingdom: Government), while his deputy David Gammans handled the debates in the House of Commons. After much debate, the first Television Act became law on July 30, 1954.

The Act laid down that there should be an Independent Television Authority (ITA) both to organize the setting up of the new television channel and subsequently to control all its activities. The ITA was required not only to set out codes of practice for programming and advertising, but also to own the transmitters and control all the signals to them, to ensure that improper material was not broadcast. De la Warr appointed Sir Kenneth Clark as chairman of the new nine-member Authority, who in turn recruited Sir Robert Fraser and Bernard Sendall as the ITA’s first director-general and deputy director-general respectively. These three designed a federal system in which regionally based television companies would each be contracted by the ITA to provide a complete schedule of programmes to the relevant regional ITA transmitter. The Television Act, however, required that there be an element of competition between the programme contractors. Franchises were therefore split between weekday and weekend, and four companies would serve three regions.

On October 26, 1954, the Authority members approved the first ITV contract awards. The London weekday contract went to Broadcast Relay Services and Associated Newspapers (later renamed Associated-Rediffusion); the contracts for the London weekend service and the Midlands weekday service were awarded to the Associated Broadcasting Development Company (later shortened to Associated Television and then to ATV); the Midlands and the North of England weekends were provided for by the Associated Broadcasting Development Company (later ABC Television); the North of England weekday contract went to Granada Theatres.