Carlton Television

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Carlton Television**

Based in	London
Broadcast area	London, later the Midlands and South West England
Launched	1 January 1993

Closed	lost on-air identity 25 October 2002 (verbally known as ITV1 London before regional programming only - no visual local identity)
Replaced	Thames Television also Central Independent Television and Westcountry Television
Replaced by	ITV London also ITV Central and ITV Westcountry
Website	itvregions.com/london
Owned by	ITV plc

Carlton Television was the United Kingdom Channel 3 (ITV) licensee for London and the surrounding areas from 9:25am every Monday to 5.15pm every Friday (and for legal formalities, still is). The company is now part of ITV plc and managed with London Weekend Television as a single entity, ITV London. Major programmes include London Tonight, The London Programme and London Soccer Night.

Carlton also gained the Central England and Westcountry franchises, after successfully taking over Central Independent Television in 1994 and Westcountry Television in 1996. The regional identities of the two regions continued as normal until 1999, when Carlton controversially rebranded both of them as simply Carlton, however the official names of the franchises remained as Carlton Central and Carlton Westcountry respectively. Prior to the 1999 rebrand, Carlton axed Central's 'cake' idents, which had been in use since 1985, and replaced them with the Carlton London idents of the time, albeit cleverly replacing the word "Carlton" with "Central".

1 History
2 ITV London
3 Multi-Channel Carlton
4 Legacy
5 External links

[edit] History

Carlton Television was originally a company set up by Michael Green's Carlton Communications to bid for an ITV franchise. Having failed to buy into Thames Television in 1987, Carlton finally succeeded in ousting that broadcaster in the 1991/92 franchise round, for reasons that were seen as political.

Rather than acquiring its own studio complex, Carlton hired space from London Weekend Television and took over from Thames at midnight on January 1, 1993. Unlike Thames (which was both a production company and a broadcaster, and following a merger, continues to produce programmes as talkbackTHAMES), Carlton has always commissioned most of its programming from independent production companies. Its contract to hold the ITV franchise license disallows the company to commission all programming, therefore it was compulsory for Carlton to produce a minimal amount of programming for the network, such includes Police, Camera, Action.

Carlton found itself at the centre of a major controversy about truthfulness in broadcast journalism in May 1998, when The Guardian carried a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded 1996 Carlton documentary, The Connection, which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that The Guardian's allegations were in large part correct and the then industry regulator, the ITC, punished Carlton with a record £2-million fine[1] for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production.[2] [3]

In recent years, changes in rules concerning media ownership enabled Carlton to buy out many of the other ITV stations, including Central Independent Television, Westcountry, and it also acquired HTV (via Granada), as well as the rights to the archives of ITC Entertainment and its former sister company ATV, and the Rank film archive. HTV was the only region owned by Carlton not to be subject to a full rebrand as Carlton. Both "HTV West" and "HTV Wales" stayed with their then-current idents; however upon Carlton's purchase, the animated introduction and music to the idents were replaced by the sequences and audio in use with Carlton's graphical package. The logo and endboard of the ident remained unchanged however, using the generic hearts look of 1999.

The ITC archive is particularly lucrative since it includes such popular shows as Thunderbirds, The Prisoner, The Saint and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (original version), as well as feature films that include The Return Of The Pink Panther, On Golden Pond, and Capricorn One. Many Rank Organisation films are also part of the Carlton library. Carlton has released much of this material on video and DVD via its own label in the UK, and via A & E Home Video, Acorn Media, MGM Home Entertainment, and Lions Gate Home Entertaiment in the USA. A large number of these films were shown on Carlton's digital movie channel, Carlton Cinema, however it closed in 2003.

In September 2002, Carlton and Granada, having now acquired all the franchises in England and Wales, made the controversial decision to remove all regional idents, continuity and branding, and replace them with the single brand, ITV1. English regional idents were to only precede regional programming, and regional announcements were pre-recorded from London (Wales gets on-screen recognition prior to all programming, see ITV1 Wales). Unlike Granada-owned regions, Carlton used dual-branding on its regional idents with the Carlton logo, so the Carlton Westcountry and Carlton Central regions were simply known as ITV1 Carlton. Granada-owned franchises preferred simply to place text of the region name under the ITV1 logo. This went on until 2003, when Carlton dropped the practice, resulting in changing the brands from "Carlton Central" to "ITV1 for Central England", from "Carlton Westcountry" to "ITV1 for the Westcountry". The HTV regions were re-branded "ITV1 Wales" and "ITV1 West" in 2002.

On 2 February 2004, Carlton Communications plc merged with Granada plc, creating ITV plc, which now owns all of the ITV franchises in England and Wales under the "ITV1" brand (Wales still uses its own on-screen identity as ITV1 Wales, but now also uses English ITV1 continuity). In addition, Carlton Video became part of Granada Ventures, and two of the Carlton ITV regions were reverted back to their previous names. "ITV1 for Central England" again became "ITV1 Central" and "ITV1 for the Westcountry" became "ITV1 Westcountry", prior to regional programming in their respective areas.

[edit] ITV London

Main article: ITV London

Since 28 October 2002, Carlton Television (in common with all the other ITV companies, except Scottish Television, Grampian Television and Ulster Television) has been known on air simply as ITV1 (London Weekdays). Unlike London Weekend Television, Carlton Television did not note the last day (25/10/02) of its regional identity on-air. However, the Carlton brand continued to be seen on production captions until 2004. Since Carlton and London Weekend Television now use identical presentation and logos, the division between the London weekday and weekend franchises is now invisible, although the old LWT - now ITV1 (London Weekends) - does have London Weekend Weather, which is sponsored by a different company to that of London Weekdays.

With the merger of Carlton and Granada, Carlton Television and LWT are now run as a single entity (ITV London), with a single management team appointed to both companies. Both continue to have a separate legal existence however, and still have separate licences, although this is now just a formality.

Upon merger, Carlton lost recognition to programmes made by their companies, which became branded as "Granada" and the relevant area, for example, all programmes made in London became branded as "Granada London". From January 16, 2006, all programmes produced by any ITV plc owned region are branded by ITV Productions. This means that there is no distinction between which programmes are made by Carlton, LWT or any other ITV company.

[edit] Multi-Channel Carlton

Between 1997 and 2003, Carlton owned a number of extra channels, carried initially on analogue cable, but later their flagship platform, ONdigital, and some even made it to Sky Digital. The first channels to close were in 2000, and all five were closed by 2003. Most were closed due to cost, and lack of viewing figures. They all time-shared on three EPG positions. Carlton Food Network and Carlton Select shared a channel, and Carlton Kids, Carlton World and another channel named 'RAW!' shared the second. Carlton Cinema had a slot of its own on all platforms.

Carlton Cinema

Main article: Carlton Cinema

Carlton Cinema was the Carlton channel which showed classic movies, but also cartoons unusually; this ceased transmission in 2003.

Carlton Select

Main article: Carlton Select

Carlton Select was the main entertainment channel from Carlton, and broadcast both in the UK and Africa. It time-shared with the Carlton Food Network, and ceased transmission in 2000.

Carlton World

Main article: Carlton World

Carlton World was a general entertainment channel broadcast in the evenings, with sister Carlton Kids broadcast in the daytime. This ceased transmission in 2000.

Carlton Kids

Main article: Carlton Kids

Carlton Kids was a children's channel and showed most of all of Carlton's children's imports, and programming from Carlton's regions. Time-shared with Carlton World, it ceased transmission in 2000.

Carlton Food Network

Main article: Carlton Food Network

Carlton Food Network was the Carlton channel devoted to cookery, and time-shared with Carlton Select. It was later re-branded 'Taste CFN', and ceased transmission in late 2001.

[edit] Legacy

The Carlton name and logo have now disappeared from all branding on ITV. They can, however, still be seen in cinemas as Carlton Screen Advertising, ITV plc's cinema advertising division, sells advertising for several cinema chains in the UK and Ireland.