| Based in | London |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | London |
| Launched | 1 January 1993 |
| Closed | lost on-air identity 25 October 2002 (known as ITV1 at all times) |
| Replaced | Thames Television |
| Replaced by | ITV London |
| Website | itv.com/london |
| Owned by | ITV plc |
Carlton Television (now part of the non-franchise ITV London region) was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties including the cities of Solihull and Coventry of the West Midlands, south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire and east Gloucestershire from 09:25 every Monday to 17:15 every Friday.[1] The company is now managed with London Weekend Television as a single entity (ITV London), but the two companies are still separately licensed. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited. Carlton has been branded on air as 'ITV1' since 09:25 on 28 October 2002.
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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.
A controversial edition of Thames Television's This Week documentary series dealt with the killing of IRA members in Gibraltar by a British Army's special forces unit. Titled Death On The Rock, the programme infuriated the UK Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, as well as British tabloid newspapers. Death On The Rock went on to win a British Television Academy Award.
It has been widely believed, but not fully proven, that the 1990 Broadcasting Act was used to revoke Thames' ITV franchise licence because of Death On The Rock's criticism of the British Army.
At the stroke of midnight on 1 January 1993, following ITN's Into The New Year bulletin featuring the Big Ben chimes, technicians at the Crystal Palace transmitter switched from Thames' Euston Road headquarters to the LNN playout centre from where Carlton went on-air with an opening ident featuring the then Town Crier of London, Maurice Jones,[2] with the then-famous slogan of Carlton, "This is Carlton! Television for London", ringing the bell three times, and the first announcement from continuity announcer Graham Bannerman. He started the first continuity announcement for Carlton with these words: "And a very Happy new year. Welcome to 1993, and our first programme live from Trafalgar Square, here's Chris Tarrant with A Carlton New Year." The station's first programme was the entertainment special A Carlton New Year, produced in-house and presented by Chris Tarrant. After the special, the movie Best Defense, which starred Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy, aired, which began after Carlton's second ident, with the Cadets of the Royal Navy, saying the slogan, was shown. Idents from 1993-94 had the slogan: "This is Carlton. Television for London.", "This is Carlton" or "You're watching Carlton."
Unlike Thames (which was both a production company and a broadcaster, and following a merger, continuing to produce programmes under the name Talkback Thames), Carlton chose to commission most of its programming from independent production companies. Its contract to hold the ITV franchise licence disallows the company to commission all programming, therefore it was compulsory for Carlton to produce a minimal amount of programming for the network.
The first ever Carlton programme to be broadcast nationally was Surprise Party, effectively the same format as This Is Your Life, previously a mainstay of predecessor Thames Television. Hosted by Michael Parkinson, the first celebrity to be the subject of the show was entrepreneur Richard Branson. At the end of the hour-long show, Michael Parkinson told viewers to keep their eyes out for another Surprise Party. However, no further programmes were ever made.
Alarm bells had been ringing before Carlton even transmitted as part of the ITV network, as one notable commission with wide publicity was The Good Sex Guide, inviting scorn and derision from conservative newspapers, before it had actually been broadcast.
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[3] for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production.[4][5]
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 part of 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. Carlton also did not acquire most of HTV's production facilities, most of which Granada retained.
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 Entertainment 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 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 August 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 of England 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 the three English Carlton ITV regions were reverted back to their previous names: ITV1 for Central England again became ITV1 Central, ITV1 West of England became ITV1 West and ITV1 for the Westcountry became ITV1 Westcountry, prior to regional programming in their respective areas.
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 16 January 2006, all programmes produced by any ITV plc owned region are branded by ITV Productions.
Carlton, as a publisher broadcaster, never made any of their programmes themselves and so had no need for any studio facilities whatsoever. As a result, they were based from a newly opened playout centre located within LWT's studios in London and managed by London News Network, a joint company between Carlton and LWT that provided a seven day news service.
Carlton productions that required studio space were booked by the independent production company making them, and were filmed in independent facilities. When Carlton bought Central Independent Television in 1996, their Nottingham studios at Lenton Lane became Carlton's, giving them a studio complex that they could use, should the need for one ever arise.
Carlton are to this day based in The London Studios, albeit as part of the ITV plc operations housed there.
Carlton's on-screen identity was launched in 1993 with an ident package featuring London personalities. These people, who lived and worked in the capital would appear against a brightly coloured background with the Carlton logo in the top left corner, and would say the phrase, "This is Carlton, television for London", or other variations of the theme. In excess of sixty idents were produced and used from 1993. This was replaced by a single montage of individuals used from later on in the year until 1994.
In 1994, a new in-house look was launched featuring changing backgrounds of colours with a translucent Carlton logo in the centre of the screen, becoming opaque and white at the end of the ident. These idents lasted until 1996, but were deemed not exciting or brash enough for Carlton executives. Lambie Nairn devised the new set, featuring the Carlton logo against a brightly coloured background and various animations occurring. This could be interaction between other letters in the name, letters being replaced by objects, or the letters becoming part of something larger, such as a crossword of places in London. Thirty sequences were produced, including some designed especially to introduce certain programmes.
In 1999, Carlton's boldest rebrand yet occurred, and it was also to be its last. While other regions were about to adopt the 'Hearts' generic look, Carlton refused the look and instead adopted a package that related back to the Hearts, but put their own distinct take on it. Lambie Nairn was once again commissioned, and a dozen idents were produced and were used depending on the programme to go before it. The idents featured opening films featuring a heart shape, before a star shaped light is emitted from the heart shape, before the screen changes to the Carlton logo, now with added star in top right corner, against a spinning hearts background of different colours, with ITV logo beneath. This look has received criticism, not concerning the idents themselves, but because these idents replaced the brands used by Central and Westcountry.
Carlton used a number of continuity announcers throughout the years.
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Some notable Carlton commissions are listed below:
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Between 1996 and 2003, Carlton owned a number of extra channels, carried initially on analogue cable, and also later on their flagship platform, ONdigital too, although none of them ever made it onto Sky Digital. However, three closed in 2000; and all five were closed by 2003. Most were closed due to funding issues and lack of loyal viewership. 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 received an EPG position of its own, but would be periodically closed down to provide bandwidth "On Sport 2" during the ONdigital days.
Carlton Cinema was the Carlton channel which showed classic movies, but also unusually for a movie channel, cartoons. This ceased transmission on 31 March 2003, the last of the five Carlton channels to do so.
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 2003.
Carlton World was a general entertainment and factual channel broadcast in the evenings, with sister Carlton Kids broadcast in the daytime. This ceased transmission in 2001.
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 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.
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