Night Network


Night Network, Night Time and Night Shift were names given to the overnight schedule of the ITV network in the United Kingdom. The first ITV company began 24-hour broadcasting in 1986, with all of the companies broadcasting through the night by the end of 1988. At first, individual companies created their own services; however, before too long, many of the smaller ITV stations began simulcasting or networking services from others.
From this, numerous services began each offering their own distinct take on programmes, with regions taking one of the services on offer. As each franchise was taken over, however, the services became fewer in number. Today, all of the ITV plc regions, show teleshopping, followed by repeats of daytime programming and then Unwind with ITV. STV broadcasts its own strand, Teleshopping and Nightvision.

History

Up until the mid-1980s, all British television stations closed down for the night at around 12:30am, sometimes up to an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. Some of the ITV companies wanted to expand their broadcasting hours in the belief there was an untapped market for television through the night. As early as 1983, London Weekend Television was experimenting with extra hours on Friday and Saturday nights during its Nightlife strand, which pushed back closedown until after 2am.
And between November 1986 and December 1987, Central and Granada would stay on the air into the night for live world title boxing matches involving Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. Thames would also air the coverage when a fight took place on a weekday.
By 1988, Channel 4 had extended late night broadcasting hours and transmission staff for the ITV regional companies were required to play out the network's commercial breaks, even if their station had already closed down. There was also speculation of a threat from the Independent Broadcasting Authority to franchise overnight hours to a new company, as had been the case with breakfast television.
Within just over two years of ITV's first overnight experiment, the entire network had commenced 24-hour transmission.

Early experiments

On 9 August 1986, Yorkshire Television became the first ITV company and the first British terrestrial television station to offer 24-hour broadcasting. This was achieved by simulcasting the satellite station Music Box for a three-month trial, as permitted by the IBA. The all-night simulcasts continued until Friday 2 January 1987 – shortly before Music Box ceased operations as a broadcaster. On 13 January 1987, Yorkshire became the second region to launch a teletext-based Jobfinder service for one hour after close-down with a Through Till Three strand on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights introduced in April.
On 25 April 1987, Central began extending its programming hours to 3am on weeknights and 4am at weekends, airing its own schedule of films, series and hourly Central News bulletins entitled More Central. The station's Jobfinder service was expanded from a single hour after close-down to fill the remainder of the night until TV-am took over at 6am. Meanwhile, Granada Television took a more restrictive approach – during 1987, the station introduced a Nightlife strand, which saw programming hours extended until around 3am on Friday and Saturday nights only. A short-lived joint schedule was introduced by Central, Granada and Scottish Television when the companies began full 24-hour transmission on 13 February 1988, but was abandoned within a few months. During this time, all three stations provided local presentation. Central continued to air its own overnight service until 1994, when it briefly took Carlton's Nightime service.
In August 1987, Anglia Television, Thames Television and LWT began 24-hour broadcasting. Thames's Into the Night strand began in June 1987 with broadcasts originally running until around 4am, extending to a full service on Monday 17 August 1987. Anglia originally opted to air Night Network on weekends alongside its own overnight schedule on weeknights while LWT filled the post-Night Network slot with a short-lived Thru to 6 strand. Tyne Tees Television also experimented with 24-hour transmission when in December 1987, it began airing its own teletext Jobfinder service between close-down and 6am. This continued until Granada's Night Time service launched on Tyne Tees the following September.
TVS, which also aired Night Network at weekends, started its own Late Night Late strand on Monday 25 January 1988, gradually extending its broadcast hours until a full 24-hour service began on 30 May 1988 – the strand was the first to be simulcast on another ITV station,.
HTV Wales and HTV West began broadcasting its own Night Club service on 22 August 1988. Both Late Night Late and Night Club took on a different approach to the practice of in-vision continuity – incorporating viewers' letters, competitions and live studio guests – such features were also used by Thames and Anglia's regional overnight strands.
One constant of all the overnight services, regardless of their differing schedules, was overnight news bulletins provided by ITN, referred to as simply the ITN News Headlines. These were no-frills bulletins, originally proceeded by a variant of the ITN animation of the time set over a dusk sky background ; these bulletins would lead into the ITN Morning News, and typically the anchor of that day's edition of the ITN Morning News would also anchor the short updates. The headlines were aired at different times depending on the schedule; both the bulletins and the Morning News debuted on 15 February 1988. Thames also briefly aired editions of CNN Headline News before the ITN World News in 1988.

''Night Network''

Night Network was ITV's first overnight programme, beginning on Friday 28 August 1987, originally for the ITV regions covered by LWT, TVS and Anglia, before expanding to other regions during 1988. The programme aired between 1am and 4am in the Friday and Saturday night schedules, and between 1am and 3am in the Sunday night schedule.
The show was produced for Night Network Productions and LWT by Jill Sinclair who had been the producer of BBC1's Pop Quiz and Channel 4's The Tube at Tyne Tees Television, aiming for a similar audience to that of these two shows. The format of Night Network was similar to Channel 4's Network 7, or even a late night adult version of Saturday morning kids TV, as it was a mixture of quizzes, celebrity guests, imported serials and bands.
Feature segments included Street Cred with Paul Thompson, Video View with Steve Allen and Kate Davies, Rowland Rivron in The Bunker Show, Tim Westwood's N-Sign Radio, Emma Freud's chat segment Pillow Talk, Geoffrey Cantor's video segment The Axeman, Barbie Wilde's video review for The Small Screen, and quiz show The All New Alpha Bet Show hosted by Nicholas Parsons, whilst cult TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Batman were also frequently seen. Originally, on Sunday nights, classic movies were shown but this was only until the programme was expanded to other ITV regions on Friday 2 September 1988.
Although it proved a success, Night Network was never broadcast nationally as Central opted out of the entire programme from the start to provide its own schedule. With more programmes competing for the overnight slots, the Sunday edition was eventually dropped in autumn 1988. Around the same time, the first hour of Night Network became a regional For London Only segment on LWT while the remaining two hours continued to air across other regions, albeit in differing timeslots depending on the stations' preferred schedules.
Night Network was broadcast for the last time on Friday 31 March 1989.

''Night Time'' from Granada

On 2 September 1988, four of the smaller ITV companies, American Gladiators, WCW Worldwide and Donahue. There was also a limited number of home-produced programming such as Granada's Nightbeat, The Other Side of Midnight, The Hitman and Her, Quiz Night, Movies, Games and Videos, Get Stuffed, Stand Up and LWT's Cue the Music.
Traditionally, Grampian would opt out of the overnight networked service by providing its own regional schedule on Hogmanay night into New Year's Day morning - with the exception of 1988 and 1997, as Grampian carried the network schedule through the night as normal after their hogmanay output had finished broadcasting to their region. Respectively, Border Scotland would also carry STV's hogmanay show on a yearly basis too, but didn't provide a regional schedule of their own afterwards, so they too carried the overnight network schedule as normal.
Granada's Night Time service was wound down during 1995 – with programming carried from LNN from January onwards before presentation was handed over to the London service on 5 June.

''Night Shift'' from Yorkshire

On 29 May 1988, Yorkshire Television reintroduced a full through-the-night service, this time consisting of films, imports, series and networked original programming including YTV's The James Whale Radio Show, simulcast locally with Radio Aire. Following Yorkshire's buyout of Tyne Tees Television in 1992, a new overnight service for both stations was launched entitled Night Shift, broadcast across both regions from YTV's transmission centre in Leeds with pre-recorded continuity from the station's announcing staff. Separate overnight presentation for the YTV and Tyne Tees areas was introduced two years later.
Both regions aired the same schedule of imports, films, local programming and Bollywood movies although for a short while, YTV refused to air more adult programming such as The Good Sex Guide and God's Gift – while such output continued to air on Tyne Tees. The service remained locally originated until 18 January 1998. YTV continued to opt out of the network for its regular Jobfinder programme at 5am until around 2005.