Television South
Television South was the ITV franchise holder in the South and South East of England between 1 January 1982 at 9.25 am and 31 December 1992 at 11.59 pm. The company operated under various names, initially as Television South plc and then following reorganisation in 1989 as TVS Entertainment plc, with UK broadcasting activities undertaken by subsidiary TVS Television Ltd.
During its 11-year history, TVS produced a number of notable programmes for the ITV network especially in the fields of drama, light entertainment and children's programming. It was also a significant regional broadcaster producing a wide range of programmes for its area with the flagship being the nightly award-winning news programme Coast to Coast produced as two separate editions for the South and South East.
TVS ceased broadcasting on 31 December 1992 after losing its franchise to Meridian Broadcasting during the review of franchise holders in 1991. The company was sold to the US firm International Family Entertainment in 1993.
The trademarks of Television South are now owned by an independent production company, while a majority of the company's back catalogue is now owned by The Walt Disney Company. TVS Television Ltd itself was in existence until 2018, and was ultimately a non-trading subsidiary of Virgin Media.
Formation
Television South was formed following discussions between television producer James Gatward, television executive Bob Southgate, who had previously worked at ITN, Thames Television, and journalist Martin Jackson to apply for the new south and south-east of England ITV franchise in 1980. Finance was provided by Barclays Bank and Charterhouse investment bank. This area was the most hotly contested, with seven other applicants besides TVS and the incumbent Southern Television.The Independent Broadcasting Authority had decided to increase the area covered by the south to now include the south east. This meant switching the main Bluebell Hill transmitter, and associated relays to broadcast Television South instead of ITV London. To reflect this, the contract area served by Southern Television, which was previously titled the south of England area, was renamed south and south-east of England'. To serve the new region better, the IBA expected the successful applicant to operate separate facilities for both the south and the south-east, known as a 'dual-region', with new additional facilities to be built in the south east.
Following the submission of its application, TVS was anticipating that it would be forced into a shotgun marriage with Southern, but in the end, TVS won outright against the seven other contenders since its plans for a better mix of programmes and greater investment were considered good enough to operate the franchise alone. This was the official line given by the IBA, but it was also considered that Southern's non-local ownership and its very conservative nature led to it being dropped in favour of the more interesting proposals made by TVS in its franchise application.
By the start of 1981 a number of high-profile personalities had joined the station in preparation for the start of the new franchise:
- Michael Blakstad, formerly of Tomorrow's World, as director of programmes;
- Anna Home, formerly of BBC children's output, as head of programmes for children and young people;
- Michael Rodd, as head of science and industry programmes;
- Herbert Chappell, in charge features, education and music.
Michael Blakstad, director of programmes, claimed ITV needed a shake up as an advertiser, and viewers did not like contemplating the ITV nightly programme offering and were thus hoping the 'Big Five' would welcome TVS with open arms as a chance to light up the schedules, as the only 'occasional flash of excitement' appeared from LWT's The South Bank Show. Blakstad also claimed none of TVS's £2 million worth of new programming had been accepted for networked transmission, and TVS was invited to the monthly contractors' meetings as observer only from May 1982. He also expressed doubts that Yorkshire Television would give up its monopoly of networked science programmes. Blakstad stated: 'TVS was awarded the franchise to bring a catalyst to ITV, but the authority may have to help them get into the laboratory first.'
In the days before the start of the new franchise, the Independent Broadcasting Authority made it clear that they were happy about the service changes, and were particularly impressed with TVS in connection with new programming for the ITV network in areas in which the IBA wished for improvements, mainly children's output and the sciences. TVS's aims were for a different line of programming in the early evening slots, to win back the 50,000 viewers it claimed were switching over to rivals, due to the poor service provided by Southern.
TVS began broadcasting at 9.30 am on Friday 1 January 1982. The new dual-regional station sprang to life with its new specially composed start-up theme – variously named but referred to in-house as TVS Gallop – accompanied by a programme menu and clock. Continuity broadcaster Malcolm Brown, formerly of Granada, made the opening announcement:
Following the first airing of the station's first ident, the first programme to air was a Coast to Coast special entitled Bring in the New, presented by Khalid Aziz. A number of presenters made the transition from Southern to TVS; all production staff were transferred as part of the then-union agreements within ITV that no technician should lose employment as a result of franchise changes. 200 staff were also recruited for the facilities at Gillingham and Maidstone, although a small number of these were made redundant after the company went on-air, as the studios struggled to reach production capacity, restricted by TVS's limited access to the ITV network.
Broadcasting years
Prior to broadcasting, TVS refused to take on most of Southern's programme stock, except the arrangement to cover two Glyndebourne operas each year. Following the launch of Channel 4 in November 1982, the operas were shown on that channel. Houseparty was replaced by Not For Women Only which recognised changes in women's social patterns, while a new Saturday morning children's series called No. 73 was also introduced, locally at first, before being networked.Whitbread acquired a 20% stake in TVS from European Ferries in April 1984, as the latter wished to concentrate its financial and management resources on the shipping and property sectors, but sold on the stake in November 1986. Financial director Lionel Ross said:
In August 1984, Greg Dyke joined TVS as director of programmes, coming from TV-am. He was brought in to rejuvenate the station, and started to move programming away from its original philosophy of niche arts and science programming, and began producing more entertainment programmes. In 1985, an agreement was reached with LWT, which required help to fill its schedules with appropriate, domestically produced programming while not having to increase its budget; thus TVS was able to get more of its programmes onto the ITV network slots, such as Bobby Davro on the Box, Catchphrase, C.A.T.S Eyes, Five Alive, Kelly's Eye, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Summertime Special and other light entertainment programmes. TVS retained their original philosophy for regional and children's programmes.
By November 1986, the station became one of the most heavily criticised companies by the IBA over its programming; the criticism mainly concerned the Southampton editions of Coast to Coast while issues were raised over the quality of TVS's drama and light entertainment output. Its education series were "too didactic", while the religious output was branded as having "barely discernible religious content". Dyke accepted the IBA criticism but highlighted that TVS had already begun remedying the issues and faults, with a new editor for its Southampton news operation, and a new head of religious output was brought in, along with a controller of drama - a first for TVS. Once again, TVS expressed concern about its relationship with the Big Five ITV stations, and how they controlled the channel's output. In April 1987, Greg Dyke left TVS and returned to LWT.
By TVS's fifth anniversary in 1987, its profits had grown 62% since 1981 to £14.4 million, which was helped after TVS increased its share of programming for ITV network and growth in new business; warnings were made that inflation and cost was higher, but the projected growth of television operations would be around 7–8% during the rest of the year. The result was that the accounts revealed TVS had become bigger than Yorkshire Television in terms of advertising revenue, and was quickly catching up with the other Big Five ITV companies. By the following January, profits had increased again to £21.8m. There was speculation at the time that the technicians' strike at TV-am could have spread to TVS's operations over its plans to provide an overnight service, which become fully operational by June 1988.
With TVS continuing to generate large profits, but restricted in ITV network programming, the company started to search for other investments. In 1985, it launched failed bids to acquire Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment and the French television channel TF1. In 1986, TVS was successful in buying Midem, an organisation that promoted trade fairs; and Gilson International, a Los Angeles distribution company selling programmes outside the US. TVS also acquired a 3.5% stake in Australia Network Ten company Northern Star.
At the start of July 1988, speculation started to appear of a take-over bid for the American media company MTM Enterprises. Within a few days, MTM was bought for £190m, which gave owner and founder Mary Tyler Moore 5.1% shares in TVS, and Arthur Price, chief executive of MTM, a total of 6.6%.; both agreed not to sell for a period of five years. TVS paid for the deal partly by selling 10% stakes for £29.2m each to Générale D'Images and Canal Plus, asking shareholders for £47.8m through a convertible preference share issue, with the remaining £38m taken out in a bank loan. The deal created a unique company with productions operations in Ireland, UK and USA, along with a UK broadcasting franchise.
Uncertainty over the high price paid by TVS for MTM, coupled with a collapse of a US syndication market which affected many other US stations,
plus a £5.7m write-off from the disposal of Super Channel resulted in financial instability. In January 1990, TVS started searching for a buyer for a 49% stake in MTM, as part of the restructuring of MTM due to losses of £7.3m. A few days later, TVS confirmed profits were down 35% in 1989, which resulted in 140 redundancies across the UK; this was not as bad as expected, since TVS had planned to eliminate up to 200 jobs that summer.
Ahead of the ITV franchise round, James Gatward resigned from TVS, after being informed his services were no longer required, as the board believed he was not showing sufficient resolve in preparing TVS for the franchise bid. Further changes took place, with the TVS Television board being merged into the TVS Entertainment board, along with a further 100 redundancies to help strengthen the finances. In March 1991, four contenders were lined up to buy MTM, which would have seen the company being sold off for around £50m; there were hopes that the deal would be sorted by May before the ITV franchise application was submitted.