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Central Independent Television, commonly referred to as Central, is the British Independent Television company that succeeded ATV on 1 January 1982. The main news programme for the region is Central News.

History

Apart from a new name and logo, the company was essentially a continuation of ATV, having originally applied for the franchise as ATV Midlands Limited. The new name was adopted as one of a set of conditions imposed upon ATV by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, who believed that the company needed to more fully reflect the area it served. Another condition was that ATV move its headquarters to Birmingham from Elstree (near London). The new company sold its Elstree studios (to the BBC) and opened new studios in Nottingham. Further, Lew Grade's Associated Communications Corporation was forced to divest 49% of its shareholdings in the company.

When Central launched, its region was subdivided into two sub-regions; one for the West Midlands (with studios in Birmingham), and one for the East Midlands (with studios in Nottingham). Initially, however, the Nottingham service was not seen by viewers for several weeks, because of an industrial action by technical staff. There are few differences between the subregions, but each has its own news service and advertisements. This led to the BBC also producing two news programmes (Midlands Today for the West and East Midlands Today for the East).

In 1989, a third sub-region covering the South Midlands was created. With a news studio in Abingdon (near Oxford), Central News South was at the time of its creation the most automated news operation in the country. The service was launched on 9th January 1989, the opening night being fraught with technical problems. Presenters Wesley Smith and Anne Dawson co-presented the main programme, and were the longest-serving co-presenters of any ITV regional news programme, until Anne's departure in 2003 to become a college lecturer. Anne was replaced as main presenter by Hannah Stewart-Jones, formerly of Channel TV.

The BBC finally responded to the creation of Central News South in 2000 by creating a sub-opt-out that is broadcast to Oxfordshire, eastern Wiltshire, and parts of Buckinghamshire.

Central News South was again a pioneer of new technology when, in the Spring of 2001, state-of-the-art Quantel digital video servers and edit suites were installed, along with a complete re-fit of camera and VTR equipment. This meant that Central South was at the forefront of digital newsgathering in regional news.

But Central South's reign with regional news wasn't to last. It was announced on 6th June 2006 that Central News South was to end after 17 years and merge with other ITV news regions. Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire & Swindon would merge with the existing Meridian West region to form a new ITV Thames Valley region. Gloucestershire will be part the ITV West region from Bristol. And Herefordshire will now re-join Central News West from Birmingham. This brings 40 job cuts to the ITV Regional Network.

Carlton and ITV plc

In 1994, Central was bought by Carlton Television and on 6 September 1999 was rebranded as Carlton Central, though the registered company name remains Central Independent Television Limited. With the merger of Carlton and Granada on 2 February 2004, the brand became ITV1 Central. Central Independent Television is currently owned by ITV plc.

In February 2004, ITV plc announced plans to close and sell the Lenton Lane production centre, located in Nottingham. Following the closure of the Lenton Lane studios, a new newsgathering centre was established in the city, but production of Central News East moved to Central's Birmingham studio in Spring 2005. The former studio complex is now part of The University of Nottingham and is known as 'King's Meadow Campus'. It still maintains one Studio (Studio 7), and this is rented out to television and film Companies, generating income for the University.

In October 2004, ITV plc closed Central's presentation/transmission department, moving transmission to the Northern Transmission Centre in Leeds. Many viewers and workers from the British television industry believe this to have been a mistake, claiming that Central had the most professional presentation within the ITV network, and pioneered many technologies and techniques years before they would be adopted on a wider scale. The role of transmission at Birmingham had been significantly reduced after Network presentation was centralised to LNN in London in 2002, and so there was an inevitability that this function would be moved out. CITV (Children's ITV), which had been presented from Central's Birmingham studios since 1983, was also re-homed to Granada's studios in Manchester, with all content pre-recorded and with out-of vision presentation.

Notable Central programmes

The name Central Independent Television allegedly came about after an enterprising Midlander heard of the 1980 ITV franchise round, and in an attempt to get royalties, trademarked many names relating to television in the Midlands (including Central Television). The new company got around this by simply calling themselves Central Independent Television.

External links

ITV franchisees | Media in Birmingham, England

Central Independent Television

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Central Independent Television".

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