Granada Television

Granada Television was the British ITV (commercial television) contractor for the "North of England" weekday franchise from 1954 (broadcasting began on May 3, 1956) until 1968, and for the "Northwest England" all-week franchise from 1968. Granada was the only one of the original four ITA franchisees from 1954 which survived as a franchise holder into the twenty-first century, until the merger of its parent company, Granada plc in 2004 into ITV plc. It had a strong reputation (along with Thames Television) of providing public-service programmes for ITV mixing drama, comedy and current affairs.

History

In the 1930s, Cecil and Sidney Bernstein created a cinema chain in the south of England which, in the contemporary fashion for "exotic" names, they called Granada Theatres Limited. Some twenty years later like e.g. the Associated British Picture Corporation, with the dawn of commercial television the Bernsteins decided to be involved in the new industry which was a great competitor to the cinema chains, and since their chain was strongest in the south of England the Bernsteins applied for the franchise for the north of England, in order to minimise competition between their two enterprises. With some eighteen months between the awarding of their franchise and the start of transmission, Granada built a brand new studio centre in Manchester and determined to develop a strong Northern identity for themselves — Northern voices, Northern programmes, Northern idents ("From The North — Granada", and "Granadaland").

This was counter to the practice of the other franchisees, who adopted fairly nondescript names such as Associated British Corporation, Associated TeleVision, and Associated-Rediffusion, which did not have regional associations so that they could easily move their franchises to other parts of the country — if they did well, in the future the ITA might reward them with a plum London franchise, on the other hand if they did badly they might be cast into the outer darkness of the Channel Islands franchise or lose their franchise altogether. The Northern identity immediately set Granada apart, making them immovable and embedding the company into the psyche of its viewers — so much so that the term "Granada" to this day instantly means Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire to many older viewers.

Granada's policy of regional identification was successful, and the ITA decided that all franchise contractors, large or small, should identify with their regions in this way — this was a problem which was to dog ATV for the rest of its existence and be the direct cause of the company's demise.

Corporate culture

The culture of Granada was distinctly more Socialist than the more conservative (in all senses of the word) companies further south. The company produced gritty dramas and hard-hitting documentaries, such as World in Action and Seven-Up. Jeremy Isaacs worked as a Producer at Granada from 1958 and was involved with developing a significant portion of the Channel's factual programming. The classic soap opera Coronation Street which started a 13-week, two episodes a week run on 9 December 1960, is still producing five episodes a week in 2006 this present day.

In 1968 it set up a unique experiment employing actors to work in television and theatre on the same contract - the Stables Theatre Company directed by Gordon McDougall.

Granada did not produce light entertainment extravaganzas of its own, but was quite happy to transmit those produced by its co-franchisees, but by the mid-1970s it was producing programmes for an international audience, such as Laurence Olivier Presents (1976-78), Brideshead Revisited (1981), and from 1984 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Also in 1984 came the dramatisation of The Jewel in the Crown. The productions of Brideshead and Jewel were well received at the time, but coincided with the BBCs disastrous The Borgias and the screening of the American adaptation of The Thorn Birds in each instance, giving the commercial channel a certain glow in the Thatcher era over its public funded rival.

Another of its flagship programmes was the long-running quiz show, University Challenge — the name and format of which were eventually taken over by the BBC in the 1990s, although still produced by Granada today.

Granada Television were very protective of their name and 1972, when the Ford Granada car was released by Ford of Great Britain, Granada threatened legal action against Ford but later backed down.

Franchise renewals

In 1968, Granada's contract was changed from weekdays across the whole "north of England" region (Lancashire and Yorkshire) to one covering the whole week in Lancashire alone. Granada had little difficulty in retaining its franchise in the 1981 round, and, despite bidding significantly less than its rivals, survived the 1991 round by virtue of the "quality threshold" applied by the regulator. (Granada had been out-bid for their franchise by rivals Mersey Television, but the other company was not granted the licence as their package was not deemed to meet the required quality threshold)

By the late 1980s it was thought that the UK commercial broadcasters were too small to be able to compete in the world television market - a problem exacerbated by the 1990 Broadcasting Act which instigated quotas on independent programming, removed the ITV's advertising monopoly and instigated the expensive auction process of the 1991 franchise round.

The Conservative government responded by relaxing the regulatory regime, so that ITV contractors could take each other over, and Granada responded by going on an acquisition spree which resulted in Granada establishing an effective duopoly of ITV with Carlton Television, excepting only the small franchises in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Channel Islands.

G-Wizz

In the late 90s, Granada went through a significant period of expansion and subsequent contraction, as several of the company's side ventures were sold or closed. This included the ill-fated 'G-Wizz' service in 2000, offering Internet access and high-quality content. Several of Granada's programmes also ran their websites through G-Wizz, including This Morning, Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Unfortunately, the Flash-heavy pages were largely unusable by their subscribers, who were largely modem-based, and take-up was low. Less then a year after it opened, Granada closed G-Wizz in March 2001, after costing the company £9 million.

Granada Sky Broadcasting

In 1996 Granada teamed up with BSkyB to form a joint venture Granada Sky Broadcasting to provide content and new channels to the satellite platform. Granada Breeze, the daytime lifestyle channel, was broadcast from a custom-built conservatory studio in the grounds of the existing studios, but was the first channel to disappear, closing in 2002. Granada Plus (a channel devoted to showing Granada's back catalogue of TV programmes, including classic episodes of their most popular show, Coronation Street) was first retitled 'Plus', and then eventually turned into ITV3 with just minutes' notice to staff in November 2004. Only the male-oriented channel, Men & Motors, which is now fully owned by ITV, remains from the now ceased relationship.

Channels

Granada Plus

Owned by GSB, 50% owned by Granada, the channel was later known as G Plus and finally simply Plus, this channel showed archive programmes. It was closed to make way for ITV3.

Granada Breeze

Launched as Granada Good Life, Granada Breeze was owned by GSB, 50% owned by Granada, this channel was aimed at women and was a lifestyle channel aimed at female viewers and showed programmes on lifestyle, cookery, health and US daytime television such as Judge Joe Brown.

Granada Talk TV

Another GSB channel, this one focusing on chatshows. It closed after less that a year on air.

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Wellbeing

ITV Digital

From 1997 until 2002 Granada and Carlton invested and lost over £1,000,000,000 over their joint venture into pay-TV digital terrestrial broadcasting, ONdigital, which was rebranded as ITV Digital in the summer of 2001, to the fury of Scottish Television, Ulster Television, and Channel Television which attempted to block the renaming on the grounds that it would damage the ITV brand. The competition offered by the new Sky Digital service, launched in 1998, was too great an obstacle for the service to overcome and, inevitably, ITV Digital ceased broadcasting on May 1, 2002.

Later in 2002, talks on a proposed merger between Granada and Carlton were broken off after a failure to agree terms.

Rebranding and merger

On October 28, 2002, and in accordance with a network-wide relaunch, Granada Television was rebranded on air to ITV1 Granada. The Granada name is now only seen before regional programmes, the rest of the time the only brand shown is ITV1. Since this rebrand, all continuity announcements have been made from London including regional announcements, as is now the case for all English ITV stations. The Granada logo still appeared at the end of its own programmes until 31 October 2004.

Towards the end of 2003, Granada plc was given the green light by the UK government to merge with its main ITV partner, Carlton. On February 2, 2004, this merger took place, with the new company being called ITV plc. Subsequently, from 1 November, 2004, Granada Television productions became known as "Granada Manchester". This new company owns all the ITV franchises in England and Wales.

Following this merger, there are now plans to sell off most of the Quay Street complex in Manchester, with the remaining staff, studios and offices moving into the large bonded warehouse on the site, which, from 1988 to 1999, housed the Granada Studios Tour. In 2005, they sold Tyne Tees Television's studios on City Road in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Notably, the Granada studio complex at Quay Street still, as of 2005, has the original signage that was fitted when it was opened in the mid-1950s, despite the logo change and rebrands that have taken place.

On September 21, 2005, it was announced by ITV that Granada's name would no longer appear at the end of programmes made for the network, the in-house production arm being renamed 'ITV Productions'. This change came about on January 16, 2006, coinciding with a relaunch of ITV's on-screen graphics. Granada's name and logo continue to be used at the end of programmes made for other networks, such as University Challenge on BBC Two and old programmes shown on Sky One, Two and Three. The credits for Granada TV productions (programmes like Stars In Their Eyes) still carry the copyright line: Copyright, 2006 Granada Television in their end credits.