Thames Television

Thames Television was a British television production company, and between 1968 and 1992, it was the weekday ITV company serving London.

Thames became the personification of commercial public-service television, with a strong mix of drama, current affairs and comedy. Thames Television's famous logo remains widely recognisable to this day. When used as the company's ident, the logo was accompanied by a fanfare called "Salute To Thames" composed by Johnny Hawksworth (who also wrote the theme tunes for the Thames series Man About the House, George and Mildred and the BBC cartoon series Roobarb).

Formation

In 1967, the Independent Television Authority (ITA) decided to create a joint company owned by Associated British Corporation (ABC), which had previously held the weekend franchises in the North of England and the Midlands, and the London weekday company Rediffusion, London (formally Associated-Rediffusion). ABC would own 51% of the company, with the remaining 49% going to Rediffusion. This joint company was awarded the London weekday franchise. Rediffusion were not happy with the arrangement, but they were also not given any alternative by the ITA.

After some discussion as to the name of the new company - some directors favoured 'ABC London', while others suggested 'Tower Television' to reflect the Post Office Tower and the Tower of London - the company was named Thames Television, after the River Thames. This name had been considered and later rejected by London Weekend Television, who also received their license in 1967.

On 30 July 1968, Thames began broadcasting to London, from Monday mornings at 9.25am until its handover to LWT at 7.00pm on Fridays. (From 1982, the handover time was 5.15pm, much to Thames' displeasure).

Thames was originally based in Rediffusion's former headquarters, Television House, until the opening of the newly-built Thames Television House on Euston Road in the early 1970s.

Programming

An early success was the comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set - nominally a children's show, but actually an important forerunner of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Other important Thames shows included: This Week, TV Eye, The World at War, Callan, The Naked Civil Servant, Rumpole of the Bailey, Strike It Lucky, Rock Follies, and The Benny Hill Show (Thames' most successful show, that was sold to many countries around the world). Thames produced a number of sitcoms including Father, Dear Father, Bless This House starring Sid James, George and Mildred, After Henry, Never the Twain, and Love Thy Neighbour, with its controversial take on racial issues. Less well-known is its adaptation of Andy Capp, starring James Bolam. It also produced the children's show Magpie, intended as a rival for Blue Peter. Thames became a significant contributor to the ITV network and its shows (most notably The World at War and The Benny Hill Show) became worldwide award-winning successes. Unusually for a commercial broadcaster it also produced lavish versions of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In addition to its evening and peak time programming, Thames changed the face of daytime television in Britain. For example, Afternoon Plus brought the art of intelligent interviewing to a wide and growing audience. In the late 1970s and early '80s, when unemployment was high and the national morale low, this programme, under Catherine Freeman’s editorship, took the conscious decision to move away from its perceived 'housewife at home' niche, and instead cater for an increasingly mixed audience that spanned the sexes and the social spectrum.

So it was that viewers in the afternoon could watch interviews with an eclectic range of guests: the writers Anthony Burgess and Gore Vidal, the Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar, the philosopher Krishnamurti, the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and the philanthropist Sir Robert Meyer, to name but a few. In those days, 'dumbing down' was an unknown concept; this was aiming up, and deliberately so.

The programme was fronted by four principal presenters – Elaine Grand, Mavis Nicholson, Judith Chalmers and Mary Parkinson. The producers were Peter Denton, John Tagholm, Liz Neeson, Dee McClure and Nina Burr. Together, they established a style of daytime programme which never patronised the viewers, but instead aimed at broadening their horizons.

In the early 1970s, Thames established a subsidiary production company, Euston Films, which produced many of Thames' highest-profile contributions to ITV network programming. These included The Sweeney (1975-78), Minder (1979-94) and Quatermass (1979).

Franchise loss

The loss of Thames' broadcasting franchise in 1992 may have been influenced by its documentary Death On The Rock, part of the current affairs strand This Week. The programme questioned the authority of British troops who shot and killed a group of suspected Provisional IRA members who were allegedly planning a terrorist attack on a British military base on Gibraltar. The documentary was regarded almost as an act of treason by many Conservative politicians and newspapers such as The Sunday Times, and Margaret Thatcher's government ordered that the new ITV franchises be determined by silent auction. The amount Thames offered for its franchise was significantly less than the money offered by other companies, leading many commentators to speculate that Thames had fallen victim to a government vendetta.

Another factor was the aborted takeover of Thames by Carlton Communications in 1985 when EMI (which had taken over ABC some years previously) and BET (the parent company of Rediffusion) decided to sell. This was blocked by both Richard Dunn, Chief Executive of Thames, and by the IBA. Thames then had a management buyout and were floated on the Stock Exchange. This led Carlton Communications Chief Executive Michael Green to complain to Margaret Thatcher, which in turn may have led to the Broadcasting Act 1990, which replaced the IBA with the Independent Television Commission, who in turn rebid the ITV licences.

Thames was replaced by Carlton Television at midnight on December 31, 1992/January 1, 1993.

Life after the franchise

After 1992, Thames continued to produce programmes for the ITV network and other UK and international broadcasters, a notable example being the long-running police drama The Bill. The company has changed hands a number of times: it was owned by Pearson Television, which is now Fremantle Media, part of the RTL Group; Fremantle also acquired TalkBack Productions and merged the two companies under the new name talkbackTHAMES in 2001. Thames, as a separate entity, no longer exists.

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