28 Facts About Carlton Television

Carlton Television was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties from 9.

Carlton Television has been branded on air as "ITV1" since 28 October 2002, and as "ITV" since 14 January 2013.

Carlton Television was originally set up by Michael Green's Carlton Communications to bid for an ITV franchise after Green failed to buy into Thames Television, the London franchise, in 1985.

On 16 October 1991, Carlton Television won the "Channel 3" franchise to broadcast to London during weekdays from January 1993, as a result of winning the silent auction used to renegotiate the new ITV franchises.

CPV-TV was the highest bidder, but was eliminated for failing the quality threshold; since both Thames and Carlton Television were deemed to have passed the quality threshold, the franchise was awarded to Carlton Television for having submitted the higher cash bid of the remaining two companies.

Related searches

Carlton Television did not buy Thames' studios, instead having its headquarters in St Martin's Lane in the West End and opting to rent transmission space at LWT's London studios.

Also, unlike Thames which was both a production company and a broadcaster, Carlton Television chose to commission all of its programming from independent production companies.

In May 1994, the Independent Carlton Television Commission criticised a number of ITV stations as part of its review for the first 12 months of the new franchise in 1993.

Carlton Television was condemned for providing a wide range of 'unimpressive and very disappointing' programmes for the ITV network, which were 'neither distinctive nor noticeable high quality'.

Carlton Television, angered by this criticism, responded: 'In the first year, Carlton Television launched 43 brand new series and 20 new single programmes, sustained audience levels and played a full part in ITV network; successes far outweighed failures.

Once again, in 1997, Carlton Television was criticised for failing to ensure its programming complied with the programmes code, while the number of formal interventions from the ITC had increased from four in 1995 to eight; but its regional programming continued to be of high quality.

Carlton Television found itself at the centre of a major controversy about truthfulness in broadcast journalism in May 1998, when The Guardian carried a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded 1996 documentary, The Connection, which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia.

An internal inquiry at Carlton Television found that the allegations made by The Guardian were in large part correct, and the then-regulator of the industry, the ITC, punished Carlton Television with a record fine of £2 million for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes.

Changes in legislation concerning media ownership enabled Carlton to buy out many of the other ITV stations, including Central Independent Television, Westcountry, and part of HTV, as well as the rights to the archives of ITC Entertainment and its former sister company ATV.

Carlton Television did not acquire most of HTV's production facilities; these were retained by Granada.

The merger with Granada led to the use of the Carlton Television name falling into disuse, and Carlton Television Video became part of Granada Ventures.

In 1997, Carlton Television formed a partnership with Granada and BSkyB to bid for some of the multiplexes for the new digital terrestrial network.

Unlike London Weekend Television, Carlton Television did not note the last day of its regional identity on-air.

However, the Carlton Television brand continued to be seen on production captions until 2004.

Carlton Television was a publisher broadcaster who never made any of its own programming itself.

Carlton productions that required studio space were booked at Lenton Lane when Carlton bought Central Independent Television in 1994, obtaining the company's Nottingham studios and gained the in-house production arm.

Carlton Television was originally based in a small office building in St Martin's Lane in Central London, with transmission being provided by London News Network, a company jointly owned with LWT and based at The London Studios that provided a seven-day news service.

Carlton Television used a number of continuity announcers throughout the years.

Between 1996 and 2003, Carlton Television owned a number of extra channels, carried initially on analogue cable, and later on their flagship platform, ONdigital too, although none of them ever made it onto Sky Digital.

Carlton Television Cinema received an EPG position of its own, but would be periodically closed down to provide bandwidth for "On Sport 2" during the ONdigital days.

Related searches

Carlton Television Cinema was the Carlton Television channel which showed classic movies, but unusually for a movie channel, cartoons.

Carlton Television Select was the main entertainment channel from Carlton Television, and broadcast both in the UK and Africa.

Carlton Television World was a general entertainment and factual channel broadcast in the evenings, with sister channel Carlton Television Kids broadcast in the daytime.