Television South

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 138.89.67.46 (talk) at 16:51, 14 January 2007. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Infobox ITV franchisee TVS Entertainment plc, or Television South, was the ITV franchise holder in the south and south-east of England which replaced its predecessor, Southern Television on the morning of 1 January 1982. (The company was referred to on air as "Television South" from 1985 to 1987, but as "TVS" before and after those dates.) From 1989 to 1992, the company name shown on the ident was TVS Television. The first show, named Bring In The New, was hosted by Khalid Aziz. TVS, bidding under the working title of South and South-East Communications Limited, won the franchise from the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the hardest fought battle of the 1980 franchise round, having faced competition from the previous incumbent, Southern Television, and six further consortia.

The best the company itself had hoped for was a shotgun marriage with Southern as a criticism of the incumbent was its closed and non-local share ownership. However the applicants' plans were considered so good they won the contract in their own right.

Because Southern refused to sell their studios to TVS, the new company had to start its pre-broadcasting operations from a series of Portakabins based in the studio car park; this led to Southern publicly deriding TVS as "Portakabin TV", emphasising this in a specially-commissioned song (performed by Richard Stilgoe) transmitted in its farewell show.

The company chairman was Lord Boston of Faversham, and Anna Home was among the board members. She was better known as the creator of the BBC2 children's programme Play School as the channel's first show in April 1964.

Michael Rodd was among the well-known personalities associated with the winning bid. Rodd presented networked science programmes for TVS in its early years, notably The Real World, a science-based programme designed to be ITV's answer to Tomorrow's World (and not to be confused with the show made by MTV).

Both TVS and its successor, Meridian, had a slightly bigger coverage area than Southern, because on the day TVS was launched, the main transmitter at Bluebell Hill, and associated relays such as Chatham Town (in north Kent) along with the major relay at Tunbridge Wells were switched from the London ITV region to that of the South of England.

TVS operated from two main sites: inherited studios in Northam, Southampton and — after a brief interregnum at Southern's old Dover studios — a new facility built in Vinters Park, Maidstone. Like its predecessor, the company made many contributions to the network in the areas of children's television, drama and light entertainment. In common with Southern, it specialised in children's programmes, but after a while showed itself to be more ambitious than its predecessor in terms of networking adult series. TVS argued that its coverage area was booming while those of Granada Television and Yorkshire Television were in decline, and aimed to become a "major" company, and to turn ITV's "Big Five" into a "Big Six".

As well as the main studios, TVS had an office in London and several smaller offices around the region. They also converted the Plaza Cinema in Gillingham into the TVS Television Theatre, and it was here that the UK inserts for both Fraggle Rock and inserts for the second series of No 73 were made. They also purchased land adjoining the Northam site and constructed a helipad and fourth broadcast studio (Used for "World Wise" and other programmes). In the early days, TVS operated a plane (with the call-sign G-OTVS) that flew between the main television studios. This was later replaced by the TVS helicopter.

TVS's regional news magazine programme throughout its franchise period was Coast To Coast. At launch it was transmitted from 5.30 straddling the ITN 545 news, the 15 minute drama 'Radio' was created to fill the 15 minutes after the children's programming. The format saw the programme presented from both Southampton and Maidstone each night but as this was messy the more familiar format was soon adopted with the programme being transmitted at 6pm on weekdays from its studios in Southampton and Maidstone. In the late 1980s there was an opt-out for the north of the Southampton region (the Thames Valley) from Reading; from 1993 this area would gain its own full-length regional magazine programme. In December 2006 this part of the Meridian region will merge with the ITV Central (South) area to create a new ITV Thames Valley region.

In the late 1980s the company was making significant and increasing profits. Restricted by what they could make for the network, the company started to look for other ventures to invest in, either in or outside of television, or even outside the UK. Its biggest purchase was the American media company MTM Enterprises, founded by Mary Tyler Moore. This was purchased with borrowed funds and was expected to help the company reap the benefits of the American syndicated production market. However, the syndicated market collapsed and when TVS's licence to broadcast came up for renewal in 1991, the company was suffering serious financial problems. On top of this it had to bid high to secure an extension to its contract. The bid at £59m was deemed excessive and unviable, and the contract was handed to Meridian Broadcasting.

TVS operated until midnight on 31 December 1992, its last programme being the celebratory show Goodbye To All That, presented by Fred Dinenage and Fern Britton. At midnight, TVS was in turn replaced by Meridian. TVS were very generous to Meridian, giving them quick access to their facilities and allowing them to promote themselves on TVS in the run-up to taking over. On the farewell show TVS wished Meridian luck.

The main studio building in Southampton was sold to the newcomer. Meanwhile, TVS retained the Maidstone site and the smaller studio block at Northam (now a plumbing warehouse), intending to become an independent programme producer, but it was bought by American company International Family Entertainment in late 1992. Using the TVS programme archive, The Family Channel was launched as a result of this deal, on the Sky Analogue service; it later became Challenge TV (now simply known as Challenge). Live links to the channels and programmes for Family/Challenge were, at one time, made at Maidstone.

The ending of TVS was the words "Thanks for Watching" with the animation of the 1987-1992 logo flipping for the final time while a piece of music crescendos ending with an applause and then.... Big Ben made the very loud New Year's sound and when it reached it's 12th chime,Meridian began along with [[Carlton Television]] (now ITV London) , Westcountry Television, and Teletext.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Television_South&oldid=100679692"