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	<title>Rediffusion Television Archives - THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</title>
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	<description>Thames TV: a talent for television 1968-1992</description>
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		<title>Next on Rediffusion: Thames</title>
		<link>https://thames.today/next-on-rediffusion-thames</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Transdiffusion Broadcasting System]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2018 13:44:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Audio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[It Takes a Thief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liberace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magpie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Noel Coward]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rediffusion Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[today]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thames.today/?p=938</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>A promo for what's coming up on Thames, put out by Rediffusion in its last few days</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/next-on-rediffusion-thames">Next on Rediffusion: Thames</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
]]></description>
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<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/next-on-rediffusion-thames">Next on Rediffusion: Thames</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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		<title>Shotgun marriage</title>
		<link>https://thames.today/shotgun-marriage</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Thomas]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:42:56 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[With an Independent Air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ABC Weekend TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aidan Crawley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Frost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Doreen Stephens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Frank Muir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Thomas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humphrey Burton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Independent Television Authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Freeman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Spencer Wills]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London Weekend Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lord Hill of Luton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Peacock]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rediffusion Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sir Philip Warter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sir Robert Fraser]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tony Curbishley]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thames.today/?p=721</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>ABC's Howard Thomas is told of his company's fate by Lord Hill in 1967</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/shotgun-marriage">Shotgun marriage</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The companies expected 1967 to be a year of change &#8211; but they had no idea that the effect of the contracts shuffle would be to halt the progress of commercial television for a couple of years. The addition of three new contractors had direct effects not only on the three areas concerned, but the whole industry was to be shaken by the resulting Union upheavals and strikes, loss of audience and consequent loss of revenue.</p>
<figure id="attachment_727" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-727" style="width: 250px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b.jpg"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="size-wcsmall wp-image-727" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-250x368.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="368" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-250x368.jpg 250w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-204x300.jpg 204w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-768x1130.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-696x1024.jpg 696w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-370x545.jpg 370w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-550x810.jpg 550w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-800x1178.jpg 800w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-122x180.jpg 122w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b-340x500.jpg 340w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alpha-3b.jpg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-727" class="wp-caption-text">Howard Thomas</figcaption></figure>
<p>When the new franchises were advertised at the end of 1966 the general assessment was that the new company, Yorkshire, was being introduced to dilute the power and profitability of the four major companies, and perhaps to make life more difficult for them; thereafter, change for the sake of change would bring in two or perhaps three new regional contractors.</p>
<p>The real problem facing us at ABC Television was how to find a new area to replace our ‘lost week-end’ as Peter Black of the <em>Daily Mail</em> called it. The company’s reputation stood high with the Authority, but it would now be homeless. London was our objective. Like the other companies, we thought that the Authority would be content with simply weakening Rediffusion by lopping off the Friday evening. We at ABC therefore decided to apply for the London two-and-a-half day week-end contract, and, as second choice, the seven-day Midlands contract. The boards of directors of all the companies had studied their potential revenue and costs figures before reaching decisions. There was little difficulty in convincing our own Board that although the extra evening’s programme in London would be costly, the resulting revenue for the week-end would provide a profit at least equalling ABC’s current £3,000,000 <em>[£55,000,000 today, allowing for inflation]</em> and perhaps more if we worked hard enough at it.</p>
<p>The Authority had been doing its own arithmetic. It was on the assessments of their canny Director of Finance, Tony Curbishley, that the Authority had divided the five contracts as evenly and as fairly as they could. Curbishley, who had access to all the details of every company’s finances, had worked out the potential revenue of each area, deducted the running costs, and he calculated that the net profit on each of the four major companies would be £3,000,000, with smaller Yorkshire below this level. It was Curbishley who had been responsible for re-dividing London’s revenue and he calculated that the total income would be evenly split if the London week-end contract began at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. on Fridays. According to his figures both of the London companies should show a profit of £3,000,000. This confirmed the figures we had worked out and presented to our own Board. The fact that London Weekend failed to achieve such profits in the early years reflected their early difficulties and miscalculations.</p>
<p>And perhaps now was the opportunity for new blood to be infused? It soon began to leak out that certain BBC executives were being nominated by would-be new contractors and were, in fact, appearing at the Authority’s Brompton Road hearings alongside the new applicants. Then, ominously, Michael Peacock resigned from his job as Controller of BBC1 to join Aidan Crawley’s London Weekend Television consortium. Whilst other BBC executives were known to have allowed their names to go forward, to be revealed only to the Authority, we decided that some sort of assurance must have been given to Peacock before he would venture from security into the unknown. It was discovered that he had been nominated as Managing Director of the proposed company, and other BBC names began to emerge: Humphrey Burton (music and opera), Doreen Stephens (head of BBC children’s programmes), Frank Muir (supervisor of comedy shows) and also John Freeman and David Frost. Such expertise and renown would be almost irresistible to Lord Hill.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/261659140&amp;color=%23a51d35&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=true&amp;show_comments=false&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=false" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p>By this time there was confusion and suspicion in the ITV boardrooms and on the third floor at the BBC. For everyone concerned, the final pronouncement by Lord Hill could not come too soon. The Authority reached its final decisions on the new contractors at their meeting towards the end of May and it was decided that the Chairman would make the announcement two days later, on a Sunday, to avoid Stock Exchange reactions.</p>
<figure id="attachment_723" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-723" style="width: 250px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-wcsmall wp-image-723" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-250x305.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="305" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-250x305.jpg 250w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-246x300.jpg 246w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-768x936.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-370x451.jpg 370w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-550x670.jpg 550w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills.jpg 800w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-148x180.jpg 148w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/John-Spencer-Wills-410x500.jpg 410w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-723" class="wp-caption-text">John Spencer Wills of Rediffusion</figcaption></figure>
<p>On the fateful Sunday morning the Chairmen of the three London contenders returned with their cohorts to Brompton Road for their final interviews with Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser. Thus it was that London Weekend was awarded the programme contract it had sought, while John Spencer Wills, Chairman of Rediffusion Television, was told by Lord Hill of the Authority’s decision &#8211; which was to merge Rediffusion with ABC Television and to award the London weekday contract to the new joint company. There would be an equal sharing of profits but fifty-one per cent of the voting shares and the control of the new company would go to ABC, who would provide the managing director and the controller of programmes. Lord Hill described John Spencer Wills’ reaction as ‘deeply shocked, if not flabbergasted, but courteous throughout’.</p>
<figure id="attachment_724" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-724" style="width: 250px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-wcsmall wp-image-724" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-250x298.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="298" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-250x298.jpg 250w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-251x300.jpg 251w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-370x442.jpg 370w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-550x657.jpg 550w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-151x180.jpg 151w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill-419x500.jpg 419w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Lord-Hill.jpg 604w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-724" class="wp-caption-text">Lord (Charles) Hill of Luton</figcaption></figure>
<p>Next it was ABC Television’s turn and I went with my Chairman, Sir Philip Warter and the deputy-chairman Robert Clark. We were given the same formula, with the addition that Lord Hill and Sir Robert Fraser congratulated me on my appointment as Managing Director of the new London company. It was only on the day after the meeting with Lord Hill and Bob Fraser that I began to realise fully the enormity of the task upon which I had been so suddenly embarked. My first thought was for the staff; nearly three thousand men and women employed by both companies were now reading in their newspapers that something had happened to their jobs. To operate the new company (and what should we call it?) for four-and-a-half days in London would need fewer staff than Rediffusion employed and more than had worked for ABC. There would be jobs for little more than half of the total payroll of the merged companies. Lord Hill had already tried to quell rising apprehension among the ITV workers by a promise that there would be a job for everyone &#8211; somewhere.</p>
<p>It was important too to retain the most valuable programme executives and I had to make rapid decisions as to who should be in control of the six programme departments, bearing in mind the equal division between the two original companies and the knowledge that some people had committed themselves already to new contractors.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/shotgun-marriage">Shotgun marriage</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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		<title>Weekend world</title>
		<link>https://thames.today/weekend-world</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Russ J Graham]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Sep 2005 10:00:07 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Independent Television Authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London Weekend Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rediffusion Television]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thames.today/?p=1537</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>The competition</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/weekend-world">Weekend world</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The relationship between split-time contractors had never been easy.</p>
<p>When ITV first began in 1955, Associated-Rediffusion and ATV London had good relations. Partially this was of necessity: the two shared A-R&#8217;s London facilities, and when bankruptcy beckoned in early 1956, AR had effectively bankrolled ATV to keep it on air. The last thing A-R needed was to expand its loss-making 5 day operation into a loss-making 7 day operation, after all.</p>
<p>Once ATV opened in Birmingham, AR was looking forward to another company pulling its weight and taking some of the burden of the weekday production requirements.</p>
<p>Alas, ATV chose to save its best output for London weekends; anything of value that could be recorded in Birmingham to show in London found its way on to ATV London.</p>
<p>ABC and ATV fought like cat and dog from the start &#8211; on launch day, ABC was to be found in the High Court arguing that the new London weekend contractor was passing off the initials &#8216;ABC&#8217; by calling itself Associated Broadcasting Company. ATV had changed its name and on-air identity by its third week.</p>
<p>ABC and ATV went into partnership on studios in Birmingham out of necessity in the early, loss-making days. Howard Thomas describes in his autobiography how this was a necessary short-term solution that caused him unending problems as ATV in turn denied him access to London and challenged the costings of the few programmes they did allow through.</p>
<p>ABC and Granada had a better relationship, if only because the two of them resolutely ignored each other as much as they could. Granada was eventually told by the ITA that their closedowns on a Friday night, which implied that there was no television at all until Monday, would have to not only mention that ITV continued when Granada was off, but also name-check the weekend service.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Granada in all its publicity continued to suggest that the north of England was served by Granada and Granada alone.</p>
<p>These petty differences were swept away when the new pattern of broadcasting was announced in 1967. From now on, the previously regional model of 7-day companies would apply everywhere.</p>
<p>Except London.</p>
<p>The London weekday company was already the dominant company in ITV &#8211; although this was partially because ATV was distracted by its split region and Granada had an almost-illegally close relationship with AR and continued to be pals with Rediffusion London.</p>
<p>However, the fact remained that a 7-day London company would very quickly overwhelm the entire network. It would be richer, have better access to stars and would start to draw money and talent from out of the regions &#8211; an anathema to the ITA in pre-devolution days, but not something that worries regulators now.</p>
<p><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1540" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend.jpg" alt="" width="1343" height="1000" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend.jpg 1343w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-300x223.jpg 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-768x572.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-1024x762.jpg 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-201x150.jpg 201w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-370x276.jpg 370w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-250x186.jpg 250w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-550x410.jpg 550w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-800x596.jpg 800w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-242x180.jpg 242w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-403x300.jpg 403w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/TONIGHT-ON-London-Weekend-672x500.jpg 672w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1343px) 100vw, 1343px" /></a></p>
<p>So the split was retained. But the ITA wanted the new &#8220;Big 5&#8221; to have roughly equal shares of the revenue of ITV (roughly because YTV was a minnow compared to the other 4, whilst ATV had rich diversifications like ITC that somewhat muddied the waters) and also planned to end the practice of one company having two contract areas (ABC and ATV).</p>
<p>The split therefore needed to move to create a more useful equity between weekdays and weekends in London. The most useful split would have been a straight Monday-Thursday/Friday-Sunday division.</p>
<p>However, the ITV system had commitments during the day on Fridays. Schools programming couldn&#8217;t just stop or change style or control on a Friday &#8211; although control of output could go elsewhere (it went to ATV in Birmingham).</p>
<p>Sports programming like racing and cricket was a staple of daytime ITV, being exempt from the broadcasting hours restrictions that kept television to a largely evenings-only experience until the early 1970s.</p>
<p>But a major London event, like test cricket or Wimbledon couldn&#8217;t efficiently be split between two providers without a lot of waste, duplication and confusion.</p>
<p>Worse, most major news stories in those days occurred on weekdays during the day &#8211; politicians and terrorists alike hadn&#8217;t learnt to time events to catch the BBC news at 8.55 or the ITN News at Ten.</p>
<p>With the ITA planning a specifically different service on weekdays to that seen on weekends, it didn&#8217;t want the weekend provider suddenly having to cover a major story of the style of Churchill&#8217;s funeral. Likewise, it didn&#8217;t want the entire responsibility to fall on to the shoulders of ITN, who would have had to run to the ITA to ask them to make ITV pay for the increased responsibility.</p>
<p>Therefore the split would need to be after these things were unlikely to happen, but before the meat of the evening was underway &#8211; sometime on Friday evening.</p>
<p>The time of the split appears not to have been fixed by the time of the contract interviews. Certainly the new London Television Consortium (later London Weekend and later still LWT) was already lobbying for all of Friday for its weekend service well before it went on air.</p>
<p>Thames also wanted as much of peak time as could be garnered.</p>
<p>The time to split was set at 7pm by the ITA, though they agreed to keep this under consideration as both contractors wanted to push it an hour or more either way.</p>
<p>Therefore Thames and LWT were thrust into closer contact than any two companies had ever been before. The split between the two was noticeable not only for its picture roll at 7pm but also for the failure of either announcer to acknowledge the other&#8217;s existence &#8211; although Thames would provide the epilogue on LWT at first, and in the 1980s would even provide LWT with a service called &#8220;Thames Weekend News&#8221;.</p>
<p>Needless to say, the two companies started to bicker almost immediately.</p>
<p>LWT&#8217;s management was largely ex-BBC. They had no idea how ITV worked, but knew that it didn&#8217;t and were happy to tell their opposite numbers of that fact to their faces. Thames management was ABC, and they took pleasure in telling the LWT shower that they would crash and burn.</p>
<p>After the launch-week strikes and subsequent shut down, Thames&#8217;s ex-ABC sales force went out on the rampage to rebuild the lost business.</p>
<p>LWT&#8217;s ex-Rediffusion sales force arranged to have lunch with a contact here and a friend there.</p>
<p>Thames organised discounts, special offers and freebies.</p>
<p>LWT took people to dinner and gave them free tickets to studio audience shows.</p>
<p>Thames sales staff knocked on doors, rang around, called in favours, got friends and families to recruit small advertisers.</p>
<p>LWT sales staff sat and waited for the phone to ring like gentlemen should do.</p>
<p>Thames, worried over the potential financial ruin from the botched launch period, poured money it didn&#8217;t have into popular programmes and local interest features.</p>
<p>LWT produced the highbrow arts features, reviews and David Frost talk shows they had promised the ITA. And put them out in peak time. And wondered why the other regions didn&#8217;t take them.</p>
<p>Thames aggressively sold its programmes to the network and abroad.</p>
<p>LWT offered its programmes to the network and expressed wry amusement when there were no takers. How foolish these old-fashioned ITV people were! The programmes wouldn&#8217;t sell abroad, either &#8211; after all, they wouldn&#8217;t sell in the UK.</p>
<p>The end result of this was obvious to everyone except those at LWT.</p>
<p>LWT crashed and burned.</p>
<p>The ex-BBC executives were amazed when it was pointed out to them that their programmes had to attract viewers to attract advertisers to attract money. If that circle never started, the company would simply go bust.</p>
<p>The executives had all been crying out for serious arts and documentary programmes on a weekend that neither BBC-1 nor ATV London were supplying. They thought that providing expensive arts programmes to the masses in place of <em>Sunday Night at the London Palladium</em> would be providing the masses with just what they needed.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s likely true that the masses needed that. But foisting it upon them wouldn&#8217;t work on the BBC (which is why they left) so it was even less likely to work on ITV on the weekends. If nothing else, the masses still had popular programming on BBC-1 at weekends &#8211; that didn&#8217;t end when the executives left (quite the reverse &#8211; Sir Hugh Carleton Greene&#8217;s reforms of the BBC were bearing fruit even as he was leaving; the BBC had never been so popular since the monopoly ended).</p>
<p>The ITA, powerless to stop LWT making a fool of itself but required by law to be ready to pick up the pieces, drew up two plans of action.</p>
<ol>
<li>In the first instance, the day LWT went bankrupt, Thames would go 7 days. Howard Thomas reports that he was asked to draw up an emergency schedule for Thames weekends, undoubtedly to last the period until a new contract could be let &#8211; generally regarded to be about a year.</li>
<li>Second, that contract would be offered first and foremost to Rediffusion Television. They would be invited to takeover the remains of LWT (the studios, staff and programming at a peppercorn certainly; the actual bankrupt company itself if they were wiling to yet again throw money at ITV, despite their treatment last time).</li>
</ol>
<p>When the second event came to pass, Rediffusion would give up its share of Thames at market rate. EMI would be a willing buyer; if not, there were others.</p>
<p>Rediffusion would be compensated by having the ITA&#8217;s favour, so far as that went. Most probably that meant rebates on rental and a favourable eye cast upon any programme plans.</p>
<p>Rediffusion Television, under John Spencer Wills, wasn&#8217;t fooled by this; nevertheless it was a tempting offer and one that BET was unlikely to refuse.</p>
<p>But BET was already noticing that its 49% of Thames was earning almost as much money as 100% of Rediffusion London. Given time to settle in and an end to the recession that had inevitably followed in on the heals of the new Tory government in 1970, 49% of Thames was likely to be worth far more than 100% of Rediffusion Weekend Television.</p>
<p>Rediffusion-BET were therefore cautious in their replies to the ITA&#8217;s back-channel private soundings.</p>
<p>In the end it didn&#8217;t matter &#8211; LWT recovered after a series of painful boardroom coups, relaunches and attempts to grasp the nature of Independent Television.</p>
<p>But a suspicion between LWT and Thames was now set in cement. Many LWT staff had been displaced from good jobs at Rediffusion by the coming of Thames. The sales force of Thames had helped doom the early ideals of LWT. The new management at LWT knew that Thames was always waiting to catch their contract should they fall.</p>
<p>There would be co-operation and contact between the two companies over the years, but never trust.</p>
<p>When contract renewals came up in 1973/4, 1980/2 and 1991/3, the two would back the bids of others either loudly or behind the scenes.</p>
<p>Eventually one of them would win by default. But that&#8217;s another story.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/weekend-world">Weekend world</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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		<title>Chairman&#8217;s statement</title>
		<link>https://thames.today/chairmans-statement</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Thomas]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 31 Dec 1977 23:50:36 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Company on the move]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ABC Weekend TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alex Clarke]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Annan Committee]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[George A Cooper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Howard Thomas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humphrey Tilling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ian Scott]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thames.today/?p=444</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Howard Thomas looks back over 1977 at Thames</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/chairmans-statement">Chairman&#8217;s statement</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>THIS IS A REVIEW of the calendar year 1977, together with a glance at these early months of 1978. In writing it I had to ask myself what were the most significant events of the year, and I found myself choosing between two. The first was the publication of the massive, detailed report of Lord Annan’s committee of inquiry into the future of broadcasting. The second was the award to Thames of its third Italia Prize in two years. The very different nature of those two important events reflects the position in which British broadcasting now finds itself.</p>
<p><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-447" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a.jpg" alt="" width="1170" height="1170" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a.jpg 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-150x150.jpg 150w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-300x300.jpg 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-768x768.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-370x370.jpg 370w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-0a-70x70.jpg 70w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></a></p>
<p>Here is Thames, a vigorous young company, producing programmes which continue to win worldwide acclaim, able to carry proudly back to Britain for a second year the most coveted award in the whole of international broadcasting. Here is Thames earning £3m annually in foreign currency for Britain, by exporting its programmes to more than a hundred countries overseas. Yet simultaneously and paradoxically here is Thames, in common with the rest of Independent Television and the BBC, under yet another scrutiny and with yet more uncertainty about its future. It is a situation which puzzles our broadcasting colleagues throughout the world. When I go to countries like Australia, where British programmes are regarded as the excellence to which their own productions must aspire, the idea of these continuing enquiries into television is regarded as a British eccentricity. Unfortunately, it is not so amusing for the people who work in broadcasting.</p>
<p>What is especially difficult for us in ITV is the double standard which is so often applied by those who write about, talk about, or take part in committees about us. For our part we are prepared to admit frankly that when ITV began 22 years ago, commercial necessity produced a service that was engrossed with ratings and seeking to maintain its existence. But that was very long ago. ITV has now achieved a public service of high quality, rivalling anything that broadcasting can offer in Britain or elsewhere in the world &#8211; and limited only by expansion into an additional channel. It is no accident that ITV companies have become increasingly attractive to some of the finest talents in the BBC: men and women who would not join an inferior service however rich the rewards.</p>
<p>Nevertheless there are still people reluctant to acknowledge how ITV has developed, from its beginnings as the brash newcomer of 1956. The BBC, for example, still refers to its monopoly of public service broadcasting’. A respected critic, writing in the Sunday Times, suggested that a BBC play about welfare state bureaucracy &#8216;would have had no chance&#8217; of being screened &#8216;on the commercial networks’. There remains a kind of snobbism behind such blinkered attitudes.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>THE ANNAN COMMITTEE mostly managed to avoid this trap, but then made some surprising conclusions. Having recognised that ITV now offers programmes quite as good as, and in some cases superior to, the BBC; having acknowledged that &#8216;it is difficult to make comparisons when the BBC has two channels’ and that &#8216;ITV output cannot be expected to have the range which BBC can provide on two channels’; and having argued for the inauguration of a fourth channel as &#8216;a challenge to broadcasters’ and &#8216;a nursery for new forms and new methods of presenting ideas’ the Committee then promptly rejected the proposal that it should be run by the ITV companies. They claimed there would then be a risk of giving the public more of what they already had, and intensified competition between ITV and BBC.</p>
<p>This is out of touch with reality. The best way to make a fourth channel thrive, in a world where the viewer increasingly expects free choice of what he watches, is to dovetail it with ITV’s current service. A fourth channel having to compete against BBC’s two and ITV’s one would be fighting a losing battle, which all the taxpayer subsidy in the world could not win. The result would be an elitist service for a tiny minority of viewers, subsidised at enormous public cost. Yet one of the main areas in which ITV producers can fairly claim to have established unequalled experience and success is in popularising minority subjects. That experience, coupled with complementary &#8211; not competitive &#8211; scheduling between ITVl and ITV2, is the key to providing a new and exciting service on the fourth channel.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>AS TO THE ASSERTION that ITV2 would provide &#8216;more of the same’, there are scores of ITV programme makers who are clamouring for the chance to prove this judgement of Annan wrong, once the straitjacket of a single channel has been removed. But if we were to assume that the staff and managements of ITV companies would want to produce on ITV2 a service identical to ITV1, the machinery of the Independent Broadcasting Authority is there to prevent such a duplication. We at Thames (and most of our colleagues in ITV) would expect to provide an ITV2 service which is obliged by statute and by IBA control to fulfil requirements not yet met by ITV or BBC. One of those, for which we put forward the original proposals in 1971, is the acquisition of programmes from independent producers for showing at peak time. We would welcome these additional freelances, though I suspect that they are neither so numerous nor so devoid of opportunity as the critics of BBC and ITV suggest. The fact remains, however, that the ITV companies are already equipped to provide a service which will meet the philosophical demands of the Annan Committee and also win a sizeable audience. Alternatives to ITV2 can do the first, but not the second.</p>
<p>The Annan Committee reported almost a year ago. As I write, the Home Office is about to produce the results of its deliberations on that report. So once again broadcasters have halted to await their future. We wait also to hear when and how the new IBA contracts are to be advertised and awarded. At Thames we await with confidence the confirmation that our record will ensure the continuation of our contract in the future. But we wait. And while we wait, we have to go on working.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in this Review you can see what &#8216;going on working’ means. In 1977 it meant producing 300 hours of programmes for our region and a further 700 for the ITV network. It meant raising a bountiful revenue from our advertisers, establishing new records. It meant selling more programmes overseas than any ITV company has ever done before.</p>
<p>Those achievements are made possible by what I believe to be the most professional staff in British television. But those bare facts could imply that Thames in 1977 was identical in all respects to Thames in 1976, ploughing the same familiar furrow. Far from it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>IN 1977 we introduced <em>Thames At 6</em> &#8211; a daily regional programme which replaced the former <em>Today</em> and brought Andrew Gardner from ITN to be its chief presenter. Already the new programme has been praised for its impact, and this is only the first stage of impressive developments in television journalism covering local news and current affairs.</p>
<p>In 1977 we introduced <em>Time For Business</em>, a weekly 45-minute programme for the London region, not only a forum for the world of business, manufacturing and the city, but emphasising to the general public the importance of business and its contribution to their life style. Presented by the unique popularising talent of Eamonn Andrews, the programme is ITV’s first in the field. It arose directly from the consultation between business and union leaders and ITV companies, promoted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.</p>
<p>In 1977 our outstandingly successful Light Entertainment Department produced another string of entirely new hits. There were the situation comedies <em>The Upchat Line</em> and<em> Miss Jones &amp; Son</em>; the sparkling variety shows <em>Night Out At The London Casino</em>; and a range of superbly spectacular productions, including the highly acclaimed <em>Tommy Steele And A Show</em>, now chosen to represent ITV at this year’s Golden Rose of Montreux.</p>
<p>In 1977, the year in which the Annan Committee put into ITV’s mouth the words &#8216;If the public prefers series, why produce one-off dramas?’, Thames’ Drama Department in fact transmitted in peak time two seven-part series and fourteen &#8216;one-off dramas’, or plays.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>DETAILS OF THESE and other innovations are in <a href="https://thames.today/a-message-from-the-managing-director">the Managing Director’s accompanying report</a> of the year’s programmes, together with information about other imaginative projects. But it is not only in our programmes that new developments are to be found.</p>
<p>In 1977 our Technical and Engineering Department, in addition to its many other technological developments, launched a new Outside Broadcast unit of its own design, which packs into a single vehicle the resources of a vast studio.</p>
<p>In 1977 our Sales Department launched Enterprise, its own entirely new computerised airtime sales system, which provides a faster, more comprehensive service to advertisers and also increases the efficiency of our internal operation.</p>
<p>In 1977, with London Looks Forward, Thames created and financed an unprecedented investigation and debate about London’s future, on which the Duke of Edinburgh commented: &#8216;This is the first time a television company has become so deeply involved in the organisation of a project of such great public interest. It must also be the first time that a television company has managed to establish what might be described as two-way communication with the public.’</p>
<p>Those are considerable achievements, but it is inevitable that hundreds of other successes go unrecorded in a formal Chairman’s statement. The award of the OBE to our brilliant Controller of Light Entertainment Philip Jones and other honours to our staff &#8211; and the programme awards, both to complete production teams and to individuals like cameraman Nick Downie (Royal Television Society News Feature Award) and designers Alex Clarke and Rod Stratfold (RTS Design Award for Rock Follies) bring pleasure and pride to all of us. In the same way, the achievements of week-by-week programmes like <em>Help!</em>, <em>Money-Go-Round</em> and <em>Magpie</em> (which has now raised more than half a million pounds for children’s charities), go largely unsung although they remain a crucial part of our service to the public, especially to the underprivileged. These are not the routine achievements of some shapeless thing called a company, but the creation of dedicated, imaginative people; for people are the main ingredient of a television programme company.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>DURING THE YEAR we have made several changes in our structure and management, building a younger team to move Thames forward. This energetic group is now led by Mr Bryan Cowgill, the outstanding BBC programme maker and channel controller, who joined us as Managing Director in October. He took over from Mr George A. Cooper who had reached his retirement age after contributing so much to ITV as well as to our company. The first Sales Director both for ABC Television and for Thames Television, Mr Cooper succeeded me as Managing Director in 1974. His knowledge and advice continue to be available to us on a consultancy basis.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>AFTER TEN SUCCESSFUL YEARS, changes in the Board were inevitable. One of our earliest directors, Mr Humphrey Tilling, formerly Company Secretary of EMI Limited, and a member of its Board, also came to retirement age. The wise and polished contributions of Mr Tilling will he missed at our Board meetings, but we shall continue to enjoy hearing his scintillating after-dinner speeches at our social events. In his place, we are fortunate to have another EMI director, Mr John M. Kuipers, particularly because of Mr Kuipers experience of electronics and his recent supervision of EMI’s interests in Australia and the Far East. Retirement age was also the reason for the resignation of one of our two independent directors, Lord Wolfenden, and we were sorry to lose his guidance on educational programmes, dating back to his pioneer work on the Schools Advisory Committee in 1957, when Rediffusion Television introduced the first television programmes for schools. Succeeding him as another non-executive independent director we are fortunate to have the services and experience of the distinguished film and television producer, Lord Brabourne.</p>
<p>The collaboration between Bryan Cowgill and our Director of Programmes, Jeremy Isaacs, is already producing new ideas, new programmes and new ways of extending our public service. At the time of Mr Cowgill’s appointment, the Board also made other changes to the senior management. Ian Scott became Director of Administration and Finance, with Jim Shaw continuing as Director of Sales and Marketing. A new senior management team was formed to work alongside the four executive Board members: Muir Sutherland, Managing Director of Thames Television International; Bob Godfrey, technical and Engineering Director; John Hambley, Planning and Development Director; and John O’Keefe, Industrial Relations Director, with Ben Marr continuing as Company Secretary.</p>
<p>All the promotions involved in these moves, and those immediately resulting from them, are internal appointments from among our existing management. At the same time, we have begun to make structural changes to our departmental system where we think them necessary. Current Affairs and Documentaries have now been split, for example, into two different departments under Mike Wooller and Peter Pagnamenta. Further changes will follow, including the establishment of the ambitious Regional News Unit about which the Managing Director writes elsewhere.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-448" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png" alt="" width="1170" height="75" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider.png 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-300x19.png 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-768x49.png 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-1024x66.png 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/thames-divider-370x24.png 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" /></p>
<p>NEW POLICIES ARE EMERGING at Thames, for example, in relation to sport and to filmed programmes. When Rediffusion Television, the pioneer London weekday contractor, was merged by the Authority with ABC Television, the weekend contractor for the North and Midlands, then dominating the Saturday/Sunday afternoon audiences, LWT took over ABC’s <em>World of Sport</em> with outstanding success; but no longer can ITV sport be concentrated into the weekend. With such international sports specialists as Bryan Cowgill, Managing Director of Thames, and Paul Fox, Managing Director of Yorkshire, recruited into the Independent Network, there should now be vigorous competition with the BBC on weekday sports coverage and commentaries.</p>
<p>In terms of filmed programmes, and with all the studios of Thames Television now overflowing with both live and videotaped programmes, this company must turn increasingly to the medium of film to augment its programme output. The international success of <em>Sweeney!</em>, in the cinema as well as on television, has proved that British drama series of the highest quality can be filmed entirely on location, and therefore Thames’ subsidiary film company, Euston Films, will extend its production.</p>
<p>Benefiting by all the expertise which has been gained by this company over its busy seven years, Thames Television will now take the further step of making a series of full-length feature films for television. It is hoped to revive and refurbish the reputation of British feature films at their very best, except that these films will not be produced for the cinema, hut for today’s greater audience television.</p>
<p>To the makers of our past and future programmes, and to every member of the staff of Thames Television, I express thanks for a highly successful year, and look forward to another period of exciting progress.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-449" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a-300x48.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="48" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a-300x48.jpg 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a-768x123.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a-1024x164.jpg 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a.jpg 1170w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/onthemove-3a-370x59.jpg 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/chairmans-statement">Chairman&#8217;s statement</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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		<title>Wedding anniversary</title>
		<link>https://thames.today/wedding-anniversary</link>
					<comments>https://thames.today/wedding-anniversary#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Transdiffusion Broadcasting System]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Sep 1976 10:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Corporate advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ABC Weekend TV]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thames.today/?p=712</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>While ITV celebrates 21 years, Thames celebrates 8</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/wedding-anniversary">Wedding anniversary</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_157" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-157" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-157 size-full" src="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="920" srcset="https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280.jpg 1280w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280-300x216.jpg 300w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280-768x552.jpg 768w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280-1024x736.jpg 1024w, https://thames.today/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tumblr_o5o5cqxklO1umsw06o1_1280-600x431.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-157" class="wp-caption-text">Advert in &#8216;Broadcast&#8217; magazine&#8217;s ITV21 celebration magazine, 22 September 1976</figcaption></figure>
<h2>For us it&#8217;s a wedding anniversary.<br />
Here are some pictures of the kids.</h2>
<p>For some ITV companies this is a 21st birthday. For us it&#8217;s the eighth year of the partnership between Rediffusion Television and ABC TV (two great pioneers who would have been twenty-one today) that created Thames Television.</p>
<p>In our short career, our programme makers have won the Prix Italia, the Prix Jeunesse, two Emmys and dozens of other national and international awards. We&#8217;ve produced more of Britain&#8217;s favourite programmes than any other company, including the BBC. We&#8217;ve exported programmes to no fewer than 93 countries. And we&#8217;ve given birth to some of the outstanding ITV programmes of the last decade.</p>
<p>Who says marriages aren&#8217;t made in heaven?</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://thames.today/wedding-anniversary">Wedding anniversary</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thames.today">THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion</a>.</p>
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