Timeline of Carlton Television explained

This is a timeline of the history of Carlton Television (now known as ITV London), and of its former owner Carlton Communications. Carlton Television has provided the ITV service for London on weekdays since 1993, and Carlton Communications took over the services for the Midlands, South West England, the West of England and Wales before merging with Granada plc to form ITV plc.

1980s

• 1985
  • 11 October – Carlton Television is set up by Carlton Communications to bid for an ITV franchise after the Independent Broadcasting Authority stops them from buying Thames Television.^[1]
• 1987
  • 16 March – Carlton Communications acquires 20 percent of Central Independent Television from Ladbrokes for £30million^[2] which finally gave them their first stake in a terrestrial broadcasting company, after a bid to buy Thames Television was blocked by the IBA two years earlier.^[3]

1990s

• 1991
  • 16 October – Carlton Television is awarded the licence to provide London's weekday service by outbidding Thames Television.^[4] Carlton had not been the highest bidder as CPV-TV had bid just over £2 million more (£45.32 million compared to Carlton's £43.2 million) but it had failed to pass the quality threshold test.
• 1992
  • Carlton Television and LWT create a 50/50 joint venture called London News Network to provide both franchisees with news and non-news regional programming.
• 1993
  • 1 January – At midnight, Carlton Television begins broadcasting.
  • 4 January – London Tonight launches as the new news service for both Carlton Television and LWT.
• 1994
  • January – Carlton Communications takes full ownership of Central.^{[5] [6]}
  • 30 May – The Independent Television Commission criticises Carlton Television for providing a wide range of "unimpressive and very disappointing" programmes for the ITV network which were "neither distinctive nor noticeable high quality".^[7]
• 1995
  • 4 September – Carlton Television launches a new set of idents.^[8]
• 1996
  • Carlton Communications buys Westcountry Television.
  • 2 September – Carlton Food Network launches, becoming Carlton's first cable channel. It broadcasts for five hours each weekday afternoon, timesharing with SelecTV.
  • 25 November
    • Just over a year after its last ident refresh, Carlton Television launches a new set of idents.^[9]
    • London Today, a 30-minute lunchtime edition of London Tonight is launched.
• 1997
  • 31 January – Carlton Communications, Granada plc and satellite company British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), create British Digital Broadcasting (BDB) as a joint venture to operate three digital terrestrial television (DTT) licences.^[10]
  • 14 February – Carlton Select is launched. It replaces SelecTV which Carlton acquired when it bought Pearson Television.
  • 2 April – Carlton Communications buys Rank Film Distributors, including its library of 740 films, for £65 million.^[11]
  • 20 December – The ITC awards the sole DTT broadcast licence to British Digital Broadcasting. However, BSkyB had by now been forced by the ITC to pull out of the joint venture on competition grounds, effectively placed Sky's forthcoming digital satellite service in direct competition with the new service, although Sky was still required to provide key channels such as Sky Movies and Sky Sports to ONdigital.^[12]
• 1998
  • May – The Guardian publishes a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a 1996 Carlton Television 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 found that The Guardians allegations were in large part correct and the ITC, fines Carlton £2million.^[13] for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes.
  • 28 July – BDB announces that the DTT service will be called ONdigital.^[14]
  • 15 November – OnDigital launches^[15] and Carlton Communications launches three new channels for the service, Carlton Cinema, Carlton Kids and Carlton World. The service also carries Carlton Food Network and Carlton Select.
• 1999
  • January - Carlton Communications buys the ITC library from Polygram Filmed Entertainment which was in a process of folding into Universal Pictures.^[16]
  • 6 September – Carlton drops the Central and Westcountry names from their on-air presentation, rebranding these two regions under the "Carlton" name and using the same on-air presentation as Carlton Television for all three regions.^[17]

2000s

• 2000
  • 31 January – Carlton Kids stops broadcasting.^{[18] [19]}
  • 1 February – Carlton World stops broadcasting.^{[20] [21]}
  • 1 March – Carlton Select stops broadcasting^[22] and its hours on ONdigital are given over to Carlton Food Network, resulting in CFN becoming a full-time channel.^[23] Whilst on cable, the space vacated by CFN is given to Carlton Cinema.
• 2001
  • May – Following the signing of a joint venture with supermarket chain Sainsbury's, Carlton Food Network is renamed Taste CFN.^[24]
  • 11 July – Carlton Communications and Granada plc relaunch OnDigital as ITV Digital in an attempt to better compete with Sky.^[25]
  • 11 August – ITV's main channel is rebranded as ITV1.
  • September – London Today is broadcast for the final time.
  • 1 December – Taste CFN stops broadcasting.
• 2002
  • 27 March – ITV Digital goes into administration.^[26]
  • 1 May – ITV Digital stops broadcasting.^{[27] [28]}
  • 28 October – The remaining two ITV companies in England, Carlton and Granada, decide to drop all regional identities and replace them with a single ITV1 branding. Consequently, the London ITV region now operates as a seven-day service and is branded as ITV London although no ident featuring this branding is created. Instead, the region used plain generic idents seen by the rest of the country, without any regional variance identifying it as London. However, the Carlton name continues to appear on endcaps and on presentation before regional programmes in the Midlands and South West regions.
• 2003
  • 31 March – Carlton Cinema stops broadcasting after Carlton was unable to get the channel onto the Sky platform.^[29]
• 2004
  • 2 February
    • Granada plc merges with Carlton Communications to form a single company ITV plc, which consequently owns all the Channel 3 franchises in England and Wales.^[30]
    • Carlton Television and LWT lose their identities into ITV London.
    • The Carlton name no longer appears on presentation or endcaps. This brings to an end the use of the Carlton name on ITV after 11 years.

See also

• History of ITV
• History of ITV television idents
• Timeline of ITV
• Timeline of Thames Television – Carlton's London predecessor
• Timeline of London Weekend Television – supplying the weekend service alongside Carlton's London weekday service
• Timeline of television in London – includes the ITV London service after Carlton's name ceased to be used.

Notes and References

1. Guardian Friday, Oct 11 1985 P20, Dennis Barker " Carlton Communications proposal ruled unaccepted"- IBA blocks sale of Thames
2. Ladbroke sale fuels takeover speculation. Cliff Feltham. The Times, Monday, 16 March 1987; pg. 19
3. Carlton buys Central stake from LadbrokeStoddart, RobinThe Guardian (1959–2003); 16 March 1987;
4. http://www.itvplc.com/about/history/ ITV plc: History
5. Too much reward without risk. The Times (London, England), Friday, 4 March 1994; pg. 25;
6. TV bid will spark more takeovers. Martin Waller Deputy City Editor. The Times Tuesday, 30 November 1993; pg. 23
7. Web site: Williams . Rhys . The case for Carlton Television: Paul Jackson, managing director of Carlton Television, gives Rhys Williams his response to the stinging criticism of his company's performance by the Independent Television Commission . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220507/https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-case-for-carlton-television-paul-jackson-managing-director-of-carlton-television-gives-rhys-williams-his-response-to-the-stinging-criticism-of-his-companys-performance-by-the-independent-television-commission-1439390.html . 2022-05-07 . subscription . live . The Independent . 1994-05-30 . 2013-06-25.
8. Web site: Carlton . TV Live . 2019-12-01 .
9. Web site: Carlton . TV Live . 2019-12-01 .
10. Web site: Carlton, Granada, and BSkyB form British Digital Broadcasting.
11. News: Dawtrey. Adam. Carlton Buy of Rank a Done Deal. Variety. 2 April 1997. 6 July 2018.
12. Itv Big Two lead digital revolution. Eric Reguly and Carol Midgley. The Times, Wednesday, 25 June 1997
13. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/itc/itc_publications/annual_report/1998/programme_regulation.asp.html ITC Annual Report 1998 - Programme regulation
14. News: 28 July 1998. UK Digital turn on for ONdigital. BBC News. 24 September 2018.
15. News: BBC News – The Company File – First shots in Digital TV war. news.bbc.co.uk.
16. News: Thal . Peter . Carlton pays $150m for film library . The Independent . 1999-01-20 . 2012-10-22 . London.
17. Web site: Carlton . TV Live . 2019-12-01 .
18. News: Discovery channels boost ONdigital. 22 December 1999. The Independent.
19. News: Carlton makes unhappy Discovery. 22 December 1999. The Guardian.
20. News: Discovery channels boost ONdigital. 22 December 1999. The Independent.
21. News: Carlton makes unhappy Discovery. 22 December 1999. The Guardian.
22. News: Carlton makes unhappy Discovery. 22 December 1999. The Guardian.
23. News: Discovery channels boost ONdigital. 22 December 1999. The Independent.
24. Web site: Sainsbury's to front digital TV. MediaWeek. 30 July 2013. 28 September 2000.
25. News: Ondigital 'faces relaunch'. 23 April 2001. news.bbc.co.uk.
26. News: ITV Digital goes broke. 27 March 2002. news.bbc.co.uk.
27. Web site: ITV Digital RIP. .
28. News: Race to find digital broadcaster. 1 May 2002. news.bbc.co.uk.
29. Web site: Carlton finally drops digital channel. Jason. Deans. 4 December 2002. Theguardian.com.
30. News: ITV cleared for a united kingdom . Litterick . David . The Daily Telegraph . London . 8 October 2003 . 26 June 2011.