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Associated TeleVision Limited, later ATV Network and best known simply as ATV, was a British ITV company from 1955 until 1981.
Formation The company was formed from the merger of the Associated Broadcasting Development Company (known as ABDC and under the control of Norman Collins) and the Incorporated Television Programme Company (known as ITC and under the control of Prince Littler and Lew Grade). Both companies had applied for a contract to become one of the new ITV stations. ABDC won the contract but had insufficient money to operate it; ITC failed to win a contract, mainly due to the stranglehold this would give the Grades and Stoll-Moss theatres over talent in the UK. The merger provided the money required but put Littler and Grade in real control of the new company, effectively sidelining Collins. The new company was originally known as the Associated Broadcasting Company (and therefore ABC), but Associated British Corporation's parent company, who wished to call their station ABC and also ran a large chain of cinemas under those initials, successfully sued for prior ownership. The name change took place after ABC had been operating for three weeks; the new name chosen was Associated TeleVision Ltd, producing the initials ATV. The company's logo, originally designed for ABC and tweaked for the newly renamed ATV was a "shadowed eye", which was inspired by the CBS logo and reputedly designed by Lew Grade on a transatlantic flight back from the US. The logo is one of the most recognisable in broadcasting. As a side note to ATV's television activities, the company also set up a music publishing division. This was known as 'ATV Music' and existed initially to publish TV-related music, such as theme tunes, composed by its in-house composers. This company was eventually split away from the parent company and went through numerous different owners as well as buying into other established music publishers (a good example of which being Northern Songs - The Beatles publishing company) until it eventually settled into the hands of Micheal Jackson. A joint venture was entered into with Sony in the late 1990s which became known as Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. Broadcasting ATV (as ABC at first) began broadcasting in its own right on Saturday 24 September 1955 (after jointly presenting the network's opening night on Thursday 22 September). The company had won two ITV contracts, the Saturday and Sunday contract for London and the Monday–Friday contract for the Midlands. The latter service opened on 17 February 1956, with, ironically, ABC providing the weekend programmes. The new company ran into further financial difficulty due to the staggering losses of the first two years of ITV and the start-up costs. The London weekday contractor Associated-Rediffusion shouldered some of ATV's losses and further funding was achieved by selling shares in the company, mainly to the Daily Mirror newspaper. The company structure was changed several times until 1966, when ATV and ITC both became subsidiaries of the Associated Communications Corporation (ACC), formed by turning the old structure on its head. This marked the point where Lew Grade moved from being the greatest influence over the company, to him taking actual control. ATV's main impact on the early ITV service was, no surprise given its ancestry, in the field of variety and light entertainment. In the major contract and region changes in 1968, ATV lost the weekend franchise in London to the new London Weekend Television, but its Midlands contract was renewed for the full seven days instead. The weekday/weekend "split-service" ended in the North & Midlands with the 1968 franchise round, continuing only in the London area. In 1969, in readiness for colour broadcasting in the UK, a large new 'state of the art' television studio was built off Broad Street, in the heart of Birmingham. Constructed alongside a 100 metre high tower block, Alpha Tower, it was to replace the former Alpha Studios in Aston. The complex was named 'The Paradise Centre'. This was finally closed in 1996 when the centre was diagnosed with the building condition concrete cancer. However the centre, now owned by Carlton, was very rarely used as they had moved to smaller studios just around the corner in Gas Street. At the time of writing (2006) the studios are due to be demolished for a new retail development and office complex. Alpha Tower will survive as it is a listed building. Loss of franchise In 1981 the Independent Broadcasting Authority decided that ATV's lack of regional programming and production (it had a major studio centre at Elstree in Hertfordshire, well outside its Midlands franchise) was hampering the region, so it insisted that the new applicant for the franchise be more clearly based in the region and have separate facilities for East and West Midlands. ATV Midlands Limited, a shell company owned by ACC, applied successfully for the franchise. As a condition of its award, ACC was forced to divest itself of 49% of the company and rename the company. The new company name was registered as Central Independent Television plc and the new logo, advertised as being a UFO, appeared on 1 January 1982. Central maintained control of ATV's news archive and regional programmes, plus programming already in production or being shown at the time of changeover; the rest of the ATV archive was sold on by ACC. ACC later divested itself of the remainder of Central after the Australian investor Robert Holmes à Court staged a boardroom coup and forced Lew Grade to cede control. ACC remained in control of ITC and Stoll-Moss Theatres until ITC was sold to Polygram International Television—coincidentally bringing Lew Grade back into control of ITC until his death in 1998. Stoll-Moss Theatres, the last remaining part of ACC, was sold to the Really Useful Group in 2001. Carlton Communications had spent much of the 1980s and 1990s buying up the intellectual property of the former ACC, including the rights to the ATV logo and company name, the ATV news archive (via its purchase of Central) and finally both the ATV and ITC archives, before itself being swallowed-up by Granada. Recent changes have seen Granada Ventures take over Carlton, and all of ATV's national archive programming has been taken into their ownership. The regional news archive from ATV and Central, plus some regional programmes, are now stored at the Media Archive for Central England in Nottingham. This archive is located at Nottingham University, which by co-incidence now own the former Central Studios in the City where the archive is kept. ATV Network Limited was 'dissolved' as a company in 1992; however, just like Rediffusion, it made a strange comeback many years later. Victor Lewis-Smith bought the rights and logo to Rediffusion many years ago, but in 2006 "ATV Network Limited" was revived as a company brand independent of Granada and its previous archive. Names used Company names: On-air names: Initials used: Popular programmes ATV zoom 2 ATV zoom 2 was the name of a short 10-second piece of animation, which pre-ceeded the start of all ATV produced programmes. So-called 'station identities' (idents) would inform ITV viewers in the United Kingdom of the originating local ITV company that had produced and was ultimately broadcasting the programme to follow across the network. The ATV ident therefore indicated when a programme made by ATV was about to begin. Various ATV idents were used over the lifetime of the company, but the 'Zoom 2' was largely considered the most famous, by far. It was used from the launch of colour transmissions on ITV from 15 November 1969 until 31 December 1981. The music was composed by Wally Stott, a prolific TV composer including of the Hancock's Half Hour theme. History When ATV became and renamed Central on 1st January 1982, they would use a "Central Presents" caption before the usual ATV frontcap on programmes produced before the change. Although this practice ended around December 1982 on first-run programmes (live programmes used the "Central" frontcap), schools programming continued to start like this until sometime in 1984 as most schools programmes by this time had been firmly established as repeats. Versions Birmingham versions It was created by individually painting the animation onto the film, each film frame slightly different to the next. When the animation was put through an older colour telecine machine, one in which the colorimetry was working incorrectly, a blue background version aired. This frontcap was often seen with a blue background when it preceded programmes from the Birmingham studios of ATV. Crossroads & Tiswas are some examples of this. The Birmingham studios were equipped with older telecine machines because they were not ATV's main production centre. Their main studio was in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. This was very close to the Elstree Film Studios. ATV initially operated in London at weekends (1955-1968) and Birmingham (1955-68) during weekdays although they were two separate ITV franchise areas. ATV went "full-time" in the Midlands in July 1968 after their weekend rival ABC Weekend TV had become Thames Television. But, in the early days of colour ATV, there were two different versions of the animation itself. One was used for the Borehamwood studios (which is the version explained below) & one with a different sounding fanfare for the programmes coming out of Birmingham (the only ATV Birmingham programme being seen in other ITV regions at this time was Crossroads.) The situation in which two different versions of the jingle were used was abandoned after the ITV technician's strike of 1970-1971. During this period, ITV did not stop broadcasting, but the programmes made in this period by all ITV companies were made using the colour cameras with only black & white camera tubes inserted in them. Ater the colour strike ended, both the ATV studios adopted the Borehamwood version of "zoom 2". Borehamwood Version There were two versions of the Borehamwood zoom 2 animation itself. These are not clearly visible but when the ATV logo forms up, you can see the differences. The first one was used by ATV from the start of colour transmissions in 1969 up until the ITV strike of 1979. As stated earlier, this was used for Borehamwood programmes only at first & was then adopted by the Birmingham studios in 1971. This had vertical lines going all the way through the ATV logo as it formed up from the white dot. The second version was used from the resumption of services in 1979 up until the company's demise in 1981. The reason for the replacement of the original is unknown, although it may have been that the original had its colour quality starting to fade because it had been overused in the telecine machines (ATV made a lot of programmes for ITV during the 1970's). This version had lines similar to those described in the previous paragraph except that they only went in the shape of the ATV logo. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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