ITV Wales & West (old)

"HTV" redirects here. For other uses, see HTV (disambiguation).

ITV Wales & West, previously known as HTV, is the ITV contractor for Wales and the West of England, owned and operated by ITV plc from studios in Cardiff and Bristol. The station, a dual-regional franchise, took over from TWW in 1968, as Harlech Television, later becoming HTV and through a series of takeovers, ITV Wales & West, effectively ran as two separate regions. Currently, the station's licence is owned by ITV Broadcasting Limited.

History

Initially the station used its full name (after the head of the company, Lord Harlech), but from the introduction of colour in 1970 it became HTV after fears that the name Harlech alienated viewers of the English part of the region.

The company won its contract in circumstances which angered its predecessor Television Wales and West (TWW) and the Independent Television Authority offered them an opportunity to buy shares in HTV, an offer which was declined. It was felt that TWW, being corporately-based in London, was too distant from the area it served and that Harlech, jointly based in Bristol and Cardiff, would serve the area better. TWW left its franchise five months early, selling the remaining air-time to Harlech. This resulted in an emergency service as Harlech were not ready to go on-air.

HTV had to serve two distinct regions (Wales and the west of England) and therefore two distinct languages and cultures. It inherited studios in Cardiff (built around an old farm house in Pontcanna) and Bristol (in Brislington).

HTV West had a lucrative sideline in producing high quality children's TV series, often sold internationally. It established the 'HTV junior drama workshop' that auditioned and trained young actors and used the elite group as a casting base for both its own productions, and other companies seeking young talent. Arthur Of The Britons (a historic adventure series), Children of the Stones (a supernatural thriller shot amid the famous stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire) and Robin Of Sherwood were all very popular wherever they were shown. Indeed, HTV was the first British broadcaster to show Sesame Street, after it was rejected by the BBC in 1971. HTV Wales produced far less drama output, though they were contracted to make the ten-part Return to Treasure Island for The Disney Channel in 1985.

In 1984 HTV opened new £14m studios at Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff to replace those at Pontcanna. The studios fell into the ownership of United Business Media (then United News and Media) following the takeover of HTV by the group in 1997. However, while HTV changed hands twice more, UBM continued to own the Culverhouse Cross headquarters. ITV plc bought the headquarters in 2006, though plans to create a media village on the site failed. They also invested heavily in ITV Wales' newsroom, but a severe downturn in advertising revenue had caused severe financial cutbacks by late 2009. ITV have leased the management of Studio 1 to Barcud Derwen, a Welsh TV production facilities provider, under the company's Omni TV business. Among other programmes, the studio played host to some of the interior sets for the first revived series of Doctor Who in 2005. In Bristol, ITV have been based at Television Centre in Bath Road since the creation of TWW, although following the confirmed merger of ITV West's and ITV Westcountry's operations in 2009, along with significant job losses, a spokesman for the company confirmed that ITV are looking to move from there in the future.

HTV Ltd was re-named ITV Wales & West Ltd on 29 December 2006, alongside HTV Group Ltd, which was re-named ITV Wales & West Group Ltd On 11 December 2008, the broadcast licence was transferred from ITV Wales & West Group Ltd to ITV Broadcasting Limited.

Services

ITV Wales and West operates two separate services: ITV1 Wales (formerly HTV Wales) in Wales, and ITV1 West (previously HTV West, then briefly ITV1 West of England) in the West of England area. In 2002, the name ITV1 West was only shown before regional programmes. Since 2006, this name does not appear before any programming on the channel at all. At all times, the station is simply called ITV1. ITV1 Wales is now only seen on idents before network opt-outs or regional programming, although it continues to be seen on breakbumpers for most of the day (excluding promotional breakbumpers). Announcers and presenters now generally avoid calling the channel ITV1 Wales and instead usually call it ITV1.

After Granada and Carlton introduced national ITV1 branding to all stations in England and Wales on 28th October 2002, ITV1 West lost its team of continuity announcers. ITV1 Wales were allowed to retain theirs until 16 January 2006 - at this point, they switched to using the same London-based team that the West region had been using since 2002. Although only being verbally referred to before regional programming, ITV in Wales continues to be visually identified as ITV1 Wales on idents before regional programmes and on breakbumpers (excluding promotional ones) throughout the day. Following the change to the single ITV1 branding, the 'HTV' name was initially kept for its news programming. However, when Granada and Carlton merged on 2nd February 2004 to create ITV plc, this was dropped in favour of 'ITV Wales News/ITV West News.

Programming

HTV headquarters, Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff

HTV/ITV Wales and West's main programmes include Wales Tonight (ITV1 Wales), The West Tonight (ITV1 West) and The Ferret (ITV1 Wales). Nuts and Bolts, a local drama series on ITV1 Wales, was briefly shown across the UK on ITV2. It ended in 2002, and neither ITV Wales nor ITV West now produce network programming. Up until c.2002, HTV did continue to commission Movies, Games and Videos. Previously, there have been several major HTV commissions for the network, including Robin of Sherwood, Wycliffe and children's programmes including Rubbish, King of the Jumble, Children of the Stones, The Famous Five (90s version starring Jemima Rooper), The Top Ten of Everything, The Slow Norris, Captain Starr, and Dog & Duck; HTV also produced the game shows Definition (originally hosted by Don Moss and later Jeremy Beadle), Three Little Words (co-hosted by Ray Alan and his wife Barbie) and Keynotes, co-produced with Reg Grundy Productions.

Since 1982, HTV Wales (now under the ITV Cymru brand) has provided Welsh language programming to S4C such as Cefn Gwlad, Hacio and Y Byd ar Bedwar, although this is now commissioned rather than produced in-house. Prior to S4C's introduction, HTV's evening news had to be split into two fifteen-minute bulletins, presented from the same studio and separated by an advertising break: Y Dydd (The Day) in Welsh, and Report Wales in English.

Ownership

During 1996, speculation grew over a possible takeover of HTV. At the time, Scottish Television held a 20% stake in the company, while Carlton was seeking guidance from the Independent Television Commission about a buyout.. Carlton had previously beaten HTV to taking control of Westcountry Television in the South West of England..

In October, United News and Media agreed to buy Scottish Television's 20% stake in the company, ending Carlton's interest about a buyout. HTV and United began talks shortly after the sale aimed at sharing production services and facilities. United was quoted at the time to have "no intention of bidding for the whole company" but within 6 months, on 28 June 1997, HTV was taken over fully by United News and Media plc (now United Business Media plc) for £370 million.

In 2000, Granada Media plc bought United's television interests, but at the time competition regulations limited the extent to which one company could control the ITV network, and were consequently forced to give up one of its ITV franchises. This resulted in a break-up of HTV, whereby its broadcast facilities and Channel 3 broadcast licence (and hence its advertising revenues) were sold to Carlton Communications plc, owners of Carlton Television, whilst the majority of production facilities were retained by Granada. Unlike Carlton's other ITV acquisitions, which were rebranded to use the Carlton name on screen, HTV's identity was retained on-air until 27 October 2002 when the 'ITV1' brand was introduced to most of the network.

Granada and Carlton were subsequently permitted to merge in 2004 to form the single company ITV plc, which now owns all of the ITV franchises in England and Wales, and consequently re-united the two separated parts of HTV.

Reception

ITV Wales can be received across the UK and Ireland and further afield via satellite on Sky Digital. Its terrestrial signal can also can be received in southeastern parts of Ireland, where it is retransmitted on UHF by so-called 'deflectors', although this is because the UTV region was not historically receivable in those areas by any means in order to be rebroadcast. ITV Wales (when known as HTV Wales) had also been carried by a number of Irish cable TV providers in the south-east and south of Ireland prior to being replaced by UTV during the 1990s.

ITV West is now also broadcast from a relay transmitter on the Ridge Hill transmitter (on UHF channel 30) and now covers a larger area (see map, but note that the radiation from Ridge Hill is only 90 degrees to the south east for north Gloucestershire, and not the 360 degree radiation as shown).. . This service is on analogue TV only, and is broadcast in tandem with the ITV Central West service (on UHF channel 25). Digital terrestrial viewers using Ridge Hill only receive Central West, but this will change to ITV West on digital switchover in 2010/2011.

Regional news programmes

ITV Wales News

Its flagship programme is known as Wales Tonight. All other news bulletins are known as (ITV) Wales News. Unlike their counterparts in the West of England, ITV Wales cannot use the word "Today" in the title of their daytime news bulletins as the national BBC Wales news programme is called "Wales Today".

ITV West News

Its flagship programme was known as The West Tonight. All other news bulletins were known as The West Today/Tonight, dependent on the time of day they are broadcast. With effect from 3 December 2006, following the end of the Central South sub-region and the beginning of ITV West transmissions from Ridge Hill, ITV West took over Central's Gloucester regional news office and began covering north Gloucestershire for the first time, something that had been sought by the public in the area for a long time.

Under plans revealed in September 2007, as part of ITV plc's attempts to reduce the cost of regional programming, ITV West and ITV Westcountry combined operations in early 2009, with The West Tonight and Westcountry Live becoming a new, single programme, The West Country Tonight, covering the whole of south west England. While the programme is based in Bristol, it features two opt-outs on weekdays - 15 minutes during the main 6pm programme and a full late night bulletin - for both halves of the region, covering more localised stories. Depending on the day's news, either one of the West and Westcountry opt-outs is pre-recorded shortly before transmission.

External links

• ITV Wales at itv.com
• ITV West at itv.com
• Harlech House of Graphics (unofficial history site)
• ITV Wales & West England at TV Ark