Tyne Tees Television

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Tyne Tees Television

Based in	Gateshead (previously Newcastle upon Tyne)
Broadcast area	North East England North Yorkshire
Launched	15 January 1959
former Tyne Tees Television logos.
Closed	lost its on-air identity on 27 October 2002 (known as ITV1 Tyne Tees before regional programming only)
Website	itvlocal.com/tynetees
Owned by	ITV plc

Tyne Tees Television is the ITV television contractor for North East England. The company is registered as Tyne Tees Television Limited and is a division of ITV plc.

The company launched in January 1959 from its then main studios in City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. The station has contributed several shows to the ITV network and Channel 4, as well as its regional output. Its current regional news programme is North East Tonight.

It moved from Newcastle to Gateshead, in 2005. As part of its business strategy, ITV plc have announced that Tyne Tees' newsroom will merge with Border Television in the next three to five years, though this has yet to be approved by the regulator OFCOM. It is expected to switch off its analogue signal in 2012, one of the last of the ITV regions to do so.

[edit] History

After a financially difficult time for the first ITV companies, the ITA decided to roll out independent television to the rest of the country and advertised for bids. Several offers were submitted, including from the existing four companies, to the ITA for the regional ITV contractor to broadcast from the Burnhope transmitter in County Durham.^[1] A local consortium headed by Sir Richard Pease was awarded the contact on 12 December 1957, mainly from their commitment to the local flavour of their programming, concentrating on regional topical matters, and educational and children's programmes.^[2]

The three Ts morphed from an anchor, reflecting the nautical influence of the station's name.

The station is named after two of the region's three primary rivers. ITA considered the original name, North East England, was imprecise. Some of the consortium's suggestions were rejected: 'Three Rivers Television' for being obscure, and 'Tyne, Wear, and Tees' for being too long. Eventually, in October 1958, the name 'Tyne Tees' was announced.^[1] The other major river, the Wear (which runs between the Tyne and the Tees), was represented within the company's early signature tune "Three Rivers Fantasy", a specially commissioned work by composer and arranger Arthur Wilkinson, which merged several regional folk tunes, ending in The "Blaydon Races".^[2] The nautical theme was also reflected in the station's first logo, where the triple Ts morphed from an anchor.^[1]

Two converted warehouses provided the base for Tyne Tees on City Road until 2005.

Two furniture warehouses were purchased on City Road in Newcastle and converted into the studio and office complex. The location was chosen because of its proximity to the telephone exchange in Carliol Square. The complex initially contained four studios, with a fifth built in 1981 to accommodate productions for Channel 4.^[3]

Three years after the first British independent television station, Tyne Tees went on air at 5.00pm on 15 January 1959. The then prime minister Harold Macmillan was interviewed live on the opening night,^[1] followed by a live variety show, named The Big Show, from a small studio.^[4]. In the 2006 documentary A History of Tyneside, former newsreader Mike Neville suggests that the launch of the station enabled local people to be able to hear local accents and dialects on television.^[4]Early broadcasters, particularly those from the BBC, tended to speak in Received Pronunciation.

[edit] 1970s

The 1962 Pilkington Report lauded ITV. It prompted the government to impose a levy on ITV's revenue, the effects of which were heightened by a recession in 1970 when revenue had declined by 12 per cent in real terms. Despite the levy being reduced, Tyne Tees was one of the contractors facing collapse. To ensure the station's survival, the ITA allowed it to affiliate with Yorkshire Television under a joint management company named 'Trident Television'.^[5] A major factor in the merger was that when UHF transmission was introduced in 1969 to accommodate colour television it was found that the key Bilsdale transmitting station in North Yorkshire so dominated the territories of both companies that its allotment to either individual company would have seriously prejudiced the coverage and sales revenue of the other. The ITA agreed that Tyne Tees and Yorkshire could be considered as one company for the purposes of selling airtime, whilst expressing their individual identities in their programming output.^[6] Trident was formed in March 1969 to sell adverts for the two companies, with Yorkshire and Tyne Tees become owned by Trident Television on 1 January 1974. Trident Television, a joint venture formed in 1969 to sell airtime for both companies. For the first time, one company owned two distinct and separate ITV franchises although the new company was dominated by the larger, stronger Yorkshire whose shareholders owned 71.5% of the new company.^[7]

[edit] 1980

Trident became redundant as business became healthier. The stations were required to demerge from January 1982 as a condition of the renewal of their ITV franchises.^[6] The ITA imposed the condition that for the 1980 franchise round a company could only own one franchise, although it could earn up to 30% of another. When the new licenses started in January 1982, Trident sold all but 30% of Yorkshire, and 25% of Tyne Tees.^[7]

However, developments in satellite and cable television, in addition to the two BBC channels and the new Channel 4, began to put pressure on ITV's finances. ITV lost 3% of advertising between 1993 and 1994. Media historian Andrew Crisell comments that it was beginning to make even less sense to operate a regional structure in such a small a country as Britain.^[8] In 1990, Yorkshire bought Vaux Breweries' 19% stake in Tyne Tees, costing a £5.1million. In 1991 Tyne Tees retained its franschise in the new blind auction by out-bidding its competition by £10million. Their main challenger was 'North East Television', which was backed by Granada, Border and local newspaper the Evening Chronicle.^[9]

[edit] 1990s

New regulations from the Independent Television Commission allowed Yorkshire to takeover Tyne Tees, this time under the name Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television plc. The merger led to the culling of staff.^[10] This was the first step to ITV becoming one company in England and Wales.^[9] From 1 January 1993, Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees broadcast all regional programmes simultaneously, affecting programming that had been shown at different paces in different regions (such as Blockbusters and the Australian soaps The Young Doctors and Prisoner: Cell Block H). Most of the regional programming was produced by Yorkshire and broadcast across the two stations, an area that the ITC considered too broad to be considered local interest.^[11]

The Channel 3 North East branding, introduced in 1996, was derided by viewers.

On 16 March 1996, the continuity studios in Newcastle were closed, with continuity being centralised in Leeds. Later that year Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television made the controversial move of dual branding its stations as "Channel 3". The Broadcasting Act 1990 had made Channel 3 the 'official' name for ITV,^[12] and 'three' was the preset used by most television sets and VCRs for ITV. Tyne Tees Television was forced to use the rather long-winded name "Channel 3 North East - Tyne Tees Television". The famous "TTTV" logo was dropped in favour of a large '3'. The name "Tyne Tees Television" was only seen in small letters at the bottom of the screen. Its neighbour, Yorkshire Television, was allowed to keep its own logo alongside the '3', but Tyne Tees was not. The new branding was launched on 2 September 1996, with "Going Home (The Theme of the Local Hero)" by Mark Knopfler regularly accompanying ident sequences.^[13]

In 1997, Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television plc was acquired by Granada Group plc (now ITV plc). One of Granada's first moves was to scrap the-often derided Channel 3 branding. The "TTTV" logo returned to television screens in a new form on 9 March 1998. However, dual branding with the "ITV" name was introduced a year later. In 2000, a new logo and collection of identities was created for use before news and regional programmes. The TTTV logo was re-styled in a new typeface and partially surrounded by a group of dots which progressively faded at either end. Bizarrely, though, the "hearts" ident (used before network programmes) still featured the old style 1998 logo, making Tyne Tees one of the only broadcasters to use two different corporate logos simultaneously.

[edit] 2000s

On 28 October 2002, Tyne Tees Television was rebranded as ITV1 Tyne Tees. The name "Tyne Tees" only appears before regional programmes; the rest of the time, only the name "ITV1" is shown. The Tyne Tees logo continued to appear after its own programmes, accompanied by a small Granada logo to identify its parent company. In 2004, Granada and Carlton merged, creating a single company for all ITV franchises in England and Wales. Tyne Tees became part of ITV plc, the largest television production company in the world who now owned 90% of ITV.^[14] One of the consequences of the merger was (according to the company) an over-capacity of studio facilities and production units around the country, which had previously been rivals, but were now all part of the same group. In order to make cost savings, several large regional headquarters, studio sites and programme departments closed and merged. The decision was taken to close the City Road studios and relocate to a smaller purpose built complex housing a newsroom and studio, resulting in the loss of up to 30 jobs.^[15] A documentary about the move to new premises, The Big Move, reflected that over the years the staff numbers had dropped by about 800, and around 170 people would be moving to the new site.^[16]

ITV Tyne Tees has been based on the Gateshead bank of the River Tyne, just south of the mouth of the River Derwent, since July 2005.

ITV Tyne Tees moved to Television House at The Watermark, a new business park adjacent to the MetroCentre in Gateshead, in 2005. The first broadcast from their new base took place on 2 July 2005. Along with the move, news reporters had to learn a range of new skills, such as editing their own reports. The new practices contrast with early reporting, which had an average crew of five, with current equipment only needing a camera operator, who could also operate sound equipment, and a reporter.^[16]

Television House also acts as a base for ITV SignPost, Britain's biggest supplier of British Sign Language (BSL) services for television, video, CD-ROM, DVD, film and the Internet.^[17] Tyne Tees also has smaller studios and offices in Billingham, York, London and within the Media Centre at the University of Sunderland.^[18]

On 9 February 2005, Ofcom issued a proposed timetable for ending analogue terrestrial television transmissions as part of the switchover to digital television. Tyne Tees is the penultimate station scheduled to cease broadcasting in analogue, with a target year of 2012. Tyne Tees took over the relay transmitter at Berwick-upon-Tweed in December 2006 from Border Television in order to extend the deadline of the town's upgrade to digital TV by four years, since Border will be the first to switch off its analogue signal in 2008.^[19] In September 2007, Michael Grade announced that as part of ITV's five-year business strategy, Tyne Tees' newsroom will merge with Border Television.^[20]

[edit] Programming

The bulk of Tyne Tees' output has been its regional programming, consisting of news, current affairs and local interest. It's longest running news programme was Northern Life, which ran from 1976-92. The main news show has been rebranded several times, with the current version being North East Tonight. Local interest programming is now usually broadcast at 19:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are low profile slots due to the high-rating EastEnders being broadcast at those times on BBC One. Such documentaries concentrate upon local history, landscape and architecture, such as the various shows by John Grundy.

Tyne Tees was obliged to contribute programming for the ITV network, although the bulk of network programming was purchased from the largest stations.^[21] Tyne Tees contributed gameshows to the network, including Crosswits (1985-98), which was replaced by Chain Letters (1987-97). Tyne Tees became a prolific producer of children's entertainment for the ITV network in the 1980s. It produced How Dare You!, weekday pop music show Razzamatazz, and managed Get Fresh.^[22][23] Supergran, based on a series of books about a grandmother with superhuman powers, was also successful in the mid-1980s.^[24] Tyne Tees has also produced the 100 Greatest... series of clip shows for Channel 4.

With independent production company Festival Films and Television, Tyne Tees produced several adaptations of books by local novelist Catherine Cookson. The second, The Black Velvet Gown, was the number one drama of 1991, winning an Emmy Award for best TV drama.^[25]

The public entrance to Studio 5 at City Road gave The Tube its title.

Tyne Tees produced a lot of music programming. One of the first attempts at reaching the teenage audience was Young at Heart, hosted by Jimmy Saville and Valerie Masters. It launched in May 1960, and lasted for eight editions.^[26] In 1979, Tyne Tees launched two national series, Alright Now and Check it Out, the latter a mix of rock music and segments on youth-oriented social issues; among performances by established acts, the two shows offered early exposure to bands linked to the Northeast, notably Dire Straits and The Police. The most famous music show from the station, though, derived its name from the studios themselves. Produced for Channel 4, and first broadcast three days after the new station's launch, The Tube acquired its name from the architecture of the public entrance to Studio 5, from where the show was broadcast, at the City Road complex. Under the direction of Gavin Taylor, The Tube filmed Queen's 1986 Wembley concert for later broadcast and video release.^[27] Cameras bearing the Tyne Tees logo can be seen throughout the concert. The Tube was axed in 1987 as a result of falling audience figures, with Jools Holland swearing during a live trailer not helping matters.^[28] A couple of months later, Tyne Tees launched another music show, this time for the ITV network. Whereas The Tube featured rock and punk bands and emerging musicians, The Roxy, concentrated on the mainstream UK singles chart. The show suffered, however, from not having a regular slot on the ITV network. Also, unlike The Tube, which had gained a loyal fanbase and respect from artists, mainstream acts were reluctant to travel to Newcastle for a three minute performance when they could appear on the more established Top of the Pops in the more accessible London.^[29]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• ITV Tyne Tees at itvlocal.com
• City Road - an unofficial site with many articles detailing the history of the station, along with aspects such as continuity and news presentation.
• SignPost (BSL translation provider, part of Tyne Tees)