TV Theory: From Start-Up to Consolidation: Institutions, Regions, and Regulation over the History of ITV by Catherine Johnson and Rob Turnock

ITV Cultures: Independent Television Over Fifty Years was written by Catherine Johnson and Rob Turnock and was published in 2005 by McGraw-Hill Education. 

It is split into different parts with each part further broken up into chapters. Part 1 is called Histories with chapter 1 titled From Start-Up to Consolidation: Institutions, Regions, and Regulation over the History of ITV. This chapter covers how ITV was created and the reasons why, as well as the channel's aims and issues it faced. 

The time period covered is between 1951-2005, where the issues faced by the channel in the past and still even now, were to do with the association between commercial and public service broadcasting as well as the association between national and regional broadcasting.

1951

The Broadcasting committee chaired by Lord Beveridge was against advertisements being broadcast on British TV, but was for increased broadcasting in the regions. However, due to rising incomes leading to an improvement in the economy, there was a want for adverts on TV from the public. 

For advertising on television was the Popular Television Association and against was the National Television Council. 

However, the Popular Television Association were not the ones to cause advertisements to begin broadcasting on British television, but instead a small group of conservative MPs titled the 'One Nation Group' managed to gain power in the back of Parliament and secure a deal.

1954

This meant that the Television Act of 1954 was passed which broke the BBC's monopoly on television broadcasting. 

A few weeks later the Independent Television Authority (ITA) started up. Its responsibilities included building and operating transmitters, giving programming companies in the regions licences to broadcast, and supervising the programming and advertisements that were being transmitted across the country. Because the ITA's members were taken from the same place as many of the BBC Governors, it was ran similarly. 

To fund the new commercial system 'spot adverts' were created and placed in and between shows creating the first ad breaks. These were limited by the ITA to no more than 6 minutes an hour and there was to be no promotion of gambling, religion, or money-lenders. 

1962

ITV started along regional lines and when completed was made up of 15 programme companies which were located in 14 franchise areas. These also included Independent Television News (ITN), which began broadcasting from the night ITV started. 

This year also saw the publication of the Pilkington report which was critical of ITV especially but favored the BBC, as it not only stated that ITV did not entirely realize the effect it had on its viewers, but also claimed the channel did not have a reflective balance of programming. However, this changed how the public and press reacted to ITV as they defended it, seeing the report as being an 'elitist' judgement.  Although this report did make an impact on public service broadcasting as during the '60s, ITA had a section for 'The Development of Serious Programmes' in its Annual Report and Accounts.

1963 & 1964

The Television Acts passed over these years, allowed the BBC to start up a third channel, BBC 2. 

1968

The Free Communications Group (FCG) was set up by members of the various media industries due to the lack of access and control workers in these industries had. They were incredibly critical of ITV because of the amount of control the channel had across a broad spectrum of media companies.

1970

Because of the general hostility that had began to be felt about broadcasting, the Annan committee was set up (chairman: Lord Annan). 

1977

The Annan committee's report had different views from the Pilkington report as well as the Beveridge committee as it had a positive view on ITV and was not firmly against advertisements, instead seeing them as a way to fund public television. It was also for greater diversity in television to reflect the growing multiracial society present in Britain. 

1980

Broadcasting Act passed by the Conservative government required ITA to also supervise the new fourth channel, Channel 4, which was to provide a more diverse range of programmes that were not available on the other channels.

1985

In March of this year, a committee was started by the Conservative government chaired by Sir Alan Peacock, which was to inquire into methods of alternative funding for the BBC, such as beginning to advertise on the channel.

1986

The committee's report was published a year later, but suggested that advertising on the BBC not be started, amid the fear that it could reduce the choices offered to television viewers, who would be seen as consumers. 

1987-1990

The Conservative government comes up with proposals which cause the Broadcasting Act to be passed later in 1990. 

1992

The effects of this act began to be seen this year, when both ITV and BBC began to get 25% of their programmes from independent producers, as the act requested be done. 

During the '90s, ITV began to own more and more companies, but the Broadcasting Act restricted companies to not being able to own more than two large franchises.

1993

However, this restriction was ended, meaning companies could now own two large franchises, as long as both did not have bases in London. 

1996

This was furthered when the Broadcasting Act of 1996 permitted that companies could merge only if this did not decrease the quality and range of the company's programmes. 

1997

Channel 5 started up, providing more competition. 

2003

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) was created from five different regulators, required by the Communications Act 2003 to promote competition and enhance public interest in communications matters. It took on ITC's responsibilities such as permitting licences and giving out sanctions, as required by the Broadcasting Act 1990. 

Ofcom's first responsibility was to measure how  'effective'  BBC, Channel 3, Channel 4, 5, S4C and Teletext were at providing public service broadcasting (PSB) and how to continue this, or to improve it. 

2004

On 2nd February, ITV's key shareholder, Granada, merged with the channel's second, Carlton, to create ITV plc. During its first year of running, the company was outdone by fierce competition, especially from BBC 1, which remained the most popular channel for the fourth year running. 

2005

However, by 2005, ITV plc was the owner of the 11 ITV programme companies forming ITV 1 and also the channels, ITV 2, which was started 1998, ITV 3, which began broadcasting in 2004, as well as the ITV News Channel, which had started airing in 2000. 

Also, this year saw the publication of Ofcom's third and final report on PSB in February, which was titled Competition for Quality. It recognized key characteristics of PSB which were that these shows should be:

Well funded and produced so that they are of a high quality;

Original as well as from across the UK;

Innovative;

And challenging for the viewer. 

They also suggested a publicly funded body should be established to be able to provide distinct, high quality programming across a wide spectrum of media to both 'citizens and consumers', whilst also correctly arguing that as the digital system grew, it would decrease the value of analogue. 

The report's title showed the suggestion that competition helps ensure programmes of quality, which was the argument that caused ITV to be created in the early '50s. 

However, from this report it seemed that Ofcom thought in a world of growing competition and digitization, that a broadcaster covering the regions and funded by adverts would not be able to serve as an effective public broadcasting service for the future.

References:

Johnson, C., Turnock, R. ITV Cultures: Independent Television Over Fifty Years. (2005) Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education. pp.15-32.