TV-am
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| Image:TV-AM.JPG | |
| Based in | Camden Town, London |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | National (Breakfast 6:00 am - 9:25 am) |
| Launched | February 1 1983 |
| Closed | December 31 1992 |
| Replaced by | GMTV |
| Owned by | Self-owned |
TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast to the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 to 31 December 1992. It made history by being the first national operator of an ITV franchise at breakfast-time, and was broadcast every day of the week, for most or all of the period between 6am to 9.25am.
Contents |
[edit] February 1983: The Beginning
Tv-am went on-air on 1 February 1983, two weeks after the BBC launched their show Breakfast Time. The station was originally scheduled for launch in June, however the Independent Broadcasting Authority allowed the station to bring forward its start-date in response to the BBC service.
TV-am was spearheaded by 'The Famous Five' who were not only lined up as presenters on the station, but were also shareholders — Michael Parkinson, David Frost (1983–92), Angela Rippon (1983), Anna Ford (1983) and Robert Kee. TV-am's headquarters and studios were at 'Breakfast Television Centre', Hawley Crescent, Camden, London. Designed by Terry Farrell and converted from a former Henleys garage, the building included a number of large plastic egg-cups on its roof. These are still present on the building today, despite now being home to MTV's European operations. The "TVam" logos, on the front of the building, are now obscured but still partially visible.
Programmes originally ran from 6:00-9:15am, with Daybreak and Good Morning Britain filling weekday mornings, followed by engineering announcements before the start of the regional ITV franchises at 9.25. It was not until later that the IBA extended its hours to 9:25 to allow continuous programming, and not until some years after that the ITV stations extended their hours to 6am to provide 24-hour television. (The engineering announcements were later moved to Channel 4, and cancelled in 1990 when the IBA was replaced by the ITC.)
[edit] The Summer of 1983: Troubled times
While the BBC's Breakfast Time was a huge success, TV-am's early ratings were profoundly disappointing. Its high-minded and somewhat starchy approach sat uneasily at that time of day, and was easily upstaged by the rival's sure-footed and accessible magazine style which effortlessly mixed heavy news and light-hearted features (famously moving cabinet ministers, after a serious interview, to help with a cookery demonstration).
TV-am's chief executive Peter Jay quit, while presenters Anna Ford (who famously poured a glass of red wine over the head of TV-am executive Jonathan Aitken during a heated argument at a restaurant) and Angela Rippon were sacked. Their replacements were Anne Diamond (1983-1992) and Nick Owen (1983-1986). A new director of programmes Greg Dyke was brought in, and slowly ratings improved. To save money, the show spent the summer on the road, in a show coming from various seaside resorts and presented by Chris Tarrant. A notable gimmick introduced in this time was the puppet, Roland Rat; this attracted large audiences of youngsters, but pushed up overall viewing figures.
The low audiences brought financial problems. The company was close to having its power supply disconnected, when a London Electricity official arrived during a press conference with a warrant to terminate power for non-payment: Elsewhere, a local newsagent stopped supplying the station with newspapers, for the same reason.
The cost-cutting was brought sharply into focus in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. The night before the terrorist attack on the British Cabinet Tv-am sent the production team home, as they could not afford to pay for hotel rooms. When the blast occurred in the early hours, the BBC and ITN provided immediate coverage. TV-am's response was limited to a caption of reporter John Stapleton while he reported over the phone while the BBC were showing graphic coverage of the attack. Previous conflicts with ITN meant that they would not share their footage with TV-am.
The whole affair earned the company a severe rebuke from the Independent Broadcasting Authority, who told the company to invest and improve their news coverage, or they would lose their licence.
[edit] 1984-1991: Recovery and Success
In 1984, the Australian business tycoon Kerry Packer took a substantial minority interest in the company and in May appointed his own Chief Executive, Bruce Gyngell, who had run Australian networks and previously worked in the UK for ATV in the 1970s, and would go on to run Yorkshire Television. Greg Dyke left to take a new position with TVS but Gyngell pursued the same lightweight, populist approach that Dyke had forged to establish the station's viability; a model parodied later in a Guardian newspaper headline as 'Snap, Crackle and Pap'.
In an echo of the changes which had occurred in newspapers, Gyngell was determined to make use of technical developments in television in order to reduce staff and save money. He believed that the ease of use of modern video recording and other broadcasting equipment meant that staffing levels could be reduced: ENG crews would no longer require a separate lighting technician (following a pattern familiar in Gyngell's native Australia) and technical personnel virtually eliminated. This brought him into conflict with the broadcasting trade unions, but gained him support from the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government.
In 1987, technical staff at the station went on a 24 hour strike. Management locked out the strikers, but stayed on air using non-technical staff to broadcast a skeleton service including (among other things) episodes of the American series Flipper, Batman and Happy Days - while secretaries manned cameras Gyngell himself directed the show. Although shambolic at times, this schedule turned out on occasions to be more popular than former programming (although not what they'd be allowed to broadcast under any other circumstances). In the hurricane-force storms that hit England in October that year the electrical power to TV-am's studios was lost and an emergency programme had to be transmitted from facilities at Thames Television's Euston Road centre using reports from TV-am's own crews and those of ITN, TSW and TVS. All this withstanding, the programme continued to thrive. Eventually, Bruce Gyngell fired all of the strikers replacing them with non-unionised labour from around the world.
In the years that followed, the station gradually found its feet again, and by the early 1990s, operating with a significantly reduced staff, it was the world's most profitable TV station, in terms of turnover. During this period the station became the most popular breakfast television service in the UK as the BBC's Breakfast Time lost viewers: In 1989 the BBC replaced the magazine style Breakfast Time with a more in-depth and analytical news format called Breakfast News, reminiscent of TV-am's original format.
[edit] 1991/2: Franchise Loss
In 1990, changes in the law meant that ITV franchises were no longer allocated on merit or potential but rather through a blind auction, the results of which were made public on 16 October1991. TV-am bid £14.3m, but were outbid by another consortium, Sunrise Television, which had put down £36.4m.
By February 1992 the first on screen effects of the licence loss became obvious, with TV-am closing its in-house news service and contracting it out to Sky News for a one-off payment. Children's programming also suffered, with fewer appearances of Timmy Mallet and 'Wacaday', replaced by 'Cartoon World', which also ran on a Saturday from 8am (extended to 7:30am later in the year).
Margaret Thatcher, whose government had introduced this reform (but who had by then been replaced as Prime Minister by John Major), famously wrote to Bruce Gyngell, apologising for being partly responsible for the loss of its licence. The letter was written for private consumption but Gyngell made it public, an act which drew criticism from friends of the former Prime Minister.
TV-am broadcast its last show on December 31, 1992, and was replaced by GMTV on January 1, 1993. While TV-am had used an expensive, custom-built studio complex at Camden lock, GMTV has always hired studio space from The London Studios.
The station's broadcast finished on December 31, 1992 at 09:21 with a caption over a black and white still of the station's cast and crew in the studio:
"TV-am: February 1, 1983 - December 31, 1992"
This was then followed by a final commercial break in which there was no final appearance by the famous eggcups. Instead the final commercial was for GMTV.
At 09:25 the other franchise losers; Television South,Television South West, and Thames Television began their final day's schedules and were replaced at midnight by Meridian Broadcasting, Westcountry Television, and Carlton Television respectively.
The next day, GMTV began at 06:00 GMT. Their opening studio segment included a tribute to TV-am in the form of a painting similar to their ident visible on the set behind the presenters.
The TV-am HQ in Camden Town was sold to MTV networks in 1993, where the famous eggcups still stand proud on the roof facing the canal. As well as being used by MTV for the production of its programmes, MTV Studios (as they are now marketed) are available for commercial hire within the TV industry. TV-am performed a reverse takeover to become Crockfords Plc (a gambling company).
"TV-am", the TV-am logo and fifteen registered trade marks are now owned by Ian White. The archive of TV-am programmes made between 1983 and 1992, are now owned and managed by 'Moving Image Communications Limited', based in the Maidstone Studios in Kent.
[edit] Presenters
- Anne Diamond, 1983-90, Good Morning Britain (Anne Diamond on Sundays)
- Maya Even 1989-1992 - began her television career at TV-am in 1987, first as a researcher in the political unit and then as a producer and reporter from 1989, mainly from Westminster. In 1990 she took over from Richard Keys as regular host of the early show and began deputising for Lorraine Kelly on "Good Morning Britain". She also fronted the revamped "First Report" and covered for David Frost with "Even on Sunday", which ranged across politics, the arts and sport
- Anna Ford, 1983, Good Morning Britain
- David Frost, 1983-1992, Good Morning Britain (Frost on Sundays}
- Angela Rippon, 1983, Daybreak, Good Morning Britain
- Kathy Tayler, 1989-1992, Good Morning Britain, After Nine
- Mike Morris, 1983-1992 ;Good Morning Britain; ;Sport;
- Richard Keys, 1984-1990 ;Good Morning Britain; ;Sport; ;The Morning programme
- Lorraine Kelly, 1984-1992 ;Reporter;Good Morning Britain;
- Rustie Lee, also consistently appeared on the show in the cooking segment.
[edit] Trivia
- The two themes used by TV-am from the beginning are "Daybreak" (composed by David Dundas) and "Good Morning Britain" (composed by Jeff Wayne).
- Four skydivers, 917 pigeons in Trafalgar Square, HMS Hermes and 1,000 of its crew and 6,000 people on Bristol Downs featured in the opening titles of Good Morning Britain.
- In the 1991 franchise round David Frost bid for three ITV franchises but won none of them.
[edit] External links
- TV-am.org.uk - the official company website
- www.tv-am.net - the official TV-am Archive (1983-92).
- TV-am at TV Ark
ITV | |
|---|---|
| Companies | ITV plc · SMG plc · UTV Media plc · Channel Television Ltd · GMTV Ltd |
| ITV Franchises | Northern Scotland: Grampian · Central Scotland: Scottish · Scottish/English Border and Isle of Man: Border · Northern Ireland: UTV · North East England: Tyne Tees · Yorkshire/Lincolnshire: Yorkshire · North and North West England (Weekdays): Granada · North, Midlands, and North West England (Weekends): ABC · Wales and the West of England: TWW, WWN, ITSWW, HTV · Midlands: ATV, Central · East Anglia: Anglia · London (Weekdays): Rediffusion, Thames, Carlton · London (Weekends): ATV, LWT · South and South East England: Southern, TVS, Meridian · South West England: Westward, TSW, Westcountry · Channel Islands: Channel |
| National franchises | Breakfast: TV-am, GMTV/GMTV2 · Teletext: ORACLE, Teletext Ltd. |
| Non-franchise regions | STV · ITV Thames Valley · ITV London |
| Digital channels | ITV2 · ITV3 · ITV4 · CITV Channel · Men & Motors |
| News | ITN · ITV News |
| Brands | Sport: ITV Sport · Children: CITV · Weather: ITV Weather · Mobile: ITV Mobile |
| Online | itv.com · ITV Local · Friends Reunited |
| See Also | ITV television presentation · ITV Digital |
| Independent television regulators | ITA (1955-72) · IBA (1972-91) · ITC (1991-2003) · Ofcom (2003-present) |
| Website: www.itv.com | |
