Timeline of Carlton Television

This is a timeline of the history of Carlton Television (now known as ITV London).

1980s[]

• 1985
  • 11 October – Carlton Television is set up by Carlton Communications to bid for an ITV franchise after the Independent Broadcasting Authority stops Carlton Communications from buying Thames Television.^[1]

• 1987
  • 16 March – Carlton Communications acquires a 20 per cent of Central from Ladbrokes for £30million^[2] which finally gave Carlton its first stake in a terrestrial broadcasting company, after a bid to buy Thames Television was blocked by the IBA two years beforehand.^[3]

1990s[]

• 1991
  • 16 October – Carlton Television is awarded the licence to provide London's weekday service by outbidding Thames Television.^[4] Carlton had not been the highest bidder as CPV-TV had bid just over £2 million more (£45.32 million compared to Carlton's £43.2 million) but it had failed to pass the quality threshold test.

• 1992
  • Carlton and LWT create a 50/50 joint venture called London News Network to provide both franchisees with news and non-news regional programming.

• 1993
  • 1 January – At midnight, Carlton Television begins broadcasting.
  • London Tonight launches as the new news service for both Carlton and LWT.

• 1994
  • January – Carlton Communications takes full ownership of Central.^[5][6]
  • 30 May – The Independent Television Commission criticises Carlton for providing a wide range of "unimpressive and very disappointing" programmes for the ITV network, which were "neither distinctive nor noticeable high quality".^[7]

• 1995
  • 4 September – Carlton launches a new set of idents.^[8]

• 1996
  • Carlton Television buys Westcountry Television and increased its stake in Central Independent Television to 81%.
  • 1 September – Carlton Food Network launches. It becomes Carlton's first cable channel, It operates on weekday daytimes, timesharing with SelecTV.
  • 25 November –
    • Just over a year after its last ident refresh, Carlton launches a new set of idents.^[9]
    • London Today, a 30-minute lunchtime edition of London Tonight is launched.

• 1997
  • 31 January – Carlton Television, Granada Television and satellite company British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), create British Digital Broadcasting (BDB) as a joint venture to operate three digital terrestrial television (DTT) licences.^[10]
  • 14 February – Carlton Select, is launched. It replaces SelecTV, which Carlton acquired when it bought Pearson Television.
  • 2 April – Carlton buys Rank Film Distributors, including its library of 740 films, for £65 million.^[11]
  • 20 December – The ITC awards the sole DTT broadcast licence to British Digital Broadcasting. However, BSkyB had by now been forced by the ITC to pull out of the joint venture on competition grounds; effectively placed Sky's forthcoming digital satellite service in direct competition with the new service, although Sky was still required to provide key channels such as Sky Movies and Sky Sports to ONdigital.^[12]

• 1998
  • May – The Guardian publishes a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a 1996 Carlton documentary, The Connection, which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that The Guardian's allegations were in large part correct and the ITC, fines Carlton £2-million.^[13] for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes.
  • 28 July – BDB announces that the DTT service will be called ONdigital,^[14]
  • 15 November – OnDigital launches^[15] and Carlton launches three new channels for the service – Carlton Cinema, Carlton Kids and Carlton World. The service also carries Carlton Food Network and Carlton Select.

• 1999
  • 6 September – Carlton drops the Central Independent Television and Westcountry Television names from their on-air presentation, instead branding these regions as Carlton Television, and using the same presentation for all three regions.^[16]

2000s[]

• 2000
  • 31 January – Carlton Kids stops broadcasting.^[17][18]
  • 1 February – Carlton World stops broadcasting.^[19][20]
  • 1 March – Carlton Select stops broadcasting.^[21]

• 2001
  • May – Following the signing of a joint venture with supermarket chain Sainsbury's, Carlton Food Network is renamed Taste CFN.^[22]
  • 11 July – Carlton and Granada relaunch OnDigital as ITV Digital in an attempt to better compete with Sky.^[23]
  • September – London Today is broadcast for the final time.
  • 1 December – Taste CFN stops broadcasting.

• 2002
  • 27 March – ITV Digital goes into administration.^[24]
  • 1 May – ITV Digital stops broadcasting.^[25][26]
  • 28 October – The remaining two ITV companies in England, Carlton and Granada, decide to drop all regional identities and replace them with a single ITV1 branding. Consequently, the London ITV region now operates as a seven-day service and is branded as ITV London although no ident featuring this branding is created. Instead the region used plain generic idents seen by the rest of the country, without any regional variance identifying it as London. However the Carlton name continues to appear on endcaps.

• 2003
  • 31 March – Carlton Cinema stops broadcasting.^[27]

• 2004
  • 2 February ���
    • Granada plc merges with Carlton Communications to form a single England and Wales ITV company called ITV plc.^[28] and Carlton officially becomes ITV London.
    • The use of the Carlton name no longer appears on endcaps. This brings to an end the use of the Carlton name on ITV after 11 years.

See also[]

• History of ITV
• History of ITV television idents
• Timeline of ITV
• Timeline of London Weekend Television
• Timeline of television in London

References[]