ITV regions debate

[Humphrey Hacker]

Indeed, though ISTR Southern/TVS actually had the biggest advertising revenue at least at one stage, due not to the population but how to affluent the region was and the higher rates it could therefore charge.

You have to remember that in early ITV, the four original contractors were the network, and only slowly was it extended elsewhere. Even when other regions came online their access to network programming was through affiliating to one of the original contractors (Rediffusion, ATV, ABC, or Granada). This was the beginning of what evolved into the Five and the Ten, where the successors to the original four contractors (plus Yorkshire which was carved out of the original Granada/ABC region) absolutely dominated for the next couple of decades the supply of programming to what became the ITV network and what was supplied by the Ten was limited to the fringes.

From what I understand for a long time there were weekly meetings to decide the scheduling. The big 4 (later to be 5) would have some pretty heated arguments over what would be shown. This only ended in the mid 90’s when a central scheduling unit was created