ITV, British Independent Television, has been a part of my life since the 1970s. My teenage years and my subsequent adult years have been filled with ITV programmes like Upstairs Downstairs (London Weekend Television, 1971-1975), Brideshead Revisited (Granada, 1981), The Jewel in the Crown (Granada, 1984), Inspector Morse (Central Independent Television and Carlton, 1987-2000), Lewis (Granada and ITV, 2006-2013), Vera (ITV, 2011-), and Endeavour (Mammoth, Masterpiece, Endeavour, 2012-). These shows, along with shows on the BBC like Doctor Who (1963-1989, 1996, 2005-), The Forsyte Saga (1967), Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974), Shoulder to Shoulder (1974), I Claudius (1976), The Good Life (1975-1978), Fawlty Towers (1975-1979), Butterflies (1978-1983), House of Cards (1990), and the Beeb's adaptation of the Shakespeare plays (1978-1985), to name just a few, showed me how good, how intelligent, how compelling, how dramatic, how tragic, and how funny television could be, particularly when compared with the often at best mediocrities that populated the airwaves of the three commercial networks that dominated American television before the 1980s, CBS, ABC, and NBC.
The anthology ITV Cultures edited by Catherine Johnson and Rob Turlock (Maidenhead, Berkshire, Eng: Open University Press, 2004) explores the economic, political, cultural, and geographic history of Britain's first commercial network, ITV, and its regional franchises across the UK, from the advent of commerical televison in 1955 to the early twenty-first century. Chapters look at the institutional history of ITV and the changing economic and regulatory ecologies within which it had to operate (Johnson and Turlock), whether it is possible to construct a canon of ITV television shows (John Ellis), and the role of patron and publisher Lew Grade played at Associated Television, one of ITV's original regional franchises, and Incorporated Television Company, which Grade owned until it was bought by ATV, and which produced programmes for the franchise (Jonathan Bignell). Other chapters look at ATV's The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1959) which was co-written and co-produced by Brits and Americans (Steve Neale), and London Weekend Television's Upstairs Downstairs (Helen Wheatley) and its nuanced engagement the neo-Victorian and Edwardian movement of the 1970s and with second wave feminism in its narrative and its mise-en-scene, both of which were successfully sold overseas, and LWT's strategy of making "quality" programmes not only for the domestic market but also for overseas markets at a time when the cost of making dramatic TV programmes was skyrocketing and which, as a result, brought much needed monies into ITV's coffers free of the levy regulators laid on ITV advertsing revenue (Rod Allen). Another chapter focuses on the only failure of an ITV regional franchise, Wales's West and North Television, as a result of its limited number of broadcast translators, the tensions between the BBC and the Independent Television Authority (ITA), the body that regulated commericial television in its early years, particularly over TV broadcasting in Wales, the commerical and public service remits mandated for ITV, commitments WWN met by broadcasting Welsh programming, and WWN's financial inexperience and lack of financial expertise (Jamie Medhurst). Still another chapter looks at Independent Television news, the news provider for all ITV franchises, which has been caught between ITV's commercial and public service remits, between commercialism and profit and its mandate to serve the public good, and both profited and suffered as a consequence (Jackie Harrison). Finally, two chapters explore the ITV talk show Trisha (1998-2010) and the ITV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (1998-2017, 2018). Sherryl Wilson and Matt Hills argue respectively that what some academics and scholar fans see as trash television actually have, in the case of Trisha and its thereapeutic aspects, a public service component, and, in the case of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, a degree of creativity in its mise-en-scene. Millionaire also has, Hills argues, an appeal to game, quiz, and puzzle enthusiasts, some of whom are scholar fans who can put Millionaire into its commerical and public service contexts. A very helpful timeline of ITV history ends the anthology.
A couple of things struck me while reading ITV Cultures. First, I was struck by how a television network that was initially regionally structured in order to avoid Londonocentrism and regionally structured in order to emphasise regional programming, was, over time, centralised in London. Second, I was struck by how ITV's regional franchises were, thanks to the relaxation of governmental regulation, concentrated into fewer and fewer hands over time. Both centralisation and concentration, of course, are the legacies of the revival and triumph of sectarian laissez-faire liberalism or neoliberalism after the late 1970s and the neoliberal takeover of the Conservative Party and even parts of the Labour Party. Finally, I was struck by the similar impact the coming of cable television and satellite television had in the UK and US. They ended the duopoly, at least on one level, that was ITV and the BBC in the UK and the cartel that was CBS, NBC, and ABC in the US. This, in turn, allowed neoliberals to argue that now that there were so many different television stations out there in the terrestrial and digital universes, governmental regulation could be relaxed and competition and diversity could be left to the market. Given that the market produces much of the same product, however, and given that Channel Four, which came on the air in 1982 with the remit to produce product for the part of the part of the market that was largely ignored in the age of governmental regulation, is no longer that different from other commercial channels, the logic of the neoliberal argument can certainly be questioned.
ITV Cultures should be a must read for those interested in the history of broadcasting and the history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Highly recommended as an introduction to the economic, political, cultural, geographic, and, if to a much less extent, the demographic aspects of commercial British television and beyond.
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