Television South was formed following discussions between television producer James Gatward, television executive Bob Southgate, who had previously worked at
ITN,
Thames Television, and journalist Martin Jackson to apply for the new south and south-east of England
ITV franchise in 1980. Finance was provided by
Barclays Bank and
Charterhouse investment bank. This area was the most hotly contested, with seven other applicants besides TVS and the incumbent
Southern Television. The
Independent Broadcasting Authority had decided to increase the area covered by the south to now include the south east. This meant switching the main
Bluebell Hill transmitter, and associated relays (including the important relay at
Tunbridge Wells) to broadcast Television South (TVS) instead of ITV London. To reflect this, the contract area served by
Southern Television, which was previously titled the south of England area, was renamed south and south-east of England'. To serve the new region better, the IBA expected the successful applicant to operate separate facilities for both the south and the south-east, known as a 'dual-region', with new additional facilities to be built in the south east. Following the submission of its application, TVS was anticipating that it would be forced into a
shotgun marriage with Southern, but in the end, TVS won outright against the seven other contenders since its plans for a better mix of programmes and greater investment were considered good enough to operate the franchise alone. This was the official line given by the IBA, but it was also considered that Southern's non-local ownership (the majority shareholders were
Associated Newspapers, based in London, and
D.C. Thomson, based in
Dundee) and its very conservative nature led to it being dropped in favour of the more interesting proposals made by TVS in its franchise application. By the start of 1981 a number of high-profile personalities had joined the station in preparation for the start of the new franchise: • Michael Blakstad, formerly of ''
Tomorrow's World'', as director of programmes; •
Anna Home, formerly of BBC children's output, as head of programmes for children and young people; •
Michael Rodd, as head of science and industry programmes; • Herbert Chappell, in charge features, education and music. During 1981, TVS's ambitions were soon recognised for their desire to have a greater say in how
ITV operated and its dismay on how it was being treated by the "
Big Five" ITV companies:
Thames Television,
LWT,
Central Independent Television,
Yorkshire Television and
Granada Television. The rationale was that the larger ITV companies should bear more of the production costs as their size enabled them to. This led to criticism in some quarters that the larger of the remaining 'regional' ITV companies, such as TVS,
Anglia Television,
Scottish Television,
Tyne Tees Television and
HTV, found it difficult to get network access for their major productions, and that they were left with
softer non-
primetime sectors such as children's and religious television. Michael Blakstad, director of programmes, claimed ITV needed a shake up as an advertiser, and viewers did not like contemplating the ITV nightly programme offering and were thus hoping the 'Big Five' would welcome TVS with open arms as a chance to light up the schedules, as the only 'occasional flash of excitement' appeared from LWT's
The South Bank Show. Blakstad also claimed none of TVS's £2 million worth of new programming had been accepted for networked transmission, and TVS was invited to the monthly contractors' meetings as observer only from May 1982. He also expressed doubts that Yorkshire Television would give up its monopoly of networked science programmes. Blakstad stated: 'TVS was awarded the franchise to bring a catalyst to ITV, but the authority may have to help them get into the laboratory first.' In the days before the start of the new franchise, the
Independent Broadcasting Authority made it clear that they were happy about the service changes, and were particularly impressed with TVS in connection with new programming for the ITV network in areas in which the IBA wished for improvements, mainly children's output and the sciences. TVS's aims were for a different line of programming in the early evening slots, to win back the 50,000 viewers it claimed were switching over to rivals, due to the poor service provided by Southern.
Whitbread acquired a 20% stake in TVS from
European Ferries in April 1984, as the latter wished to concentrate its financial and management resources on the shipping and property sectors, but sold on the stake in November 1986. Financial director Lionel Ross said: In August 1984, Greg Dyke joined TVS as director of programmes, coming from TV-am. He was brought in to rejuvenate the station, and started to move programming away from its original philosophy of niche arts and science programming, and began producing more entertainment programmes. In 1985, an agreement was reached with LWT, which required help to fill its schedules with appropriate, domestically produced programming while not having to increase its budget; thus TVS was able to get more of its programmes onto the ITV network slots, such as
Bobby Davro on the Box,
Catchphrase,
C.A.T.S Eyes,
Five Alive, ''Kelly's Eye
, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
, Summertime Special'' and other light entertainment programmes. TVS retained their original philosophy for regional and children's programmes. By November 1986, the station became one of the most heavily criticised companies by the
IBA over its programming; the criticism mainly concerned the Southampton editions of
Coast to Coast while issues were raised over the quality of TVS's drama and light entertainment output. Its education series were "too didactic", while the religious output was branded as having "barely discernible religious content". Dyke accepted the IBA criticism but highlighted that TVS had already begun remedying the issues and faults, with a new editor for its Southampton news operation, and a new head of religious output was brought in, along with a controller of drama - a first for TVS. Once again, TVS expressed concern about its relationship with the Big Five ITV stations, and how they controlled the channel's output. In April 1987, Greg Dyke left TVS and returned to LWT. By TVS's fifth anniversary in 1987, its profits had grown 62% since 1981 to £14.4 million, which was helped after TVS increased its share of programming for ITV network and growth in new business; warnings were made that inflation and cost was higher, but the projected growth of television operations would be around 7–8% during the rest of the year. The result was that the accounts revealed TVS had become bigger than Yorkshire Television in terms of advertising revenue, and was quickly catching up with the other Big Five ITV companies. By the following January, profits had increased again to £21.8m. There was speculation at the time that the technicians' strike at
TV-am could have spread to TVS's operations over its plans to provide an overnight service, which become fully operational by June 1988. With TVS continuing to generate large profits, but restricted in ITV network programming, the company started to search for other investments. In 1985, it launched failed bids to acquire
Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment and the French television channel
TF1. In 1986, TVS was successful in buying
Midem, an organisation that promoted trade fairs; and
Gilson International, a Los Angeles distribution company selling programmes outside the US. TVS also acquired a 3.5% stake in Australia
Network Ten company
Northern Star. At the start of July 1988, speculation started to appear of a take-over bid for the American media company
MTM Enterprises. Within a few days, MTM was bought for £190m, which gave owner and founder
Mary Tyler Moore 5.1% shares in TVS, and Arthur Price, chief executive of MTM, a total of 6.6%.; both agreed not to sell for a period of five years. TVS paid for the deal partly by selling 10% stakes for £29.2m each to Générale D'Images (a cable television, film library and film production group) and
Canal Plus, asking shareholders for £47.8m through a convertible preference share issue, with the remaining £38m taken out in a bank loan. The deal created a unique company with productions operations in Ireland, UK and USA, along with a UK broadcasting franchise. Uncertainty over the high price paid by TVS for MTM, coupled with a collapse of a US syndication market which affected many other US stations, plus a £5.7m write-off from the disposal of
Super Channel resulted in financial instability. In January 1990, TVS started searching for a buyer for a 49% stake in MTM, as part of the restructuring of MTM due to losses of £7.3m. A few days later, TVS confirmed profits were down 35% in 1989, which resulted in 140 redundancies across the UK; this was not as bad as expected, since TVS had planned to eliminate up to 200 jobs that summer. Ahead of the ITV franchise round, James Gatward resigned from TVS, after being informed his services were no longer required, as the board believed he was not showing sufficient resolve in preparing TVS for the franchise bid. Further changes took place, with the TVS Television board being merged into the TVS Entertainment board, along with a further 100 redundancies to help strengthen the finances. In March 1991, four contenders were lined up to buy MTM, which would have seen the company being sold off for around £50m; there were hopes that the deal would be sorted by May before the ITV franchise application was submitted. ==Loss of franchise==