Page "London Weekend Television" Paragraph 6

Upon resolving the dispute, LWT suffered poor rating figures as the station's idea of peak viewing included a Stravinsky musical drama, an avant-garde drama from Jean-Luc Godard, a tribute to Jacques Brel and ' Georgia Brown Sings Kurt Weill '.

As a consequence viewers deserted their primetime offerings in favour of the more traditional Saturday night viewing on the BBC.

Other ITV stations refused to show LWT shows because of poor ratings.

ATV, still smarting at losing their London contract to LWT, refused to schedule any of their shows in peak time ; elsewhere, the powerful sales department at rivals / neighbours Thames took advantage of LWT's ratings disaster by adopting a beggar thy neighbour strategy, encouraging advertisers to use them during the week by heavily discounting airtime.

( This caused great animosity, even decades later, with both Thames and LWT refusing to promote each others ' programmes ).