Newman's great success at ABC had been noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, whose executives were keen to revive their own drama department's fortunes in the face of fierce competition from ITV.

On top of this, ITV decided to air a special one-hour edition of Coronation Street against Eldorado on the show's debut evening, to " strangle it at birth " as network executives put it.

was shelved by ITV executives due to prohibitive insurance costs given Carson's age.

At the heart of the revamp was the removal of the famous image of the Big Ben clock tower from the opening sequence of ITV News programmes including News at Ten ; ITV executives felt, after " months of deliberation ", that the imagery of the landmark promoted London-centricity to viewers outside the capital.

At the heart of the revamp was the removal of the famous image of the Big Ben clock tower from the opening sequence of News at Ten ; ITV executives felt, after " months of deliberation ", that the imagery of the landmark promoted London-centricity to viewers outside the capital.

The producers originally wanted Scottish actor Douglas Henshall to play Glaswegian Parlabane but ITV executives overruled them and cast Nesbitt.

New franchises which had no experience of owning an ITV franchise ( Mersey Television was one such example ) would have to a pass a " quality hurdle " that Granada executives actually helped the ITC adopt.

Each ITV region originally had its own studios, however the rise of publisher-broadcasters like Carlton Television | Carlton and the takeover of regions caused several studios to be closed.

These cases tend to be the exception, however ; the former nature of the ITV network, in which private independent companies were awarded licences to serve geographical areas for a set period of time, meant that when companies lost their licences their archives were often sold to third parties and became fragmented – and / or risked being destroyed ( ownership and copyright remained with the production companies rather than with the network ).

Channel's arrangement with Westward changed over, in 1982, to TSW, the new ITV contractor for the South West ; however, in 1986, Channel changed over to TVS, and this continued with Meridian from 1993 onwards.

This look was not to last however, as the second ITV generic look occurred in 1999, which Channel adopted.

Most of the Channel 3 licences were awarded to the incumbent ITV companies ; however there were some controversial decisions:

The ITV1 brand, however, should be distinguished from the UK-wide ITV, of which ITV1 forms a large proportion.

Granada then went on to purchase all of UNM's television interests ( including its ITV franchises ), which brought Meridian, Anglia and HTV into its power, however due to regulation Granada was forced to sell HTV to Carlton.

The show suffered, however, from not having a regular slot on the ITV network.

The pilot episode featured a resident newsreader, played by Alistair McGowan, however, his character was not carried over when a full-seven part first series was commissioned by ITV.

He stated in an ITV interview: " One point of Britishness is that people can say what they like about the way we should live, however absurd, however unpopular it is.

Anglia no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally however ( the last major programme being Trisha, before she defected to Five ) and the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand, which supplied content for Discovery Channel in the USA, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the UK and other broadcasters worldwide, was closed in January 2012 with any returning series re-allocated to either the London or Manchester factual departments.

This figure fell significantly short of the claimed potential subscriber numbers of 650, 000 as set out in the original Freeview Plus proposal document, however this is due to the differing market in 2004 and increasing temptation from Sky, who acquired ITV Digital's customer details and Cable TV companies.

STV Group plc ( then known as SMG plc ), owner of two of the three Channel 3 regional licences for Scotland ( Scottish Television and Grampian Television ) previously owned 25 % of the company ; however, this stake was purchased by ITV plc for £ 31 million in 2004.

Consequently, most viewers perceived GMTV simply as a programme on ITV ; however, until the complete buyout by ITV, it was essentially an independent broadcaster with its own news-gathering operation, sales and management teams and in-house production team.

She was, however, no stranger to soap opera, having played the part of probationary nurse Kate Ford in the ITV series Emergency Ward 10 during 1963-64.

The United Kingdom thought of return to the 2010 contest with BBC instead of ITV, however they didn't.

The new name for the show was Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown, however, for the first few weeks of transmission the ITV Sales website still had the show's off screen name as Ministry of Mayhem, but this was later corrected.

Neither promoter was able to gain a slice of ITV coverage however, as the 1981 contract renewal negotiations resulted in a five year extension on Joint Promotions ' exclusive monopoly of ITV wrestling.

The series was due to be shown on the ITV network in August 2007 ; however due to Reid's death, transmission of the series was delayed until April 2008.

As you can see Xpose was returned to 18: 30, while a Coronation Street omnibus was on a Sunday afternoon, however ultimately both ITV soaps were dropped from the schedule.

The eventual relaxation of these rules meant that afternoon closedowns ceased permanently on the ITV network in October 1972, however the BBC maintained the practice until late 1986, before commencing a full daytime service.

When ITV did return, its first evening schedule included a special " catch-up " edition of Coronation Street, in which storylines which would have taken place during the strike were explained away in the form of a narrative chat between Len Fairclough and Bet Lynch.

Like BBC1, the ITV network was officially broadcast in black and white ( though programmes were actually broadcast in colour as early as July that year for colour transmission testing and adjustment ) at this point so the episode was seen by most in black and white.

Syndication did not exist as such in Britain until the arrival of satellite, cable and later, from 1998 on, digital television, although it could be argued that many ITV programs up to the early 1990s, particularly imported programming was syndicated in the sense that each ITV region bought in some programs independently of the ITV Network, and in particular many programs out of prime time made by smaller ITV stations were " part-networked " where some regions would show them and others would not.

In a January 2008 overhaul of the ITV network the Sunday episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale were moved out of their slots.

However, by 1955, when the first ITV stations started transmitting, virtually all new British televisions were featuring 13-channel tuners, quickly making Band III converters obsolete.

At one time, original ITV Digital Monkeys were fetching several hundred pounds on eBay, and even knitting patterns delivered by email were sold for several pounds.

Had the move been successful, this could have threatened to undermine the fledgling Freeview service, since at the time most digital terrestrial receivers were former ONdigital and ITV Digital units.

Following the administration in 2002, the three multiplexes that were run by ITV Digital remained blank until a week or so before Freeview's launch.

Most of the original ITV Digital channel placeholders and Logical Channel Numbers were kept until Freeview's replaced them, leaving large gaps between channels.

In August 2007, a study by ITV television show Undercover Mothers found that a third of steaks served in Hungry Horse and two thirds served in Wetherspoon public houses in the United Kingdom were from Zebu or Zebu cross-breeds, as indicated by the presence of Zebu DNA markers in the meat ( and not that the steaks were 67 % zebu as reported in papers such as the Daily Mail ).

The Smiths were the subject of a South Bank Show documentary produced by LWT and broadcast by ITV on 18 October 1987, four months after their break-up and three weeks after the release of Strangeways.

The Broadcasting Act 1990 changed the nature of ITV ; the then regulator the IBA was replaced with a light-touch regulator the ITC, companies now able to purchase other ITV regional companies and franchises were now being awarded based upon a highest-bidder auction, with few safeguards in place.

Following the 1993 changes, ITV as a network began to consolidate with several companies doing so to save money by ceasing the duplication of services present when they were all separate companies.

The last time the franchises were reviewed was in 1991 with all operators ' licenses being renewed without contest or review since, making it the longest ITV has gone without a review.

Despite STV's explanation of expense, ITV plc were angered by the decision, as a recent schedule change had made The Bill central to their programming, and broadcast the programmes on ITV3 as well to ensure Scottish viewers could see the programmes.

Licences in England and Wales were held by the individual regional ITV plc owned companies prior to November 2008.

Gay scenes from Britain's ITV serial drama Coronation Street ( also based in the city ) were filmed around Canal Street.

Liberty X ( originally called Liberty ) were a British pop vocal group formed by the five members who were eliminated from the final ten qualifiers of the 2001 season of the ITV show Popstars.