ITV Tyne Tees

The station's first logo. The three Ts morphed from an anchor, reflecting the nautical influence of the station's name.[3]

Independent television was introduced to Britain in September 1955. Initially only available in the London region, commercial television steadily became available in other regions. After a financially difficult time for the first ITV companies, the Independent Television Authority (ITA) decided to offer independent television to the rest of the country and advertised for bids.[4] Several offers were submitted, including from the existing four companies, to the ITA. North East England was the last of the English regions without a television transmitter.[5] Sir Richard Pease headed a local consortium that included film producer Sydney Box and News Chronicle executives George and Alfred Black.[6] This consortium, was chosen from among eleven applicants because of its strong local links, commitment to local programming, concentrating on regional topical matters, and educational and children's programmes. The contract was awarded on 12 December 1957.[7] Experienced television executive Anthony Jelly was appointed as managing director, although historian Andrew Spicer credits the Black brothers as the driving force and public face of Tyne Tees; George was programme director, and both brothers were prominent board members.[7] The company opened its first Newcastle office at Bradburn House on Northumberland Street, and it was from there, on 3 January 1958, the company directors issued 300,000 ordinary shares at fours shillings each.[4]

Tyne Tees is named after two of the region's three primary rivers. ITA considered the original name, "North East England", was imprecise. Some of the consortium's suggestions were rejected: "Three Rivers Television" for being obscure, and "Tyne, Wear, and Tees" for being too long. Eventually, in October 1958, the name "Tyne Tees" was announced.[8] The other major river, the Wear (which runs between the Tyne and the Tees), was represented within Tyne Tees' early signature tune "Three Rivers Fantasy".

The BBC transmitted their programmes from the Pontop Pike transmitting station in County Durham. The ITA built a new transmitter nearby at Burnhope, to cover an area from Alnwick to Northallerton, and west to Middleton-in-Teesdale. Television sets required a new aerial, the Yagi array, to receive the high frequency that the transmitter was using.[9]

Tyne Tees went on air at 5 pm on 15 January 1959, three years after the first British independent television station, and the tenth such station to launch. The then-prime minister Harold Macmillan, who had been the Member of Parliament for the nearby Stockton-on-Tees for two decades, was interviewed live on the opening night.[10] This was followed by a live variety show, named The Big Show, broadcast from a small studio.[11] However, this local content was followed by an episode of the American police series Highway Patrol and an evening of entertainment programmes including I Love Lucy and Double Your Money.[10] The full first night's programming was

17:00 Three Rivers Fantasy - opening by the Duke of Northumberland.

17:02 Robin Hood

17:32 Popeye

17:45 ITN News

17:55 Local News

18:30 Highway Patrol

19:00 The Big Show, starring Dickie Henderson

20:00 Double Your Money

20:30 This Week

21:00 Wagon Train

22:00 ITN News

22:15 Murder Bag

22:45 I Love Lucy

23:15 Epilogue read by the Bishop of Durham[12]

In the 2006 documentary A History of Tyneside, veteran North East newsreader Mike Neville suggested that the launch of Tyne Tees enabled local people to be able to hear local accents and dialects on television, since early broadcasters, particularly those from the BBC, tended to speak in Received Pronunciation.[11] Scholar Natasha Vall suggests that the station's commitment to broadcasting comedy helped establish a regional identity. George and Alfred Black had toured working men's clubs looking for material for television.[10] Local comic Bobby Thompson was invited to host a solo show. However, poor ratings and an unenthusiastic cast led to the show's cancellation after barely a year.[13]

Where most independent television companies published their schedules in the magazine TV Times, Tyne Tees produced their own listings magazine. The Viewer was published by News Chronicle, a company with connections to the station through the Black brothers. It was produced to satisfy " 'Tyne Tees' policy to be most regional of all the independent stations".[14] Initially produced from an office in Forth Lane, near Newcastle station, it moved to the City Road studios when Dickens Press took over publication in 1963. The magazine became the biggest selling magazine in the region, with a circulation of 300,000 per week. New contracts issued by the ITA in 1968 stipulated that all ITV companies publish their listings in the TV Times, which became a national magazine with regional variations for the listings.[14] After 498 editions,[15] the last issues of The Viewer was published in September 1968.[14]

The first advertisement screened on Tyne Tees was for Welch's Toffee. The proprietor's niece is Denise, who would become a well-known actress and personality.[16] In 1959, Tyne Tees charged advertisers £100 for 15 seconds during prime time.[16] The station launched a marketing campaign in the 1960s to sell advertising time named 'Through Plan'. One of the range of promotional material was a poster called 'Sweet Sixteen', featuring photographs of 15 men accompanied by their full names, job titles and other formal history. The sole woman was simply referred to by her first name and her measurements. Historian Geoff Phillips comments that this "was a profound statement of the culture of the time".[16] Tyne Tees produced Advertising Magazines (AdMags), which were programmes with a loose storyline designed to advertise several products within an edition. The 15-minute programmes each endorsed about 12 products. Clients sat in the control room during rehearsals to ensure that their products were getting the exposure for which they had paid.[17]

A committee was established in 1960 under the leadership of British industrialist Sir Harry Pilkington to consider the future of broadcasting. The 1962 Pilkington Report criticised ITV, and Tyne Tees in particular. Some companies, historian Simon Cherry notes, were scrambling "very readily for the lowest common denominator ... Tyne Tees was notorious for avoiding minority programmes and putting out cop shows or westerns instead."[18]

Tyne Tees cameraman on the banks of the River Wear in 1982.

Following his report, Pilkington prompted the government to impose a levy on ITV's revenue, the effects of which were heightened by a recession in 1970 when revenue had declined by 12 percent in real terms. Despite a reduction of the levy, Tyne Tees was one of the contractors facing collapse. To ensure Tyne Tees' survival, the ITA allowed it to affiliate with Yorkshire Television under a joint management company named 'Trident Television'.[19] The third 'prong' of Trident was intended to be Anglia Television, but the IBA ruled out their involvement.[20] Trident Television was formed in March 1969 as a joint venture to sell advertisements for Tyne Tees and Yorkshire. Yorkshire and Tyne Tees then came under Trident's ownership on 1 January 1974. For the first time, one company owned two distinct and separate ITV franchises although the new company was dominated by the larger, stronger Yorkshire whose shareholders owned 71.5 percent of the new company.[21] Trident had sales offices in London, where most agencies are located and where most advertising is bought and sold.[22]

A major factor in the merger was that when UHF transmission was introduced in 1969 to accommodate colour television it was found that the key Bilsdale transmitting station in North Yorkshire so dominated the territories of both companies that its allotment to either individual company would have seriously prejudiced the coverage and sales revenue of the other. The ITA agreed that Tyne Tees and Yorkshire could be considered as one company for the purposes of selling airtime, while expressing their individual identities in their programming output.[23]

A political scandal caused problems during one of Tyne Tees' franchise renewals. Producer Tony Sandford recalls that Lord Pilkington was sent by the ITA to question the station's executives.[24] One-time leader of Newcastle City Council T. Dan Smith had been convicted for accepting bribes concerning the redevelopment of Newcastle city centre. Pointing out that Smith became a director of the station, Pilkington asked why Tyne Tees failed to produce a documentary about a Newcastle politician, instead leaving it to Manchester-based Granada's current affairs programme World in Action.[24] By the late seventies, Tyne-Tees's locally made programming amounted to an average of less than nine hours a week, with the remainder of programming from the ITV network. In 1978, The Economist reported that a group called Northumbria Television, partially financed by local firms Bellway Holding and Swan Hunter, applied to the IBA to take over the franchise from the "tired" Tyne Tees for the two and a half years until the scheduled franchise renewal in 1981.[25]

Tyne Tees News Unit car.

Yorkshire and Tyne Tees applied separately for renewal of the franchises in 1980, and each won.[26] However, the two companies were required to demerge from January 1982 as a condition of the renewal of their ITV franchises.[23][27] The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the successor to the ITA, recognised the criticism, reported The Economist, "that Trident was London-dominated, overly diversified, and out of touch with the grass roots. It instructed Trident to set up both companies as independents and to retain only a minority shareholding in each."[26] The IBA imposed the condition that for the 1980 franchise round a company could only own one franchise, although it could earn up to 30 percent of another.[21] By November 1981, Trident had sold all but residual stakes in the two companies (15% and 20% respectively).[28] When the new licences started in January 1982, Trident sold all but 30 percent of Yorkshire, and 25 percent of Tyne Tees.[21]

During the 1980s, Tyne Tees began to develop separate services for the Northern and Southern halves of the region. From a small two-camera studio at Corporation House in the centre of Middlesbrough, Tyne Tees developed nightly opt-out news bulletins for Teesside, County Durham and North Yorkshire as part of the flagship magazine programme Northern Life. The company also pioneered non-news programming for the two sub-regions, including the nightly Epilogues, which ended a 29-year run in September 1988 when Tyne Tees commenced 24-hour broadcasting, although Tyne Tees had run an on-screen Jobfinder teletext service throughout the night since November 1987.

Meanwhile, developments in satellite and cable television, in addition to the two BBC channels and the new Channel 4, began to put pressure on ITV's finances. ITV lost 3 percent of advertising between 1993 and 1994.

In 1990, Yorkshire bought Vaux Breweries' 19 percent stake in Tyne Tees, costing £5.1 million.[29][30] In the same year, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher initiated a blind auction system, through the Broadcasting Act 1990, through which companies had to bid for the regional franchises. This system was to be used in the 1991 franchise round, which caused large changes to the network. Granada Television, the franchise holder for North West England, had long thought that the North of England should consolidate to "counter the potential dominance of the south east".[30] Tyne Tees outbid their main competition by £10 million; their main challenger was 'North East Television', which was backed by Granada, Border and local newspaper the Evening Chronicle.[29] Along with HTV and Yorkshire, Tyne Tees believed that they had to bid high to win. These companies bid so high that the Independent Television Commission seriously considered rejecting the business plans of each in turn and disqualifying them. However, they eventually decided in their favour.[31][32] Together, the now-merged companies were committed to paying about £60 million a year to the government for the right to broadcast, a substantial amount compared to the £2,000 bid by Central, ITV's largest station.[32]

New regulations from the ITC allowed Yorkshire to merge with Tyne Tees, this time under the name Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television plc (YTT), although their ITV franchises remained separate.[33] The merger allowed the companies to avoid collapse following their high franchise bids.[34] This was the first step to ITV becoming one company in England and Wales.[29] The merger led to the culling of staff.[35] YTT's two largest shareholders became Pearson and LWT.[32] From 1 January 1993, Yorkshire and Tyne Tees broadcast all regional programmes simultaneously, affecting programming that had been shown at different paces in different regions (such as Blockbusters and the Australian soap operas The Young Doctors and Prisoner: Cell Block H). Most of the regional programming was produced by Yorkshire and broadcast across the two stations, an area that the ITC considered too broad to be of local interest.[36]

The annual cost of the franchise began to take its toll on the company. At the end of 1993, the company revealed that it was heading for a pre-tax loss in the 1992–93 fiscal year instead of the expected profit. Chairman and chief executive Clive Leach was sacked as a consequence. According to Variety, YTT "oversold its airtime to advertisers and failed to meet its ratings targets, resulting in a huge revenue shortfall estimated by analysts at over $20 million."[32] The industry newspaper also reported that the company "attempted to bolster its flagging 1992-93 revenues by giving advertisers deep discounts for advance airtime bookings made for the following year."[32] Local MP Peter Mandelson wrote to the Secretary of State for National Heritage, David Mellor, in June 1992, saying "Yorkshire and Tyne Tees are motivated by the interests of their shareholders, not their viewers, and need to make urgent savings ... it is quite clear that this is not so much a merger but a gobbling up of a smaller franchise held by a larger company."[37]

Yorkshire-Tyne Tees were repeatedly warned over worsening standards at the Newcastle-based station and at one point the Independent Television Commission (the then-governing body of ITV) threatened to revoke the Tyne Tees licence if the situation did not improve. In 1993 the MP Ann Clwyd described Tyne Tees as having been "stripped of any meaningful identity since its take over by Yorkshire TV" and Ian Ritchie, Managing Director at Tyne Tees, left the company over a widely publicised disagreement with the Yorkshire-Tyne Tees board over what he saw as an unacceptable drive to centralise the company, including the complete closure of all non-news operations at Newcastle and a proposal to close the City Road studios.[38] In October 1993, Yorkshire TV's founder Ward Thomas was brought in to stabilise the situation at the company and quickly returned the company to profitability.[39]

The Channel 3 North East branding, introduced in 1996, was derided by viewers. Granada removed the branding in 1998.[35]

Bruce Gyngell, the former chairman of breakfast station TV-am, became YTT's managing director on 15 May 1995.[40] On 16 March 1996, the presentation department in Newcastle was closed, and continuity was centralised in Leeds. (Transmission for the station had already been handled by Yorkshire since 1993). To halting "a slide in viewing figures and reflecting confidence in the region",[41] in September that year, Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television plc rebranded its stations as Channel 3.[42] The Broadcasting Act 1990 had made Channel 3 the 'official' name for ITV,[43] and "3" was the preset used by most television sets and videocassette recorders (VCRs) for ITV. However, the attempt in 1989 to create a generic identity across the ITV network was decommissioned within three years.[44] Promoting the new brand, Gygnell said, "Everyone refers to this region as 'the North-East' and we want it to be known that we are part of this great region and moving with it."[41] Tyne Tees acquired the brand "Channel 3 North East", with 'Tyne Tees Television' still being retained as the company name.[41]

On 26 June 1997, Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television plc was acquired by the Granada Media Group plc (now ITV plc).[45][46] The takeover concentrated ownership of the ITV network into three large groups: Granada, Carlton and United News & Media.[47]

The new guidelines, published by the ITC in 1998, about the Channel 3 licence renewals signalled substantial cuts in the companies' payments to the Treasury.[48] Licences awarded in 1991 were due to expire in January 2001. However, companies, including Tyne Tees, which had bid high in 1991 were allowed to apply early to try to win financial relief. The new 10-year contract began in January 1999.[48] In 1999, the cost of the tender fee that Tyne Tees was paying fell to £46 million, from the £70.5 million that it paid in 1998.[49]

Days after the two largest companies in the network, Granada and Carlton, announced that they would merge, the regional names were withdrawn from networked programming in an "attempt to make ITV1 more marketable nationally with a single generic brand."[44] (Scottish, which doesn't trail any of the network shows under any ITV1 branding, Grampian, Ulster and Channel, each kept their own names but used their own versions of the new look.[44]) Tyne Tees Television was rebranded as ITV1 Tyne Tees on 28 October 2002.[44] The name "Tyne Tees" only appeared before regional programmes; the rest of the time, only the "ITV1" name was shown. The Tyne Tees logo continued to appear after its own programmes.[44] Graeme Thompson was appointed MD and Controller of Programmes at ITV Tyne Tees in 2004, having been appointed Director of Broadcasting in December 1997 and then Controller of Programmes in 2001. He became Dean for Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland in June 2009.[51]

In 2004, Granada plc and Carlton Communications merged, creating a single company for all ITV franchises in England and Wales. Tyne Tees became part of ITV plc, the largest television production company in the world, which now owned 90 percent of ITV.[52]

On 9 February 2005, Ofcom issued a proposed timetable for ending analogue terrestrial television transmissions as part of the switchover to digital television. Tyne Tees was the penultimate region to cease broadcasting in analogue, which occurred during September 2012. Tyne Tees took over the relay transmitter at Berwick-upon-Tweed in December 2006 from Border Television in order to extend the deadline of the town's upgrade to digital TV by four years, since Border was the first to switch off its analogue signal in 2008.[53]

In September 2007, Executive Chairman of ITV plc Michael Grade announced that as part of ITV's five-year business strategy, Tyne Tees' newsroom would merge with Border Television.[54] Politicians have expressed concern, however, that the merger would affect the quality of news for southern Scotland, in particular, would fail if it lost its customised bulletins.[55] The changes would mean that aside from the merged Border-Tyne Tees regional news and political programmes, the station could broadcast only 25 minutes of dedicated North East news every weekday. In October 2008, the National Union of Journalists threatened industrial action if ITV tried to force any of the changes without discussion.[56] Between December 2008 and February 2009, around 50 staff at the station were made redundant or accepted voluntary redundancy, including presenters, journalists and production staff. The new merged ITV Tyne Tees & Border service launched on 25 February 2009.[2]

In March 2009, The Guardian newspaper reported that there was bullying at Tyne Tees that lasted for six years. One manager was accused of using inappropriate language about people with disabilities, women reporters, Chinese people and gypsies. The manager was disciplined after one inquiry, but then more journalists complained about the same manager. The manager defended himself by claiming he was using black humour. He finally left the company with a pay-off of about £50,000. The original whistle blower left the company in 2006 and was paid £80,000 after threatening to take his case to an employment tribunal.[57] Following this incident, ITV adopted an anti-bullying programme. An ITV spokesman advised that the total cost of the five bullying investigations was £1 million.[57]

On 23 July 2013, proposals to reintroduce fully separate regional news services for the ITV Tyne Tees and ITV Border regions were approved by OFCOM. On 16 September 2013 both ITV News Tyne Tees and Lookaround were restored as two single 30-minute regional programmes on weekdays with separate shorter daytime and weekend bulletins reintroduced.[58]