Carlton Television

Carlton Television took over from Thames at stroke of midnight on New Year's Day (1 January) 1993, broadcasting from a newly opened playout centre managed by London News Network, a subsidiary company co-owned by Carlton and London Weekend Television from LWT's facilities on the South Bank in London.

At the stroke of midnight, following ITN's Into The New Year bulletin featuring the Westminster clock tower chimes, technicians at the Crystal Palace transmitter switched from Thames' Euston Road headquarters to the LNN playout centre from where Carlton went on-air with an opening ident featuring the then Town Crier of London, with the then-famous slogan of Carlton, "This is Carlton Television for London", ringing the bell three times, and the first announcement from continuity announcer Graham Bannerman. He started the first continuity announcement for Carlton with these words: "And a very Happy new year. Welcome to 1993, and our first programme live from Trafalgar Square, here's Chris Tarrant with A Carlton New Year." The station's first programme was the entertainment special A Carlton New Year, produced in-house and presented by Chris Tarrant. After the special, the movie Best Defense, which starred Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy, aired, which began after Carlton's second ident, with the Cadets of the Royal Navy, saying the slogan, was shown. Idents from 1993-94 had the slogan: "This is Carlton. Television for London.", "This is Carlton" or "You're watching Carlton."

Unlike Thames, which was both a production company and a broadcaster, and following a merger, continuing to produce programmes under the name Talkback Thames, Carlton chose to commission most of its programming from independent production companies although its contract to hold the ITV franchise licence disallows the company to commission all programming so Carlton still had to produce a minimal amount of programming in-house.

The first Carlton-produced programme to be broadcast nationally was Surprise Party, effectively the same format as This Is Your Life, previously a mainstay of predecessor Thames Television. Hosted by Michael Parkinson, the first celebrity to be the subject of the show was entrepreneur Richard Branson. At the end of the hour-long show, Michael Parkinson told viewers to keep their eyes out for another Surprise Party. However, no further programmes were ever made.

Alarm bells had been ringing before Carlton even transmitted as part of the ITV network, as one notable commission with wide publicity was The Good Sex Guide, inviting scorn and derision from conservative newspapers, before it had actually been broadcast.[7] Aptly, its first commercial break featured an advert for the Vauxhall Carlton.

Carlton found itself at the centre of a major controversy about truthfulness in broadcast journalism in May 1998, when The Guardian carried a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded 1996 documentary, The Connection, which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that the allegations made by The Guardian were in large part correct, and the then-regulator of the industry, the ITC, punished Carlton with a record fine of £2 million[14] for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production.[15][16]

Changes in legislation concerning media ownership enabled Carlton to buy out many of the other ITV stations, including Central Independent Television, Westcountry, and part of HTV (via Granada), as well as the rights to the archives of ITC Entertainment and its former sister company ATV. Rank Film Distributors, including its library of 740 films, was purchased by Carlton in 1997 for £65 million.[17] HTV was the only region owned by Carlton not to be subject to a full on-screen rebrand as 'Carlton'. Both 'HTV West' and 'HTV Wales' stayed with their then-current idents; however, upon Carlton's purchase, the animated introduction and music to the idents were replaced by the sequences and audio in use with Carlton's graphical package. However, the logo and end-board of the ident remained unchanged, using the generic hearts look of 1999. Carlton also did not acquire most of HTV's production facilities; these were retained by Granada.

The ITC archive is financially lucrative, since it includes such popular series as Thunderbirds, The Prisoner, and The Saint, as well as such feature films as On Golden Pond. Carlton released much of the Rank library on video and DVD via its own label in the UK, and via A & E Home Video, Acorn Media, MGM Home Entertainment, and Lions Gate Home Entertainment in the USA. A large number of these films were screened on Carlton's digital movie channel, Carlton Cinema; however, it closed in March 2003. The merger with Granada led to the use of the Carlton name falling into disuse, and Carlton Video became part of Granada Ventures.

In 1997, Carlton formed a partnership with Granada and BSkyB to bid for some of the multiplexes for the new digital terrestrial network. In June of that year, it was successful in its application, and began the service, OnDigital, under the condition BSkyB withdrew from the group.[18] OnDigital was rebranded as ITV Digital in 2001, before its collapse in 2002.

Since 28 October 2002, Carlton Television (in common with all the other ITV companies, except Scottish Television, Grampian Television, Ulster Television and Channel Television) has been known on air simply as ITV1 (London Weekdays). Unlike London Weekend Television, Carlton Television did not note the last day (25 October) of its regional identity on-air. However, the Carlton brand continued to be seen on production captions until 2004. Since Carlton and London Weekend Television now use identical presentation and logos, the division between the London weekday and weekend franchises is now invisible, although the old LWT - now ITV1 (London Weekends) - does have London Weekend Weather, which is sponsored by a different company to that of London weekdays.

With the merger of Carlton and Granada, Carlton Television and LWT are now run as a single entity (ITV London), with a single management team appointed to both companies. Both continue to have a separate legal existence however, and still have separate licences, although this is now just a formality.

Upon merger, Carlton lost recognition to programmes made by their companies, which became branded as Granada and the relevant area, for example, all programmes made in London became branded as Granada London. From 16 January 2006, all programmes produced by any ITV plc owned region were branded as ITV Productions and in 2009 this became ITV Studios.

Carlton's on-screen identity was launched on 1 January 1993 with an ident package featuring London personalities. These people, who lived and worked in the capital would appear against a brightly coloured background with the Carlton logo in the top left corner, and would say the phrase, "This is Carlton, television for London", or other variations of the theme. In excess of sixty idents were produced and used from 1993. This was replaced by a single montage of individuals used from later on from 6 December 1993 until 1 September 1995.

On 4 September 1995,[19] a new in-house look was launched featuring changing backgrounds of colours with a translucent Carlton logo in the centre of the screen, becoming opaque and white at the end of the ident. These idents lasted until 22 November 1996, but were deemed not exciting or brash enough for Carlton executives.

Lambie-Nairn devised the new set on 25 November 1996,[20] featuring the Carlton logo against a brightly coloured background and various animations occurring. This could be interaction between other letters in the name, letters being replaced by objects, or the letters becoming part of something larger, such as a crossword of places in London. Thirty sequences were produced, including some designed especially to introduce certain programmes, and versions for Central were also introduced two years later on 27 April 1998. These idents were used until 3 September 1999.

On 6 September 1999,[21] Carlton's boldest rebrand yet occurred, and it was also to be its last. While Granada and UNM regions were about to adopt the "Hearts" generic look, Carlton refused the look and instead adopted a package that related back to the Hearts, but put their own distinct take on it. Lambie-Nairn was once again commissioned, and a dozen idents were produced and were used depending on the programme to go before it. The idents featured opening films featuring a heart shape, before a star shaped light is emitted from the heart shape, before the screen changes to the Carlton logo, now with added star in top right corner, against a spinning stars background of different colours, with ITV logo beneath. This look has received criticism, not concerning the idents themselves, but because these idents replaced the brands used by both Central and Westcountry. The idents were later partially adopted by HTV following its sale to Carlton, with the opening films from said look, although with the HTV logo and ITV Hearts ending slide being retained.

Carlton used a number of continuity announcers throughout the years.

Some notable Carlton commissions are listed below:

For other details about local news and non-news programmes for London, see London News Network.

Carlton Cinema was the Carlton channel which showed classic movies, but also unusually for a movie channel, cartoons. This ceased transmission on 31 March 2003, the last of the five Carlton channels to do so.

Carlton Select was the main entertainment channel from Carlton, and broadcast both in the UK and Africa. It time-shared with the Carlton Food Network, and ceased transmission in March 2000.

Carlton World was a general entertainment and factual channel broadcast in the evenings, with sister channel Carlton Kids broadcast in the daytime. This ceased transmission in 2000.

Carlton Kids was a children's channel and showed most of all of Carlton's children's imports, and programming from Carlton's regions. Time-shared with Carlton World, it ceased transmission in 2000.

Carlton Food Network was the Carlton channel devoted to cookery, and time-shared with Carlton Select. It was later re-branded "Taste CFN", and ceased transmission in late 2001.