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Grampian Television |
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| Based in | Aberdeen |
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| Broadcast area | Northern Scotland |
| Launched | 30 September 1961 |
 Grampian Television logo, late 1990s |
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| Closed | lost on-air identity on 30 May 2006 (rebranded as STV along with Scottish Television) |
| Website | stv.tv |
| Owned by | STV Group plc |
Grampian Television (now legally known as STV North Ltd and referred to on-air as STV) is the ITV franchisee for the North of Scotland, based in Aberdeen. Its coverage area includes the Scottish Highlands (except Fort William and Lochaber which have always received STV), Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and parts of north Fife. It has been in operation since 30 September 1961.
STV North is owned and operated by STV Group plc (formerly SMG plc), which also owns another Scottish ITV franchise, Scottish Television (now known as STV (Central) on-air), based in Glasgow and serving Central Scotland.
STV North's regional news programme for Northern Scotland is called North Tonight and is supplemented by short news bulletins seven days a week. Alongside regional news, STV North produces Scottish Gaelic-language programming, in association with independent production company Kenyon Communications.
Recent English-language regional programming has been produced by SMG Productions in Glasgow and other independent production companies or co-produced with STV Central for broadcast in both regions. The station also produces a regular online video blog entitled Northern Exposure and regional television commercials, as well as some features and reports for Politics Now and The Five Thirty Show. As of 2008, the station no longer produces any English-language regional programming in-house. Productions commissioned as STV North local programming (such as Highlands, Conquer the Castle and Nick Hancock's Fishing School) are now produced by either STV Productions in Glasgow or other independent production companies.
Some of the most recent regional programmes produced by STV North included Beyond Explanation, presented by Dundonian actor Brian Cox, which looked at mysterious sightings across Scotland over the last few centuries. Another production was Unsolved: Getting Away With Murder, which covered past unsolved criminal cases in Scotland. The series drew high viewing figures and there was an increase the number of calls made to the police by witnesses of various events who had seen the programme. Less popular productions included Where's Your Head At?, a low-budget production which interviewed a selection of people about seemingly irrelevant issues, but did not gain high ratings.
Both STV North and STV Central, together with their counterpart UTV in Northern Ireland, have resisted adopting the generic ITV1 branding that is now commonplace throughout regions in England, Wales and Southern Scotland that are owned by ITV plc.
In 2008, the United Kingdom began its 5-year programme to cease analogue television broadcasts as part of the switchover to digital television, with the eight transmitters covering the STV North region (Angus, Rosemarkie, Knockmore, Eitshal, Durris, Bressay, Rumster Forest and Keelylang Hill) switching over from May to October 2010.
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Applications for the new north and north-east of Scotland contract area were sought by the Independent Television Authority in the spring of 1960. From the original seven applicants, three serious contenders emerged and the contract was awarded in August 1960 to North of Scotland Television Limited on the provision that board positions were offered to the other two final applicants, Caledonian Television and North Caledonian Television. The company's first managing director was G E Ward Thomas who went on to establish Yorkshire Television in 1968.
The name North of Scotland TV was considered too cumbersome for use and to reflect the input of the other applicants, a new name was chosen on 11 January 1961 - 'Grampian Television'.
A former tram depot (belonging to Aberdeen Corporation Tramways) at Queens Cross, Aberdeen was purchased at the end of 1960 and was scheduled to be converted to studios by the planned launch date of 1 October 1961. Premises would also be opened in Dundee around the same time. However, four months prior to launch the Post Office announced that the links which would have connected Grampian to the network would not be ready until February 1962. This would have left the new station only able to broadcast output from its neighbouring colleagues at Scottish Television (STV). Pressure at the highest level of Government ensured that the links were in place in time for the station's planned launch.
Grampian Television went on air on Saturday 30 September 1961 at 2:45pm with the opening authority announcement from continuity announcer Douglas Kynoch and a brief welcome from the chairman of the Independent Television Authority, Sir Ivonne Kirkpatrick:
Douglas Kynoch:
Good afternoon. This is the first transmission of Grampian Television Limited, over the Durris and Mounteagle transmitters of the Independent Television Authority. Today, we're about to join all the millions of viewers of the Independent Television network and we're very glad to have in our studios, to switch us into the network, the chairman of the Independent Television Authority, Sir Ivonne Kirkpatrick.
Sir Ivonne Kirkpatrick:
Good afternoon. I am glad to be in Aberdeen today to welcome you into the great family of Independent Television viewers. You now have your own television company in the North East and I hope that you'll very soon come to regard Grampian Television as an essential part of your everyday life. I wish you and Grampian the best of luck and now, let us join the network.
Following the brief opening, the station handed over to Tyne Tees Television's networked coverage of Racing from Catterick Bridge. Later in the opening day at 7pm, Grampian's first chairman, Sir Alexander B. King, presented an half-hour introductory programme about the station. At the time of launch, Grampian served a potential audience of 332,000 people in 98,000 homes.
In its first year, Grampian produced nine regular regional programmes - namely News and Views (a thrice-weekly magazine programme), Country Focus, Women's World, Serenade, Scotland for Me, Points North (a long-running current affairs programme), Grampian Golf, local news bulletins and monthly church services.
In the early days, Grampian struggled as viewers in a key part of its' transmission area, the city of Dundee were still tuning into coverage from STV via the strong signal of the Black Hill transmitter. Three months after its first transmission, the station was only attracting 13% of the available audience in Dundee whilst viewing audiences across the region turned out to be less than Grampian had hoped for. Viewer correspondence was said to amount to little more than half a dozen letters per week.
The problems in Dundee along with the effects of Television Advertising Duty and the Equity Strike led to heavy financial losses and a subsequent reduction in transmitter rental for Grampian but by the end of 1962, the station had succeeded in increasing audience in the city and the area as a whole. The success in viewing figures were attributed to an increase in regional programming. Whereas Grampian had previously restricted its output to news and current affairs beforehand, production controller James Buchan decided to go broke and branch out to produce light entertainment and music shows (originally, at the rate of four programmes a week) - such output would remain a staple of Grampian's local output for the next forty years or so. By 1963, no less than fifty Grampian shows had featured in the local Top Ten audience ratings.
By the late sixties, the potential audience of the region reached a million viewers and Grampian was employing just over 200 staff at their studios in Aberdeen and Edinburgh (the Edinburgh studios were closed in 1969 after only a few years in operation). Prior to the 1968 contract round, smaller regional stations sought an affiliation with one of the four major ITV companies, who would provide the bulk of their programming. Grampian linked up with ABC Weekend Television.1
Grampian was slower than most other ITV stations to begin colour broadcasting, which after the company invested £180,000 in new equipment, promptly started in September 1971 - an occasion timed to mark their 10th anniversary on air. Despite this, the station did come up with a number of technical firsts. Most notable of these came in 1978 when Grampian became the first British television station to adopt ENG video cameras for news coverage - a move which finally allowed its regional news programme Grampian Today to extend from three to five nights a week. Other technological advances came with the opening of remote-controlled studios at Albany House in Dundee (1980) & Huntly Street in Inverness (1983) along with £4 million worth of investment into Grampian's headquarters at Queen's Cross in Aberdeen during the early 1980s. Grampian also developed its own outside broadcast unit, initially using studio equipment.
In June 2003, Grampian broke further technological ground when the station moved into new smaller studios in West Tullos, Aberdeen - at the time of opening, one of the most state-of-the-art television studios in the world.
Following the station's earlier troubles, Grampian Television, along with all other ITV companies at the time, won a three-year extension to their license (later extended by a further year) in 1964. In 1967, they went unopposed by any other consortiums to win a further six-year contract from July 1968 - a contract expanded by a further eight years in 1974.
Six years later, Grampian won another eight-year franchise (later extended to ten years), effective of January 1982. The only change made to the license was the classification of the franchise as North and North East Scotland, as opposed to North East Scotland - a change which the station had already capitalised upon in January 1980 when Grampian Today was relaunched as North Tonight alongside the expansion of Grampian's news operation.
The Broadcasting Act of 1990 led to a significant change in the way ITV franchises were awarded - as opposed to the straightforward review process utilised by the outgoing Independent Broadcasting Authority, the new light-touch regulator, the Independent Television Commission, required that the successful applicant pass a quality threshold and business plan. In the event, Grampian was outbid by two challengers; Channel 3 Caledonia and North of Scotland Television (ironically the name of the original Grampian Television consortium). Both competitors failed to pass the quality threshold and Grampian won back the franchise by default with a bid of £720,000 per year.
Grampian remained independent until 10 June 1997 when Scottish Media Group (SMG) bought the station for £105 million.2. The buyout led to various scalebacks in staff and overall production at the station - notable changes included the transfer of presentation & continuity from Aberdeen to Scottish Television's transmission centre in Glasgow. More Grampian-produced programmes were also broadcast on Scottish, and vice versa.
In June 2003, the company moved to new premises at Craigshaw Business Park in West Tullos, Aberdeen and the original headquarters at Queens Cross were subsequently demolished, becoming home to a development of luxury flats.
In March 2006, the owners of Grampian Television, then known as SMG plc (now STV Group plc) announced that the Grampian TV brand would be scrapped and renamed, along with Scottish TV, as simply 'STV', with a new logo comprising a large, stylised letter 'S'. It was also announced that no jobs would be lost as a result of the rebranding. The two regional news programmes, North Tonight (Grampian TV) and Scotland Today (Scottish TV) are still broadcast in their respective regions after the "stv" rebranding, which occurred at 9:25am on Tuesday 30 May 2006.
The decision to rebrand Grampian was met with much criticism from across the former Grampian region - the move was viewed by many as similar to the ITV plc-owned licences in England, Wales and Southern Scotland where all of the regions are branded as ITV1. The objections are largely due to the fact that the largely rural Scottish culture in the North is very different from the more commercial and industrialised Central Scotland area.
The news service and advertising remains regionalised as before with the Tayside and North East Fife area receiving its own opt-out service, featuring a dedicated news bulletin within North Tonight on weekdays and separate local advertising. The station is reportedly considering the introduction of a third news and advertising sub-region for the Highlands and Islands area.
As of 3 December 2007, the former Grampian name was partially resurrected at the launch of GMTV Grampian a local news segment for North Scotland shown as part of GMTV and is provided by Macmillan Media a separate company with no connection to STV. It took over the contract when GMTV did not renew SMG's contract to supply early morning Scotland Today and North Today bulletins. SMG had supplied GMTV with its news since the breakfast channel took over from TV-am in 1993. From its Glasgow studios, Macmillan Media began its service for the Grampian region on 3 December 2007.
Programming produced by Grampian Television (STV North) over the past 47 years include:
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Outside broadcast coverage of various sports including league football, cross country, lawn bowls, shinty, professional wrestling (for the ITV network's World of Sport), marathons, cycling, exhibition tennis, international amateur boxing, curling, triathlon and mountain bike racing.
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