Channel Television - History

History

From the point of view of television coverage, the BBC has always treated the islands as an extension of its South West region, relaying programmes from Plymouth to the islands. (The BBC does now broadcast an opt-out of the regional news bulletin, Spotlight, for the Channel Islands.) However, as the smaller areas of Britain acquired their commercial television channel in the late 1950s and early 1960s, local opinion was that the Channel Islands should have their own franchise.

This posed a problem to the Independent Television Authority as, constitutionally, the Television Act 1954 did not apply to the islands, so the ITA's ability to operate there had to be permitted by means of extending the Act to the islands by means of an Order in Council.

Secondly, there was a problem of connecting the islands to the rest of the ITV Network - the solution was to build a relay station on Alderney, the northern-most island, which would then send the network feed from Westward Television and occasionally Southern Television to Channel Television's studio in Jersey; this was initially a problem, because the existence of the relay station meant that Alderney itself could not have a broadcast service from the start of broadcasting, and the local authorities refused to lease land to the ITA for the relay station.

This problem was eventually overcome, and Channel Television went on the air on September 1, 1962 - the penultimate ITV franchise to begin broadcasting (followed by WWN), and serving the smallest population: only about 150,000 people in 54,000 households.

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. Several acquired afternoon serials running on Channel were disrupted during the switchover from TSW to TVS and the Channel TV Times detailed how they affected viewers. For instance Channel had to miss 172 episodes of The Young Doctors, the first nine episodes of Prisoner Cell Block H which had been screened on TVS in 1985, and it had to re-show 83 episodes of Sons and Daughters as TVS was behind TSW.

Because of the need to provide a stronger network feed from the UK, and upgraded studio facilities, the Channel Islands were prevented from receiving colour television, and Channel could only broadcast in black and white until 1976. Similarly, 16:9 widescreen broadcasts from Channel did not begin until early 2008 – many years after the rest of the network, the rest of which was largely widescreen capable by the launch of digital television in 1998.

The smallness of the station, once described as 'television in miniature', while having implications for the profitability of the company, has on the whole been to its advantage: it has an extremely close relationship with its viewership, reflecting daily life and government in the islands, and while not producing large numbers of programmes for the ITV Network at the start of the 21st century, it does produce some five-and-a-half hours a week of programmes for its own area, including the local nightly news magazine Channel Report. This has posed a challenge, as the bailiwicks are politically separate not only from the UK, but also from one another. Channel also produces the children's programme Puffin's Pla(i)ce, which was first broadcast in 1964.

Although not widely known, it has been reported that in 2000, amid takeovers of the other licensees by Carlton, Granada and SMG, Channel Television had plans to buy HTV, valuing the company at £450 million. HTV had become available after Granada acquired it as part of United News and Media's broadcasting assets, but were forced to sell it to comply with ownership regulations. Part of the reason why the company was targeted was that the management buy-in group that had taken over Channel Television earlier in the same year was led by two former HTV executives - Huw Davies (chief executive) and David Jenkins (finance director). In the end, the bid either failed or was abandoned; Granada sold HTV to Carlton and Channel Television itself was sold again, this time to Iliffe News and Media, part of the privately-owned Yattendon Group plc.

On 18 October 2011, it was announced that Channel Television would be sold to ITV plc subject to approval from the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority. ITV plc completed its takeover of Channel Television from Yattendon Group plc on 23 November 2011.