Independent Television Service For Wales and The West - ITA Solution

ITA Solution

The ITA suggested a solution, where the sale of the contract would go ahead, Harlech would receive all advertising revenue from the handover date and would pay TWW a fixed weekly fee to continue making local productions for a further five months. During that time Harlech would be preparing its own programmes, using the same studios and staff, for launch in the summer. The interim contract would use neither company's name, and the literal Independent Television Service for Wales and the West was chosen.

This created a cordon sanitaire between the end of TWW and the start of Harlech. Nevertheless, the "in the can" TWW productions, of which there were many, still carried "TWW presents" and "TWW production" captions.

Also, TWW in-vision announcers were retained by the interim set up, giving a superficial impression that little had changed. This was referred to in the local press as "TWW's revenge" on Harlech. In the event, Harlech decided that the confusion was not helping, and brought forward their own start date to late May. The interim service lasted just under three months.

The interim service continued both of the former TWW dual services under the names 'South Wales and West' and 'Teledu Cymru' – the latter having been the existing on-air name in that area. For the interim period, both names were prefixed with the new phrase "Independent Television Service". Thus the new ITSWW (the initials were never used on air, and mainly served as an abbreviation used by the newspapers) was operating two channels known as ITSSWW and ITSTC respectively. What the viewers made of all this is unclear, but extensive broadsheet press advertising was taken out to explain the arrangements to those viewers deemed to be interested. Nothing was placed in the tabloids.