ITV Anglia - History

History

Anglia Television launched on 27 October 1959 as an independent company serving the East of England. At launch, Anglia broadcast from the Mendlesham Transmitter. It was soon joined by Sandy Heath and then Belmont. By 1973 it was available on UHF from Sandy Heath, Sudbury, Tacolneston and Belmont transmitters of the ITA and later IBA. This lasted until 1 January 1974, when the Belmont transmitter was transferred to Yorkshire Television.

In early 1994, Anglia was bought by MAI (owners of Meridian Broadcasting), who merged with United Newspapers to form United News and Media. They were joined by HTV in 1996. In 2000, following United's aborted merger attempt with Carlton, Granada bought the TV assets of United (but sold the broadcasting arm of HTV). In 2004, Granada finally merged with Carlton to form ITV plc, which ended Anglia's existence as a separate brand. During its period of UBM ownership, a 'youth' channel was launched to cable and satellite from Anglia's facilities, Rapture TV; some productions for the ITV network were also shared with Rapture, which was retained by UBM after the sale to Granada, but later closed down and its assets sold. Many early programmes for the newly launched Channel 5 were made at Anglia, as UBM also owned a stake in the channel (later sold to RTL Group). In 1993, the station took over the cartoon studio Cosgrove Hall, when it was sold off by its original owners, Thames Television, though it remained based in Manchester.

Anglia no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally however (the last major programme being Trisha, before she defected to Five) and the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand, which supplied content for Discovery Channel in the USA, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the UK and other broadcasters worldwide, was closed in January 2012 with any returning series re-allocated to either the London or Manchester factual departments. Notable series included Animal Precinct and Animal Cops for Animal Planet, Monkey Kingdom for Channel 5 and Real Crime and Survival with Ray Mears for ITV (credited as ITV Studios). Commercial Breaks, the now-defunct commercial production agency owned by ITV's sales division, was also based in Norwich.

In 2006, ITV plc swapped subsidiaries, which involved renaming Anglia Television Ltd as ITV Broadcasting Limited and vice versa. However, due to OFCOM licensing regulation, the new Anglia Television Limited could not take up the franchise, which means that the East Anglia franchise was effectively transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited. All other ITV plc-owned franchises were transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited in December 2008, meaning that technically, the former Anglia Television Limited now holds all ten licenses in England, Wales and southern Scotland.