ITV Granada - Other Ventures

Other Ventures

The Granada Studios Tour opened in 1988 as an entertainment park at the Granada Studios themed around television productions. The park featured a replica set of No. 10 Downing Street, and visitors were shown how television is produced. The main feature was the set of Coronation Street

Several of Granada's programmes administered their websites using G-Wizz, including This Morning, Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Its Flash-heavy pages were mostly unusable by subscribers, who were largely modem-based, and take-up was low. Less than a year after it opened, Granada closed G-Wizz in March 2001, after it had cost the company £9 million. It combined the remainder of its online presence with fellow ITV company Carlton to launch itv.com.

From 1997 until 2002 Granada and Carlton invested and lost over £1 billion with a joint venture into ONdigital, a pay-TV, digital terrestrial broadcaster. ONdigital was rebranded ITV Digital in summer 2001, but opposed by SMG plc, UTV, and Channel Television, who felt it would damage the ITV brand. ONdigital was expected to create a new revenue stream and be floated as a separate company but by March 1999 the service only had 110,000 subscribers, well below the 2 million Granada aimed for. Granada and Carlton persevered by rebranding the service ITV Digital but this too was not successful. Competition from Sky Digital launched in 1998 was too great and ITV Digital ceased broadcasting on 1 May 2002. This led to sweeping cuts in the organisation, including cutting budgets for flagship drama serials and productions and loss of jobs at the Manchester headquarters.

In 1996 Granada joined BSkyB to form a joint venture, Granada Sky Broadcasting (GSB) providing content and new channels to the satellite platform. Granada launched a range of television channels broadcasting the Granada archive on the Sky satellite television platform and other digital platforms such as ITV Digital which closed in 2002 due to administration, NTL and Telewest (which merged to form Virgin Media). GSB operated as a joint venture until 2004 when ITV was formed. Consequently ITV purchased BSkyB's 10% stake in the venture and launched ITV3 which replaced Granada Plus. GSB was renamed the ITV digital channels Ltd to reflect ITV PLC control.

Granada Plus was a general entertainment channel, a 50–50 joint venture between Granada Television and British Sky Broadcasting, aimed at older audiences using archived material. The channel, launched as Granada Plus, was later known as G Plus and finally Plus. It broadcast until 1 November 2004, when ITV bought BSkyB's stake in GSB, and closed the channel, replacing it with ITV3, and taking Plus' low EPG position on Sky Digital.

Originally Granada Good Life, Granada Breeze was another GSB venture. It was a lifestyle channel aimed at women viewers and showed programmes on, cookery, health and US daytime television such as Judge Joe Brown. It provided programmes split into themed sections called Granada Talk Television, Granada Food and Wine, Granada Health and Beauty, Granada Television High Street and Granada Home and Garden. Most shows were presented from a large conservatory studio outside the Coronation Street studio which was later used for daytime ITV Play programming. Granada Breeze was scaled down in July 2001 before ceasing operation in March 2002 due to poor viewing figures.

Another channel, Wellbeing, a joint venture with Boots, modelled on Granada Breeze was broadcast from The Leeds Studios, although Granada made some programmes, closed in 2003. A male oriented channel, Men and Motors, lasted longest of all the channels, and ran until 2010, when it was closed to make way for ITV1 HD. Most of its programmes were transferred to ITV4. Granada Talk TV focused on chat shows and closed after less than a year on air.