Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 at 7pm until the night of 31 December 1992 at 12 midnight.
Formed as a joint company, it merged the television interests of British Electric Traction (trading as Associated Rediffusion) owning 49%, and Associated British Picture Corporation (trading as ABC Weekend Television) owning 51%. It was both a broadcaster and a producer of television programmes, making shows both for the local region it covered and for networking nationally across the ITV regions. The British Film Institute describes Thames as having "served the capital and the network with a long-running, broad-based and extensive series of programmes, several of which either continue or are well-remembered today."
Thames covered a broad spectrum of commercial public-service television, with a strong mix of drama, current affairs and comedy. The company's logo remains widely recognizable and was accompanied by a fanfare called Salute to Thames, composed by Johnny Hawksworth.
After Thames was acquired by FremantleMedia it was merged with another Fremantle company, Talkback Productions, to form a new independent production company Talkback Thames; consequently Thames ceased to exist as a separate entity. However, it was announced on 22 November 2011, that from 1 January 2012, the Thames brand was to be revived and Talkback Thames has now been split into four different labels; Boundless, Retort, Talkback and Thames within the newly created FremantleMedia UK production arm.
Read more about Thames Television: Closing Ceremony, Studios, Presentation, Programmes, Culture, Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words thames and/or television:
“Home! Yes! she would see Trafalgar Square, again; and Nelson on his plinth; and Chelsea Bridge as it dissolved into the Thames at twilight ... and St. Paul’s, the single Amazon breast of her beloved native city.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)