company name	ITC Entertainment
company logo
fate	Sold to ITV plc following death of Lew Grade in 1998
foundation	11 September 1958
defunct	11 October 1998
location	United Kingdom
industry	Television and film production and distribution
key people	Lew Grade
parent	Associated Communications Corporation }}

The Incorporated Television Company (or ITC Entertainment as it was more commonly referred to on-screen) was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.

History

ITC was founded by television mogul Lew Grade in 1954 as the Incorporated Television Programme Company. Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's new ITV, the company failed to win a contract when the Independent Television Authority felt that doing so would give too much control in the entertainment business to the Grade family's companies (which included large talent agencies and theatre interests) although the ITA said that ITPC were free to make their own programmes which they could sell to the new network companies.

However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Broadcasting Development Company, had insufficient funds to start broadcasting, so ITC was brought into the consortium and Lew Grade came to dominate it.

From 1955 - 1966, ITC (known from 1954-1957 as ITP) was a subsidiary of the Associated Broadcasting Company (ABC) which soon changed its name to Associated TeleVision (ATV) after threats of legal action from fellow ITV company Associated British Corporation - and produced its own programmes for ATV and syndication in the United States. It also distributed ATV material outside of the UK. From 1966 to 1982, it was a subsidiary of Associated Communications Corporation after the acquisition of ATV.

The initials 'ITC' stood for two different things: Independent Television Corporation for sales to North and Latin America, and Incorporated Television Company for sales to the rest of the world. The American Independent Television Corporation was formed as a joint venture with Jack Wrather in 1958. In September 1958, it purchased Television Programs of America (TPA) for $11,350,000. Wrather sold his shares to Lew Grade at the end of the decade.

The large foreign sales achieved by ITC during the British government's exports drives of the 1960s and 1970s led to ACC receiving the Queen's Award for Export on numerous occasions until ITC's association with the broadcaster and success actually led to the demise of both ATV as a broadcaster and ITC as a production company in 1982.

In 1991, ITC Home Video was formed in the UK, to make use of the hours of programmes in the archive, then unseen for years and unleash them to the public. In the following period, ITC continued to distribute its past library. Grade once again returned to ITC to head the company one last time, from 1994 to 1998, in the last of which years he died. In 1995, PolyGram purchased the company for $156 million. In 1998, it ceased its operations after Grade's death. Its library was sold to ITV plc, and continues to release ITCs original output through television repeats, books and DVD releases.

In 2005, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company, Network DVD released a DVD box set entitled ITC 50 featuring episodes from eighteen different ITC productions.

Productions

ITC is best known for being the company behind many successful British cult TV programmes during the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Saint, Danger Man, The Baron, The Champions, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Man in a Suitcase, Strange Report, Department S, The Persuaders!, Jason King, The Adventurer, The Protectors, and Return of the Saint. It was also the production company for The Muppet Show and Julie on Sesame Street which were both made at ATV's Elstree Studios and distributed in the UK by ATV and in the US by ITC.

ITC got its start as a production company when former American producer Hannah Weinstein approached Lew Grade. Weinstein wanted to make a programme called The Adventures of Robin Hood. Weinstein proposed making the series for ITV and simultaneously marketing it in the United States through an American TV distribution company, Official Films. The series was a big success in both countries, running from 1955 until 1959 on CBS and ATV London.

Grade realised the potential in overseas sales and colour television (the last 14 episodes of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot were filmed in colour a decade before colour television existed in the UK), and ITC combined high production values with exotic locations and uses of variations on the same successful formula for the majority of its television output.

Although most of the ITC series were produced in Britain, ITC often worked with Television Programs of America (TPA) and several series were filmed in America. Possibly the earliest ITC series produced in the US was Fury, a Saturday morning live-action series starring Peter Graves about a beloved ranch horse which ran on NBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1964 Gerry Anderson's AP Films became part of ACC and produced Fireball XL-5, the hugely successful children's series Thunderbirds and, under its successor company Century 21 Productions, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. ITC also funded Anderson-created programs aimed at the adult market, including UFO and Space: 1999. It was at ITC's request that Fanderson, "the Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society," was founded. Another ITC children's series was The Adventures of Rupert Bear, the first television outing for the Daily Express cartoon character. ITC was also behind Franco Zeffirelli's Biblical mini-series Jesus of Nazareth and the Gregory Peck television film The Scarlet and the Black.

In addition to television programming, ITC also produced several films - including Capricorn One, The Eagle Has Landed, The Boys from Brazil, The Return of the Pink Panther, The Last Unicorn, and a number of Jim Henson Company productions: The Dark Crystal and the first two Muppet films, The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. Initially, ITC productions were licensed out to other U.S. studios for release until 1979, when ITC partnered with another UK-based production company, Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, to create Associated Film Distribution, which would release films produced by each company, as well as pickups from other production companies. In 1979, the subsidiary Black Lion Films was founded in the manner of Thames Euston Films, but its best remembered production, The Long Good Friday, was sold on to HandMade Films.

The company's most notorious production was the 1980 film Raise the Titanic! which almost sunk the production company as costs escalated, principally around the extensive Titanic scale model. The film drew harsh criticism (not least from Clive Cussler, author of the source novel, and Richard Jordan, who starred as its main character, Dirk Pitt) and recouped only a fraction of its costs, and ITC's profile never recovered. Grade himself retired from active film production, commenting with the Jewish chutzpah he was renowned for, that it would have been cheaper to "lower the Atlantic."

After the film's failure, ITC and EMI agreed to sell AFD and the distribution rights to its library to Universal Studios, who handled the release of the remaining pictures in their pipeline, including On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice, The Dark Crystal, and The Great Muppet Caper. Today, while the copyrights have reverted to the respective owners, Universal still maintains theatrical rights to most ITC and EMI films initially released by AFD.

As a distribution company, ITC was also the world-wide distributor for Thames Television's The Benny Hill Show.

Ownership

When the Associated Communications Corporation was broken up after losing control of the ATV franchise (it became Central Independent Television when ACC was forced to divest itself of 49% of the company), the rights to the ITC archive were acquired by Polygram, and subsequently by Carlton Television and Granada International.

Today, the underlying rights are owned by ITV Global Entertainment Ltd., although Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer now owns theatrical distribution rights—ironically, MGM owns three ITC films outright--Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6 via its majority ownership (with Tom Cruise) of the original distributor of the two films, United Artists, and Without a Clue via MGM's acquisition of that film's original distributor Orion Pictures. Home video distribution in North America to a majority of the ITC library is handled by Lionsgate under license from ITV.

However, there are few exceptions to the theatrical library. One ITC production, The Dark Crystal, is now owned by The Jim Henson Company, with theatrical distribution rights handled by Universal Pictures (the film's original distributor). Two other films, The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, have full rights owned by The Muppets Studio LLC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, with Walt Disney Pictures as distributor. Some rights to The Return of the Pink Panther are now held by Universal's Focus Features division in partnership with ITV, although original distributor United Artists still owns the copyright, and as of 2008, domestic theatrical, television, and internet distribution through MGM—most of these rights are the result of the latter studio's distribution rights to the ITC film output. The Evil That Men Do is now fully owned by Tri-Star Pictures via Sony Pictures Entertainment.

As for ITC's television output, Carlton (and later Granada and now ITV) released some of these shows on DVD both in Europe and North America. There were however a few exceptions: The Adventures of Robin Hood and the other swashbuckling adventure series of the late 1950s and early 1960s were released on DVD by Network Video, as was Strange Report.

Many of the cult drama shows from the 1960s and 1970s have since been released by Network as limited edition box sets, the most recent being Interpol Calling (as of November 2010). The rights to The Muppet Show, however, are held by The Muppets Studio/Disney, with North American and UK home video rights controlled by Disney.

List of ITC Entertainment productions and distributions

ITC produced a distributed a wide range of content across both film and television, over several decades. ITC productions and distributions crossed many different genres - from historical adventure, to spy-fi and action, and later into both children's and adult science-fiction - as well as films covering many different subjects.

The ITC Distributions page offers a complete list of ITC produced and distributed programs.

Studios

ITC had no studios of its own. Programmes were made in several facilities but most notably at ATV's own studio in Elstree. However, the MGM-British Studios complex at Borehamwood, the Rank Organisation's Pinewood and Shepperton Studios were also used.

Associated Communications Corporation companies

APF

ATV Network

Central Independent Television

ITC Films

Independent Television Corporation

Incorporated Television Company

See also

AP Films

Associated TeleVision

Century 21 Productions

Cult television

Gerry Anderson

ITV

Lew Grade

Sapphire Films

References

External links

Category:Companies established in 1958 Category:Companies disestablished in 1998 Category:Film distributors Category:ITC Entertainment Category:Television syndication distributors

fr:Incorporated Television Company