ITV Central

ITV Central, previously known as Central Independent Television, Carlton Central and popularly shortened to Central, is the Independent Television contractor for the Midlands, and was created following the restructuring of ATV and commencing broadcast on 1 January 1982. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited.

History

During the 1970s, ATV the previous Midlands licence holder had often been criticised for its lack of regional output and character. Although ATV had purpose-built a modern colour production complex in the centre of Birmingham, most of its major productions were recorded at its main studios at Elstree in Hertfordshire, a legacy of when the company also served London at the weekends prior to 1968. Equally, its corporate headquarters were based in central London.

ATV attempted to address its problem in 1980 as part of its franchise re-application; with plans for a second major facility in the area (to be based in Nottingham) and as part of the Independent Broadcasting Authority plan for the contract to be a dual region, providing separate news coverage for both the East and the West Midlands. The company name would also be changed from ATV Network Limited to ATV Midlands Limited, thus reinforcing the greater regional focus. The IBA accepted ATV's assertion that ATV Midlands Ltd planned to take a more local identity, and awarded the contract to ATV Midlands Ltd on the basis that further changes were to be implemented, including that the parent company Associated Communications Corporation would divest 49% of its shareholding in ATV Midlands Ltd in an attempt to introduce local shareholders and that ATV Midlands Ltd's registered office should be within the region. To demonstrate this change of share structure, the IBA insisted that ATV change its company name, to show that it was a substantially new company due to the requirements of a dual region.

ITV

ITV or iTV may refer to:

ITV

Central

Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.

Central may also refer to:

Directions and generalised locations

Specific locations

Countries

States and provinces

Cities and districts

ITV News Central

ITV News Central is a regional television news and current affairs programme, produced by ITV Central, serving the English Midlands.

History

Launched on Friday 1 January 1982, replacing ATV Today, Central News was initially a pan-regional service based in Birmingham airing a 6pm programme on weeknights alongside shorter weekday bulletins after ITN's News at One and News at Ten. During the rest of the decade, the region was eventually broken up into three sub-regions, which would receive their own news service.

Separate services for the West and East of the region were planned to begin from day one - but an industrial dispute over the launch of the East Midlands service - and the opening of new studios in Nottingham - resulted in the entire region continuing to receive a sole pan-regional programme from Birmingham. The launch of the Nottingham-based service was initially delayed for a month,. but the dispute was not resolved until September 1983, when the news service for the East was finally introduced. Within a few months, Nottingham operations were moved from a temporary set-up at Giltbrook to Central's new complex at nearby Lenton Lane.

ITV News

ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News (ITN) was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, and has since continued to produce all news programmes on ITV. The channel's news coverage has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Emmy Awards and BAFTAs. Between 2004 and 2008, the ITV Evening News held the title of "RTS News Programme of the Year". The flagship ITV News at Ten has won numerous BAFTA awards, and also being named "RTS News Programme of the Year" in 2011 and 2015.

ITV News has the second-largest television news audience in the United Kingdom, second only to BBC News (other broadcasters such as Sky News, Channel 4 News and 5 News count their audiences in hundreds of thousands). However, its £43 million annual news budget is dwarfed by that of the publicly funded BBC, which spends £89.5 million annually on news-gathering, plus a further £23.1 million on its rolling news channel.