was the 's website). It is now a part of
ITV Plc and is now managed with
London Weekend Television as a single entity, ITV London. Major programmes include ''
London Tonight '', ''
The London Programme '' and ''London Soccer Night''.
Carlton was also the ITV licencee for
Central England and
Westcountry , after successfully taking over
Central Independent Television in 1994 and
Westcountry Television in
1996 . The regional identities of the two regions carried on as normal until 1999 when Carlton rebranded the two of them as "Carlton Television", instantly killing off the regionality of the two. Prior to that, Carlton also axed Central's "Cake" idents which had run since the channel's launch in 1982, and replaced them with Carlton idents identical to those seen on
Carlton London and
Carlton Westcountry .
Carlton Television was originally a company set up by
Michael Green 's
Carlton Communications to bid for an
ITV franchise. Having failed to oust
Thames Television from its London weekday slot in
1987 , Carlton finally succeeded in the
1991 /
92 round for reasons that were seen as political.
Rather than acquiring its own studio complex, Carlton hired space from
London Weekend Television and took over from Thames at midnight on
January 1 1993 . Unlike Thames (which was both a production company and a broadcaster, and following a merger, continues to produce programmes as TalkBack Thames), Carlton has always commissioned programming from independent production companies.
In recent years, changes in rules concerning media ownership enabled Carlton to buy out many of the other ITV stations, including
Central Independent Television ,
Westcountry , and it also aquired
HTV via Granada, as well as the rights to the archives of
ITC Entertainment and its former sister company
ATV , and the Rank film archive. HTV was the only region owned by Carlton to escape their branding. Both HTV West and HTV Wales stayed with their current idents, but replaced the animated sequence with those used by the Carlton regions, in 2001.
The ITC archive is particularly lucrative since it includes such favourite shows as ''
Thunderbirds '', ''
The Prisoner '', ''
The Saint '' and ''
Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) '' (original version), as well as feature films that include ''
The Return Of The Pink Panther '', ''
On Golden Pond '', and ''
Capricorn One ''. Many
Rank Organisation films are also part of the Carlton library. Carlton has released much of this material on video and
DVD via its own label in the UK, and via
A & E Home Video ,
MGM Home Entertainment , and
Lions Gate Home Entertaiment in the USA.
In September
2002 , ITV made the drastic decision to axe all regional idents, continuity and branding from all franchises, except prior to regional programming (the same arrangement is still happening today), as Carlton and Granada now owned all franchises in England and Wales. However, unlike
GMG regions, Carlton, ever proud of its growing logo, used dual-branding on its regional idents with the Carlton logo. Other regions just used text under the ITV1 logo, but this went on until
2003 when Carlton adopted the practice, resulting in the brands "ITV1 for Central England" and "ITV1 for the Westcountry".
On
2 February 2004 Carlton Communications plc merged with
Granada Plc , creating
ITV Plc . ITV plc owns all of the
ITV franchises in
England and
Wales . (Wales still uses its own on-screen identity as
ITV1 Wales but now also uses English ITV1 continuity.) In addition, Carlton Video became part of Granada Ventures, and two of the Carlton ITV regions were reverted back to their previous names, i.e. ITV1 Central and ITV1 Westcountry, used prior to regional programming in their respective areas.
Since
28 October 2002 , Carlton Television (in common with all the other ITV companies except
Scottish Television ,
Grampian Television and
Ulster Television ) has been known on air simply as ITV1 (
London ). Unlike
London Weekend Television , Carlton Television did not note the last day (25/10/02) of its regional identity on-air. However, the Carlton brand continued to be seen on production captions until 2004. Since Carlton and London Weekend Television now use identical presentation and logos, the division between the London weekday and weekend franchises is now invisible, although the old LWT, now ITV1 (London Weekends), does have "London Weekend Weather" which is sponsored by a different company to the weekday weather.
With the merger of Carlton and Granada, Carlton Television and LWT are now run as a single entity (ITV London), with a single management team appointed to both companies. Both continue to have a separate legal existence however, and still have separate licences, although this is now just a formality.
However, after
January 16 2006 , all programmes produced by Carlton or any other ITV Plc-
owned region are branded by
ITV Productions . Prior to this, ITV regions were still allowed to add their own endcap to a programme (except LWT, which was branded Granada London from 2004). This means that there is no distinction between which programmes are made by Carlton, LWT or any other ITV company.
