ITV Granada
Overview
ITV Granada is the Channel 3 regional service for North West England and the Isle of Man, owned by ITV plc and operated under the ITV Broadcasting Limited licence. Formerly known as Granada Television, it is based at MediaCityUK in Salford, Greater Manchester, having moved there from the historic Granada Studios in Manchester. Its flagship regional programme is ITV News Granada Reports, the early evening news service for a region covering Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside, together with parts of Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cumbria and North Yorkshire and, since 2009, the Isle of Man. On screen the service carries national ITV1 branding, with the Granada name retained in regional programming.
Granada occupies a special place in the history of ITV. It was the only one of the original franchise companies of the 1950s to survive, through its parent company, into the creation of ITV plc in 2004, and in its prime it was described by national newspapers as among the finest commercial television companies anywhere. Its network programmes — drama, documentary and entertainment made in Manchester — shaped British television for half a century.
History
Granada Television began broadcasting on 3 May 1956, as the weekday franchise holder for the North of England. Its founder was Sidney Bernstein, a cinema magnate who built the company's studios on Quay Street in Manchester, on a site bought from Manchester City Council. Bernstein took a close personal interest in the station, and Granada quickly developed a distinctive northern identity, deliberately different in tone from the London-based companies. For its first twelve years Granada served both the North West and Yorkshire on weekdays, with ABC Weekend Television providing the weekend service.
In 1968 the franchise map of the North was redrawn. Granada became the all-week service for the North West alone, while a new company, Yorkshire Television, took over the Yorkshire region, and ABC disappeared from the North. From that point Granada's identity was wholly bound up with Manchester, Liverpool and the Lancashire and Cheshire towns around them. It retained its franchise in successive licensing rounds, expanding its influence in the 1990s by acquiring other regional companies, and it was Granada's parent, Granada plc, that eventually merged with Carlton Communications in 2004 to form ITV plc — a merger in which the Manchester company's name was, for a time, the senior partner's.
Studios and Bases
Granada Studios on Quay Street, Manchester, was the company's home from its launch in 1956 until 2013. The studios were built on a modular basis, with units left unfinished until demand required them, an economy typical of Bernstein's management. Over the decades the complex grew into one of the most famous production centres in Britain, the home of Coronation Street from 1960 onwards and of drama and documentary production on a large scale. The large Granada TV sign on the building became a Manchester landmark.
In December 2010 ITV announced that it would move its North West production facilities from Quay Street to MediaCityUK at Salford Quays. Granada Reports was broadcast from MediaCityUK for the first time on 24 March 2013, signifying the completion of the initial phase of the move, and the Granada Studios closed in 2013, with the MediaCity site becoming home to hundreds of ITV Granada and ITV Studios employees. The regional newsroom is now based in Salford, within Greater Manchester, while the famous Trafford Wharf Road set for Coronation Street stands nearby, preserving the link between the regional service and the network production that made it famous.
Regional News
Granada's regional news has taken several forms over the decades. In the 1960s Scene at Six-Thirty, running from 1963 to 1966, mixed news, entertainment and current affairs in the early evening slot and became a celebrated showcase for the music and culture of the North West in that era. The main regional news programme later became Granada Reports, and in its modern form, ITV News Granada Reports, it remains the flagship of the service, broadcast at 18:00 on weekdays with shorter bulletins at other times.
The programme was notably unaffected by the regional news cutbacks of February 2009 that merged several other English regions, retaining its own separate service throughout. Since 16 July 2009 it has also covered the Isle of Man, after coverage of the island was transferred from ITV Border, extending the Granada newsroom's responsibilities across the Irish Sea. The programme covers a region containing two major cities, Manchester and Liverpool, whose rivalry and distinct news agendas give the Granada bulletin one of the strongest senses of place of any ITV regional news service.
Programming
Granada Television was particularly noted by critics for the distinctive northern and social realist character of many of its network programmes, and for the high quality of its drama and documentaries. In its prime as an independent franchisee it was the largest Independent Television producer in the United Kingdom, accounting for a quarter of the total broadcasting output of the ITV network. Its best-known programmes include Coronation Street, launched in 1960 and still at the heart of the ITV schedule; the documentary series Seven Up!, which has followed a group of people through their lives at seven-year intervals; the comedy The Royle Family; the prestige dramas The Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited; the current affairs series World in Action; and network formats including University Challenge and The Krypton Factor.
The range was extraordinary for a single regional company: soap opera, ground-breaking documentary, literary adaptation, investigative journalism and popular entertainment all came from the same Manchester studios. Nine Granada programmes were listed in the British Film Institute's TV 100 list in 2000, and the company launched or nurtured the careers of many significant programme-makers. The Financial Times and The Independent once described Granada Television as the best commercial television company in the world, a judgement that captured the regard in which its output was held. What the Papers Say, produced by Granada since the station first went on air in 1956, continued until 2008, a measure of the longevity of its factual output.
Ownership
Granada Television was founded by Sidney Bernstein and owned by the Granada group's television interests, later Granada plc, from 1954 until 2004. Unusually among the original ITV companies, Granada was never displaced in a franchise round, never taken over by a rival, and instead became the consolidator: during the 1990s Granada plc bought several other regional ITV stations, including, in February 1994, London Weekend Television — a takeover that underlines how the balance of power in ITV had shifted from London to Manchester.
By the early 2000s Granada and Carlton controlled the franchises of England and Wales between them, and in February 2004 the two groups merged to form ITV plc. The Granada name then disappeared from the parent company, but it survived where it mattered most to its home audience, in the title of the regional news programme and in ITV Granada as the name of the North West service. The licence for the region has been held by ITV Broadcasting Limited since November 2008, in common with the other ITV plc licences in England and Wales.
Identity
Granada's identity was built around its name, its northern accent and a series of logos centred on the letter G, including the famous pointed G symbol associated with the company for many years. The company's presentation was confidently regional at a time when that was a positive choice: Granada idents announced a Manchester company to the whole network at the start of its programmes, and the Granada name on a production was widely taken as a mark of quality.
As with the other ITV plc regions, Granada lost its separate on-air identity in the network rebranding of 27 October 2002, after which programmes were introduced as ITV1, with regional references confined to regional programming. The Granada name persisted in the news programme title, Granada Reports, and in the regional variant of the channel branding after the 2013 ITV refresh. Few former regional names in British television retain the recognition that Granada still commands in the North West.
Availability and Platforms
ITV Granada is available across North West England and the Isle of Man on Freeview, satellite and cable as the local Channel 3 service, broadcasting as ITV1 in high definition at 1080i with a standard-definition version downscaled from the same feed. Its principal transmitter is Winter Hill, one of the most powerful and widely received transmitters in Britain, which serves Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire; before 1968 the Emley Moor transmitter carried Granada to Yorkshire as well.
The Granada region completed its digital switchover on 2 December 2009, after which the service became digital-only on terrestrial television. Some southern parts of Cumbria, including Barrow-in-Furness and Millom, receive ITV Granada through the Winter Hill transmitter rather than ITV Border, an example of transmitter geography taking precedence over regional boundaries. Granada Reports and other regional programmes are available through ITV's streaming service, and the Granada variant can be selected by satellite viewers elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
Audience and Significance
The North West is one of the most populous and strongly identified regions in England, and Granada's success was built on reflecting it back to itself. Its drama and documentaries gave northern voices, streets and workplaces a central place in national television at a time when broadcasting was heavily London-centred, and Coronation Street, set in a fictional Salford street, became the defining popular portrait of northern working-class life.
The North West region is regarded as ITV's most successful franchise historically, and ITV Granada today inherits that standing in a changed form. Network production is now organised nationally, and the regional service's own output is concentrated on news, but the Granada name, the MediaCityUK base and the continuing presence of Coronation Street production in Salford keep Manchester at the centre of ITV's operations in a way that no other former regional capital can quite match.
