Introduction
Tyne Tees Television was the ITV franchise holder for North East England from 1959, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. It became one of the most creative regional broadcasters in Britain, producing the groundbreaking music show The Tube for Channel 4, critically acclaimed adaptations of Catherine Cookson novels and children's programmes such as Super Gran. It merged with Yorkshire Television in 1993 and was later absorbed into ITV, losing its separate on-air identity in 2002.
The station served County Durham, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Teesside and parts of North Yorkshire, broadcasting from studios at City Road in Newcastle for more than forty-five years before moving to Gateshead in 2005.
Winning the Franchise
North East England was the last of the English regions without a television transmitter when the Independent Television Authority advertised the contract. Sir Richard Pease headed a local consortium that included the film producer Sydney Box and News Chronicle executives George and Alfred Black. The consortium was chosen from among eleven applicants because of its strong local links and its commitment to local programming, with an emphasis on regional topical matters and educational and children's programmes. The contract was awarded on 12 December 1957.
Anthony Jelly, an experienced television executive, was appointed managing director, and the company opened its first Newcastle office at Bradburn House on Northumberland Street. From there, on 3 January 1958, the directors issued three hundred thousand ordinary shares at four shillings each.
Launch in 1959
The station's name was announced in October 1958 after the Authority rejected the consortium's earlier suggestions. Tyne Tees, named after two of the region's three primary rivers, was chosen over Three Rivers Television, considered obscure, and Tyne, Wear and Tees, considered too long. The other major river, the Wear, which runs between the Tyne and the Tees, was represented in the station's early signature tune, Three Rivers Fantasy.
Tyne Tees went on air at five in the afternoon on 15 January 1959, the tenth ITV station to launch. The then prime minister Harold Macmillan, who had been the Member of Parliament for nearby Stockton-on-Tees for two decades, was interviewed live on the opening night, followed by a live variety show, The Big Show, broadcast from a small studio. The first advertisement screened on the station was for Welch's Toffee, and in 1959 Tyne Tees charged advertisers one hundred pounds for fifteen seconds of prime-time airtime.
The Viewer Magazine
Where most independent television companies published their schedules in the magazine TVTimes, Tyne Tees produced its own listings magazine. The Viewer was published by News Chronicle, a company connected to the station through the Black brothers, and it was produced to satisfy what the company called its policy of being the most regional of all the independent stations.
Initially produced from an office in Forth Lane near Newcastle Central station, the magazine moved to the City Road studios when Dickens Press took over publication in 1963. It became the biggest selling magazine in the region, with a circulation of three hundred thousand per week. New contracts issued by the Independent Television Authority in 1968 stipulated that all ITV companies publish their listings in TV Times, which became a national magazine with regional variations, and after four hundred and ninety-eight editions the last issue of The Viewer was published in September 1968.
Regional Programming
Tyne Tees developed a strong tradition of regional programming, including the flagship magazine programme Northern Life and the regional news service that became North East Tonight. During the 1980s the station began to develop separate services for the northern and southern halves of the region, producing nightly opt-out news bulletins for Teesside, County Durham and North Yorkshire from a small two-camera studio in Middlesbrough.
The station also pioneered non-news programming for the two sub-regions, including nightly Epilogues, which ended a twenty-nine year run in September 1988 when Tyne Tees commenced twenty-four hour broadcasting. Veteran North East newsreader Mike Neville became one of the most familiar faces in the region, presenting the news for more than forty years before his retirement in 2006.
Network Hits
Tyne Tees' most celebrated contribution to national television was The Tube, the groundbreaking live music show it produced for Channel 4 in the 1980s, which became a defining programme of the decade's music television. The station also produced critically acclaimed adaptations of the novels of Catherine Cookson, whose stories were set in the North East, and children's programmes including Super Gran.
Other network productions included the current affairs programme Face The Press and the clip shows 100 Greatest for Channel 4. Although the station's network output declined in its later years as the ITV network consolidated, its 1980s productions gave the North East a distinctive voice on national television.
Trident and the Yorkshire Mergers
The 1962 Pilkington Report criticised ITV, and Tyne Tees in particular, for chasing the lowest common denominator, and the government imposed a levy on ITV's advertising revenue. Combined with the recession of 1970, this left Tyne Tees facing collapse, and to ensure its survival the Authority allowed it to affiliate with Yorkshire Television under a joint management company named Trident Television.
A major factor in the merger was that the key Bilsdale transmitting station in North Yorkshire so dominated the territories of both companies that its allocation to either one would have seriously prejudiced the coverage and revenue of the other. Yorkshire and Tyne Tees came under Trident's ownership on 1 January 1974, and for the first time one company owned two distinct ITV franchises, although the new company was dominated by the larger Yorkshire, whose shareholders owned seventy-one point five per cent of it. The two stations were required to demerge from January 1982 as a condition of the renewal of their franchises, but following rule changes they merged again in 1992 to form Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television plc.
The 1990s and Channel 3
In 1990 Yorkshire bought Vaux Breweries' nineteen per cent stake in Tyne Tees for five point one million pounds. Under the Broadcasting Act 1990, the franchises were awarded by blind auction, and Tyne Tees retained its licence. In 1996 the Yorkshire Tyne Tees group made the controversial move of dual-branding its stations as Channel 3, at the time the official name for ITV, and Tyne Tees was forced to use the long-winded name Channel 3 North East, dropping its famous TTTV logo in favour of a large numeral three.
In 1997 Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television plc was acquired by the Granada Group. One of Granada's first moves was to scrap the unpopular Channel 3 branding, and the TTTV logo returned to screens in a new form in 1998, though dual branding with the ITV name was introduced not long after.
The ITV plc Era
On 28 October 2002, Tyne Tees lost its on-air identity as part of the network-wide rebrand, becoming ITV1 Tyne Tees. In January 2004 Granada merged with Carlton to form ITV plc. On 1 July 2005, after more than forty-five years, the final broadcasts took place from the City Road studios in central Newcastle, and from the following day Tyne Tees was based at smaller studios in Gateshead.
In 2009 the Tyne Tees and Border regions were merged to form ITV Tyne Tees and Border, with Lookaround moving to Gateshead, though the two services were demerged again in 2013 after Ofcom approved the reintroduction of full regional services. The analogue signals in the Tyne Tees region were switched off in 2012, making it one of the last ITV regions to become digital-only. The original Tyne Tees Television Limited was dissolved in March 2017.
Legacy
Tyne Tees' legacy lies in the regional identity it helped to forge. As veteran newsreader Mike Neville suggested in a 2006 documentary, the launch of the station enabled local people to hear local accents and dialects on television at a time when broadcasters, particularly at the BBC, tended to speak in Received Pronunciation. The station's commitment to comedy and music helped to establish a distinctive North Eastern voice on British television.
Although the Tyne Tees name no longer appears on screen, the region continues as ITV Tyne Tees, and the station's best-known programmes, from The Tube to the Catherine Cookson adaptations, remain landmarks in the history of British regional broadcasting.
