Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television was a British broadcasting company, which is now part of

ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc is listed on the ...

History

The company was created in June 1992 from the merger of the Independent Television broadcasters

Yorkshire Television ITV Yorkshire, previously known as Yorkshire Television and commonly referred to as just YTV, is the British television service provided by ITV Broadcasting Limited for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV (TV network), ITV network. Until 19 ...

and

Tyne Tees Television ITV Tyne Tees, previously known as Tyne Tees, Channel 3 North East and Tyne Tees Television, is the ITV television franchise for North East England and parts of North Yorkshire. Tyne Tees launched on 15 January 1959 from studios at a converte ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. YTT was effected by the overbidding for its franchises in 1992. The company lost £7.9m in 1993, compared with a pretax profit of £16.7m in 1992. Yorkshire Television founder, Ward Thomas was recalled from retirement to change the company's fortunes in and around 1994, the company managed profits of £10.5m for a 15-month period, reflecting the changed year-end.

Bruce Gyngell Bruce Gyngell AO (8 July 1929 – 7 September 2000) was an Australian television executive, active for more than 40 years in both Australian and UK television. Although Gyngell began his career in radio, in the 1950s he stepped into the arena o ...

, the former chairman of breakfast station

TV-am TV-am was a TV company that broadcast the ITV franchise for breakfast television in the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 until 31 December 1992. The station was the UK's first national operator of a commercial breakfast television franchis ...

, became YTT's managing director on 15 May 1995. In 1974 Yorkshire and Tyne Tees had previously been taken over by

Trident Television Trident Television Limited was a British holding company with broadcasting interests. Trident acquired Halas and Batchelor (well known for their cartoons), Scarborough Zoo, Windsor Safari Park, Trident Casinos, Playboy Club, Watts & Cory Scen ...

, as a joint holding company, to allocate advertising revenue from the

Bilsdale Bilsdale is a dale in the western part of the North York Moors in North Yorkshire, England. The head of the dale is at Hasty Bank, and the dale extends south to meet Rye Dale near Hawnby. The dale is the valley of the River Seph, formed wher ...

transmitter which covered part of both areas. They were forced to de-merge by the IBA in 1980. The 1990 Broadcasting Act allowed ITV contractors to merge again. The company was purchased by Granada Media Group on 26 June 1997, GMG having been formed by a merger between Granada Television and

London Weekend Television London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 unt ...

. In February 2004, Granada plc ultimately went on to

merge Merge, merging, or merger may refer to: Concepts * Merge (traffic), the reduction of the number of lanes on a road * Merge (linguistics), a basic syntactic operation in generative syntax in the Minimalist Program * Merger (politics), the comb ...

with Carlton Communications, forming ITV plc. The takeover of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television was thought to be worth about £800m. Three months later,

left the company in September 1997. Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television, along with Welsh franchisee HTV, later challenged a government plan for all ITV companies to be required to use a single supplier of television news. It also asked for a vote among ITV companies over whether News at Ten should be moved to another time.

References

External links

YTT listing on BFI.
ITV (TV network) Yorkshire Television {{UK-bcast-stub