HTV

'ITV Wales & West Ltd' (formerly and more commonly known as 'HTV') is the ITV contractor for Wales and the West of England^[1]. It is owned by ITV plc.
It took over from TWW in 1968, as 'Harlech Television', later becoming 'HTV'. Its headquarters are based in Cardiff & Bristol.
It has since become, through a series of takeovers, ''ITV Wales & West Ltd'', effectively operated as two separate regions (Elis Owen is managing director and director of programmes for Wales, however West has closer ties with Westcountry than Wales, sharing Mark Haskell and Jane McCloskey as managing director and director of programmes respectively, with the south west station).

Contents

History

Services

Programming

Ownership

Reception

Presenters

ITV Wales News

ITV West News

References

External links

History

Initially the station used its full name (after the head of the company, Lord Harlech), but from the introduction of colour in 1970 it became HTV after fears that the name ''Harlech'' alienated non-Welsh viewers of the station's programmes on the ITV network.
The company won its franchise in circumstances which angered its predecessor TWW and the Independent Television Authority offered them an opportunity to buy shares in HTV, an offer which was declined. It was felt that TWW, being corporately-based in London was too distant form the area it served and that Harlech, jointly based in Bristol and Cardiff, would serve the area better. TWW left its franchise five months early, selling the remaining air-time to Harlech. This resulted in an emergency service as Harlech were not ready to go on-air.
HTV was in a unique position of being the only ITV company to serve two distinct countries (Wales and England, albeit just the west of England) and therefore two distinct languages and cultures (Border Television could claim to serve three - the extreme north west of England, south-west Scotland and the Isle of Man but the differences in cultures were much less and differences in popular language negligible).
HTV West had a lucrative sideline in producing top-quality children's TV series, often sold internationally. ''Arthur Of The Britons'' (a historic adventure series), ''Children Of The Stones'' (a supernatural thriller shot at Avebury Stone Circle and ''Robin Of Sherwood'' were all very popular wherever they were shown. HTV Wales produced far less drama, though they were contracted to make the ten-part ''Return To Treasure Island'' for The Disney Channel in 1985.
In 1984 HTV opened new £14m studios at Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff to replace those inherited from TWW at Pontcanna. The studios fell into the ownership of United Business Media (then United News and Media) following the takeover of HTV by the group in 1996. However, while HTV changed hands twice more, UBM continued to own the Culverhouse Cross headquarters. ITV bought the headquarters in 2006 and plan to create a media village on the site. They have also invested heavily in ITV Wales' newsroom, but have leased the management of Studio 1 to Barcud Derwen, a Welsh TV production facilities provider, under the company's Omni TV business.[1] Among other shows, the studio played host to the interior sets for the first (revived) series of "''Doctor Who''".
HTV Ltd was re-named 'ITV Wales & West Ltd' on 29 December 2006, alongside HTV Group Ltd, which was re-named ''ITV Wales & West Group Ltd'' ^[2]

Services

HTV operates two separate services: 'ITV1 Wales' (formerly "HTV Cymru Wales") in Wales, and 'ITV1 West' (previously "HTV West", then briefly 'ITV1 West of England') in the West of England area.
Since 28 October 2002, the full name "ITV1 West" has only been seen before local programming on that channel. At all other times, the station is simply called ITV1. However, the name 'ITV1 Wales' is seen before all programmes.
While ITV1 West has shared a team of announcers with the other ITV1 regions in England, since 28 October 2002, ITV1 Wales continued to have its own team of continuity announcers until 16 January 2006, when Welsh continuity was transferred to the main ITV1 announcer team in London. Although only being verbally referred to before regional programming, the channel continues to be visually identified as "ITV1 Wales".
Following the change to the single ITV1 branding, 'HTV' was kept for its news programming, but this was dropped on 2 February, 2004, in favour of 'ITV Wales News'/'ITV West News'.

Programming

HTV's main programmes include ''Wales Tonight'' (ITV1 Wales), ''The West Tonight'' (ITV1 West) and ''The Ferret'' (ITV1 Wales). ''Nuts and Bolts'', a local drama series on ITV1 Wales, was briefly shown across the UK on ITV2. It ended in 2002, and neither ITV Wales nor ITV West now produce network programming. Up until c.2002, HTV did continue to commission ''Movies, Games and Videos''. Previously, there have been several major HTV commissions for the network, including ''Robin of Sherwood'', ''Wycliffe'' and children's programmes including ''Rubbish, King of the Jumble'', ''Children of the Stones'', ''The Famous Five'' (90s version starring Jemima Rooper), ''The Top Ten of Everything'', ''The Slow Norris'', ''Captain Starr'', and ''Dog & Duck''; HTV also produced the game shows ''Definition'' (originally hosted by Don Moss and later Jeremy Beadle), ''Three Little Words''
(co-hosted by Ray Alan and his wife Barbie) and ''Keynotes'', co-produced with Reg Grundy Productions.
Since 1982, HTV has provided Welsh language programming to S4C such as Cefn Gwlad, Hacio and Y Byd ar Bedwar, although this is now commissioned rather than produced in-house. Prior to S4C's introduction, HTV's evening news had to be split into two fifteen-minute bulletins, presented from the same studio and separated by an advertising break: ''Y Dydd'' (''The Day'') in Welsh, and ''Report Wales'' in English.

Ownership

In 1996, HTV was taken over by United News and Media plc (now United Business Media plc). In 2001, Granada Media plc bought United's television interests, but at the time competition regulations limited the extent to which one company could control the ITV network, and were consequently forced to give up one of its by then many ITV franchises. The result lead to a break-up of HTV whereby its broadcast facilities and Channel 3 broadcast licence (and hence its advertising revenues) were sold to Carlton Communications plc, owners of Carlton Television, whilst the majority of production facilities were retained by Granada. Unlike Carlton's other ITV acquisitions, which were rebranded to use the Carlton name on screen, HTV's identity was retained on-air until 27 October 2002 when the 'ITV1' brand was introduced to most of the network.
Granada and Carlton were subsequently permitted to merge in 2004 to form the single company ITV plc, which now owns all of the ITV franchises in England and Wales, and consequently re-united the two separated parts of HTV.

Reception

HTV Wales can be received across the UK and Ireland and further afield via satellite on Sky Digital. Its terrestrial signal can also can be received in southeastern parts of Ireland, where it is retransmitted on UHF by so-called 'deflectors', although this is because the UTV region was not historically receivable in those areas by any means in order to be rebroadcast.
HTV West is now also broadcast from the Ridge Hill transmitter (on UHF channel 30) and now covers a larger area, as shown on the map. ^[3]. This service is on analogue TV only, and is broadcast in tandem with the ITV Central West service (on UHF channel 25). Digital terrestrial viewers using Ridge Hill only receive Central West.

Presenters

ITV Wales News

Its flagship programme is known as ''Wales Tonight''. All other news bulletins are known as (''ITV'')''Wales News''

★ Jonathon Hill

★ Lucy Owen (nee Cohen)

★ Ruth Wignall (weather)

★ James Wright (weather)

★ Charlie Neil (weekend weather)

★ Emma Jesson (weekend weather)
Awkwardly, and unlike their counterparts in the West of England, ITV Wales cannot use the word "Today" in the title of their daytime news bulletins as the national BBC Wales news programme is called "''Wales Today''".

ITV West News

Its flagship programme is known as ''The West Tonight''. All other news bulletins are known as ''The West Today/Tonight'', dependent on the time of day they are broadcast. With effect from 3 December 2006, following the end of the Central South sub-region and the beginning of ITV West transmissions from Ridge Hill, ITV West took over Central's Gloucester regional news office and began covering north Gloucestershire for the first time.

★ Lisa Aziz

★ Steve Scott

★ Bob Crampton (now doing the weather)

★ Alex Beresford (weather)

References

1. HTV licence - Ofcom
2. Web CHeck - ITV Wales & West Group Ltd information
3. Official press release from ITV

External links

★ ITV Wales at itvlocal.com

★ ITV West at itvlocal.com

★ Harlech House of Graphics (unofficial history site)

★ Original HTV animated logo, 1968, from 625.uk.com (Requires Macromedia Flash version 3 or later)

★ Animated HTV logo, 1970-1982, from 625.uk.com

★ Animated HTV West logo, 1982-1986, from 625.uk.com