Televised football in the regions, part three: From the North - Granada
The north-west of England is one of this country's true football hotbeds. This is how it was covered by commercial television.
The history of televised football in the North-West of England is complicated by the fact that independent television in Britain underwent structural changes in more than one sense during its formative years. When the Independent Television Authority (ITA) first advertised franchises for commercial television in the early 1950s, only three areas were made available—London, the Midlands, and the North of England—and in addition to this the ITA was sufficiently concerned by the amount of possible influence that any one broadcaster could hold that it decided to split each franchise into two, with one company to broadcast during the week and the other at weekends.
The two companies selected to broadcast to the North of England were simultaneously very similar and very different. Granada Television was chosen to operate during the week and the Associated British Corporation (more commonly known as ABC Television) at weekends but, whilst both companies came into this gig from similar backgrounds (Granada owned a chain of theatres whilst ABC was a well-established cinema chain), their perspectives couldn’t have been much more different.
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