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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This
profile considers Carlton, a minor UK-based conglomerate
that merged with Granada as ITV plc.
It covers -
introduction
Carlton
dated from the 1960s. It was a major UK commercial television
broadcaster (competing with Murdoch's
BSkyB and Granada) and had multimedia
and film/tv production interests. Revenues in 2000 were
reported as US$3 billion, with pre-tax profits of US$506
million. The group operated in Europe and North America,
with around 3,000 employees.
In October 2003 the UK government approved a merger of
Carlton and Granada, with the new group being badged as
ITV plc.
the group
Carlton began by supplying technical services to film
and video program producers and has moved up the production
chain, swallowing service providers, film libraries, CD
and videocassette manufacturers, broadcasters, book publishers
and other businesses as it went. A chronology is here.
It was formally established in 1983, when Michael Green's
private company - involved in television production facilities,
programming, exhibition contracting and development of
specialist audio/video gear - went public.
Carlton expanded through acquisition of television post-production
units in the US and UK, such as The Moving Picture Company
and Complete Post, at one stage buying and selling off
the United Engineering Industries conglomerate that encompassed
racing cars and pixellation software. It bought equipment
manufacturers (most since sold) such as Abekas Video Systems
and film processor Technicolor, along with the Nimbus
CD operation and disk/tape plants in the UK, Canada, US
and Mexico.
After acquiring an initial stake in ITV licence-holder
Central Independent Television - following Australian
entrepreneur Robert Holmes a Court's
takeover of Lew Grade's ailing ITC
and ACC - it absorbed Zenith Productions in 1987, becoming
the largest independent UK tv program maker (eg Inspector
Morse and Wheel of Fortune).
By the end of the decade Carlton had a global market (and
units in the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Germany and
the Netherlands). Its equipment sold in 47 countries,
it was Europe's leading video post-production service,
it was the world's largest processor of motion picture
film and the largest producer of pre-recorded videocassettes.
In 1991 it established Carlton television after gaining
the London Weekday Channel 3 licence, the most lucrative
ITV franchise. It launched Carlton Books (absorbing ailing
upmarket publisher Andre Deutsch) and bought downmarket
but more profitable audio and music group Pickwick. In
1993 it gained a stake in ITN, the commercial broadcast
news service, continued to buy film libraries (including
the Korda and Rank film libraries),
moved to full ownership of Central and sold Zenith Productions
to comply with Broadcasting Act requirements.
At that stage the group had 30% of ITV advertising revenue,
equivalent to 22% of total UK television advertising and
covering 36% of the UK population. Its 1996 purchase of
Cinema Media (renamed Carlton Screen Advertising) gave
it 80% of all cinema advertising in the UK and Ireland.
It swallowed Westcountry Television (increasing aggregate
coverage to 39% of the UK population) and producers such
as Action Time and Planet 24. Plans to merge with other
media groups were rejected. In 2000 it reshuffled its
ITV units, buying HTV from Granada.
In 1997 Carlton and established ONdigital (now ITV Digital)
with half of the digital terrestrial capacity in the UK,
competing with cable services (most substantially owned
by US Liberty Media) and Murdoch-controlled
BSkyB. In effect there were now two analogue tv broadcasters
in England, several cable networks and two digital groups.
The future direction was unclear, with Carlton and Granada
servicing heavy debts in markets where significant new
investment seemed required. Carlton was reported as wanting
to float some of the equity in the disappointing (and
increasingly moribund) ITV Digital.
An indication of Carlton holdings towards the end of 2001
is here.
Deutsch
Publisher
André
Deutsch (1917-2000) was born in Budapest and after education
at various schools in Budapest, Vienna, and Zürich
went to London in 1939 with the expectation of study at
the London School of Economics. The outbreak of war saw
him forced to take a job at the Dorchester Hotel before
internment as an enemy alien and service during the Blitz
as a fire-watcher. He became
a sales representative (later sales manager) of
publishers Nicholson & Watson, befriending the charismatic
George Weidenfeld (then working
for the BBC) in publishing Contact. In early
1945 Deutsch established his own publishing company,
Allan Wingate, with an initial
capital of £3000. The severe postwar publishing
environment, with for example rationing of paper, saw
him lose control of Wingate in 1951.
Deutsch then formed André Deutsch Ltd, with associate
and sometime lover Diana Athill (1918- ) as editor. He
sold the serialization rights to Franz von Papen's memoirs
for £30,000, one of those instances where a single
book kept a new publishing house afloat until it gained
recognition among readers. Deutsch's authors included
John Updike, Roy Fuller, Brian Moore,
Philip Roth, Wolf Mankowitz,
George Mikes,
Jean Rhys and V S Naipaul.
The imprint was also responsible for works by the
Sunday Times' Insight team during the golden age of UK
investigative journalism.
Deutsch founded the African Universities Press in Lagos
during
1962 Nigeria and in the East
Africa Publishing House in Nairobi during 1964Kenya.
During the 1970s his friendship with Harold Evans, the
editor of the investigative journalism in book form.
In 1984 Deutsch sold
50.1% of
André Deutsch Ltd to
publisher from Tom) Rosenthal (1935- ), former chair of
William Heinemann. The two men as joint chairmen and joint
managing directors. Carlton gained control after Deutsch's
death.
studies
The major study of Carlton is Raymond Snoddy's
irreverent and often perceptive Greenfinger: The Rise
of Michael Green and Carlton Communications (London:
Faber 1996).
As a grand acquisitor it hoovered up some of the more
colourful parts of the content industries. For a glimpse
of the ITC film library see Lew 'Raise the Titanic' Grade's
memoir Still Dancing (London: Collins 1987) and
other works highlighted in the ACC
note elsewhere on this site.
Perhaps the best studies of Alexander Korda and London
Films are Michael Korda's Charmed Lives (London:
Allen Lane 1980) and Charles Drazin's Korda: Britain's
Only Movie Mogul (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 2002).
For Rank see Roy Armes' A Critical
History of the British Cinema (New York: Oxford Uni
Press 1978) and Geoffrey Macnab's J Arthur Rank &
the British Film Industry (London: Routledge 1993).
There is alas no study of Raymond Rohauer, the piratical
silent film buff who reputedly left his collection to
his two cats, who presumably lived well off Carlton's
£1m. Penelope Houston's lucid Keepers of the Flame:
The Film Archives (London: BFI 1994) and Anthony Slide's
Nitrate Won't Wait (Jefferson: McFarland 1992) offer
insights about commercial film/video libraries.
Asa Briggs' five volume official history The History
of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (London: Oxford
Uni Press 1961-86) provides background to the ITV system
but predates Carlton's expansion and the Carlton-Granada
merger. There is better coverage in Independent Television
in Britain (London: Macmillan 1982) by Bernard Sendall,
Jeremy Potter & Paul Bonner and in Stuart Hood's Behind
the Screens: The Structure of British Television in the
Nineties (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1994). For
an overview see Andrew Crisell's An Introductory History
of British Broadcasting (London: Routledge 2002).
For Andre Deutsch see Diana Athill's superb Stet: A
Memoir (London: Granta 2000) and George Weidenfeld's
thin Remembering my good friends: an autobiography
(1994).
ITN is explored in the valedictory And Finally ...
? The News From ITN (London: Politico's 2005) by
Richard Lindley.
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