STV (SMG): Overview

     overview

The UK STV group (previously SMG and Scottish Media Group) is a television and radio broadcaster with newspaper, magazine publishing and other interests.

     the group

STV centres on Scottish Television, the "licence to print money" created by Roy Thomson of the Canadian Thomson group but independent of the Thomson interests since 1977. As SMG it had commercial television, newspaper, radio, magazine, outdoor and cinema advertising operations.

In December 2002 SMG sold the Herald newspapers (including the Glasgow Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times) to Gannett for £216 million; the sale followed speculation on this site and others about dismemberment or assimilation by a larger competitor.

SMG publications now range from Scottish Farmer to music magazine The Strad and sports mag Boxing News. Its broadcast interests include the dominant commercial television broadcast and production operations in Scotland, along with London-based radio stations formerly owned by Richard Branson.

SMG has an £8m stake in broadcaster Heart of Midlothian plc and a 25% shareholding in GMTV, the UK national breakfast channel. Broadcaster ITV plc holds a substantial stake in SMG.

In June 2008 it announced agreement to sell Virgin Radio Holdings, its radio arm, to Indian media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman & Co for US$105 million. Shortly thereafter it announced that it was rebadging as STV, losing the SMG name.

The SMG corporate site is here.

     studies

There have been no major studies of SMG and STV. Background is provided by the multivolume Independent Television in Britain (London: Macmillan 1982- ) by Bernard Sendall, Jeremy Potter & Paul Bonner and Behind the Screens: The Structure of British Television in the Nineties (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1994) by Stuart Hood.

For Roy and Ken Thomson see the works cited in the Thomson profile, in particular Russell Braddon's Roy Thomson of Fleet Street (London: Collins 1965) and Susan Goldenberg's The Thomson Empire: A MultiBillion Dollar Canadian Dynasty (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1984).

For Branson see Mick Brown's Richard Branson: The Inside Story (London: Michael Joseph 1988) and Tim Jackson's Virgin King (New York: HarperCollins 1994), along with other works highlighted here.

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