London Weekend Television (LWT 1968-2002)

London Weekend Television (LWT) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Friday evenings to Monday mornings. 

The London Television Consortium (LTC) was created and led by television presenter David Frost, who at the time was working for the London weekday ITV station, Rediffusion. The consortium's application promised a variety of high-brow arts and drama productions. The new company, renamed London Weekend Television, were forced by the ITA to purchase Rediffusion's site at Wembley and legally obliged to employ all members of staff, although the workforce was slightly larger than LWT had wanted. Having previously worked weekdays for Rediffusion, transmission staff now had to work at weekends, and as a result, wanted extra pay for the unsocial hours. This led to threats of industrial action, and with the dispute still unresolved, fifteen seconds into their opening night of August 2, 1968, technicians went on strike and the screens went blank. An emergency service was provided by management from the transmission centre of ATV in London.

Upon resolving the dispute, LWT suffered poor rating figures. As a consequence viewers deserted their primetime offerings in favour of the more mainstream Saturday night viewing on BBC1. Other ITV stations refused to show LWT productions. Several board executives resigned and the crisis deepened. Eventually, Rupert Murdoch became managing director in February 1971 and started restructuring the company but the ITA were unhappy and demanded assurances that LWT's original programme policies and operations were sound. Murdoch was forced out and a new board, which included many of the original personnel from 1967, and changes were made. Audience share grew and LWT won several BAFTA awards in 1975.

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