“Rivals” — a quick guide

A new TV adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals for Disney+ has gone down extremely well with the critics and I finished watching the entire series last night. It’s fun, camp, and handles the 1980s really well, in that there’s a wonderful amount of detail regarding the fashions and culture, but at the same time, mixes up the years so it just becomes a wonderful 1980s (prawn) cocktail.

“Rivals” trailer © Disney

The narrative arc to Rivals might seem rather strange to some, though — particularly to those under the age of around 40 and/or not familiar with UK media.

In Rivals, two competing television companies battle it out to win a local television franchise. The incumbent, Corinium, is run by Lord Baddingham. It is challenged by Venturer, a consortium run by former Corinium chat show host Declan O’Hara and Conservative MP Rupert Campbell-Black.

Most other countries would have TV stations operating in perpetuity but up until fairly recently, this didn’t happen in the UK. The BBC does have such a licence, but commercial television was run under a franchise model, with companies being required to meet very high standards every 10 years or so in order to retain their licence/franchise — with that franchise being open for other organisations and consortia, new or existing, to apply. Hence Corinium/Venturer.

The franchise model was created for the UK’s third channel, after BBC1 and BBC2. Nominally called Independent Television, this was the first commercially-funded channel and started in 1955. Each of the franchises was run from their region too — the franchise had to confirm to requirements of content being produced locally. So, when Rivals refers to an “ITV franchise”, it’s one of these Independent Television franchises that it’s talking about. and the national ITV service was basically a federation of these franchises.

There was an additional, national franchise for breakfast television, which launched in 1983 from a new company, TV-am (more on this later).

James Vereker (Oliver Chris) and Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack). © Disney

Television in general was heavily regulated — not just in terms of who runs each franchise, but when they could broadcast, and even the amount of prize money that game shows were allowed to offer, a limit that was finally scrapped in 1993. You might be thinking that this is big goverment in action but it worked, and maintained a consistently high standard of television content in the UK with such content being produced across the UK, for and about the people in each region.

The system doesn’t run in this way any more (which some feel is a bad thing), and the franchise holders, over the 1990s, were allowed to merge to gain national and international scale. The result of this that all of the franchises are run by either ITV (England/Wales) or STV (Scotland), as national channels and international production companies.

While the regional franchises remain, they are now essentially invisible to the end user and renewals happen quietly and en masse. All of the ITV/STV franchises were renewed for 10 years only last month with little coverage, a stark contrast to their importance in years gone by — again, more later.

Franchise timeline, Wikipedia

Below are some further references that may require some clarification.

IBA

The “startup” caption for each franchise, each morning, featured the IBA logo and the franchisee’s logo together. This was mandatory, along with an announcement that the franchisee was “broadcasting on the transmitters of the Independent Broadcasting Authority”. (you’ll hear this about 1min in, in this clip). This caption is from Thames Television, the franchisee for weekday programming in London and the surrounding areas from 1968 to 1992

The Independent Broadcasting Authority, the Government body responsible for the aforementioned franchising model and, more generally, the regulation of commercial television in the UK. The Thatcher government scrapped the IBA and replaced it with the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and other bodies, in line with its plans to change the way that ITV franchises were awarded.

Rivals does a good job in terms of how the IBA would consider franchise applications: they would be typed out, formally submitted, and reviewed by an IBA panel that would consist of notable people from notable professions. There wouldn't be head-to-head events where competing applicants would face off, however.

Where franchisees were always considered on the basis of quality of national and local content and the ability of the holder to invest in the region, the franchise methodology for 1991 was changed to be a mix of quality plus the amount of payments that the franchisee could make to the Government.

The ITC itself was replaced in 2003 by an integrated regulator for communications and media, called Ofcom (Government Office of Communications).

The franchise renewal round in 1991, for the new franchise period starting in 1993. This was huge national news, and was the big headline on ITN (the national supplier of ITV news) and in the local news for Television South West (TSW), franchise holder for Devon, Cornwall and parts of Somerset and Dorset. As you’ll see in this clip, there is a “Rivals”-like competition which TSW ends up losing.

In Rivals, the franchise renewal round looks to be set in about 1988 although there wasn’t one then; the previous franchise award was in 1980 and the next in 1991. Also, the IBA logo in Rivals is fictitious, which is odd as the organisation doesn’t exist any more so it wouldn’t seem problematic to use it.

Central South West franchise

This is not a “real” TV franchise area. The area where Rivals is based, the Cotswolds in England, was served by two franchisees in the 1980s: Central Television in the north Cotswolds (called the Midlands franchise), and HTV in the south (operating two franchises, for the West of England and south Wales).

Harlech Television has similarities with Corinium in that it was headed by a lord — Lord Harlech was the founder and first head of HTV, and it’s where the H in HTV is from.

Granada

The titles for “World In Action”, one of Granada’s most famous programmes. Until the late 1980s, each ITV franchisee was permitted to show an ident in front of their programme; Granada, in typically earnest style, just had a static board with its logo

Lord Baddingham talks about “Granada” and “Yorkshire” as part of his conversations about the franchise process. Granada was the ITV franchisee for the north west of England, and had a tremendous reputation for high-quality programming. The Granada group was a mini conglomerate, covering bingo halls, catering, book publishing motorway service stations, and TV rental as well as the franchise.

Yorkshire

The YTV ident at the beginning of “Emmerdale Farm”, a soap opera set in Yorkshire and still running on ITV today

Known informally as YTV, Yorkshire was the ITV franchisee for Yorkshire in the north east of England, and the surrounding areas.

Cotswolds at Six

“Good Morning Britain” from 1984, presented here by Rustie Lee and Henry Kelly. Note the considerable similarities between the faux-brick set here, and the set in “Rivals”

I think that it’s called this in Rivals, but please correct me if I’m wrong. This is the magazine show hosted by James Vereker and Sarah Stratton; the set is a wonderful copy of the set of TV-am’s breakfast show Good Morning Britain, broadcast from their studios in Camden, London. The studios are now owned by Paramount and it’s where their UK channels are run from; Good Morning Britain as a title was brought back by ITV a few years ago for its national breakfast show.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed the show as much as I have. I hope that Rivals is renewed, and that… well… I won’t tell you what happens!