THE start of colour television in the Midlands coincides with the completion of a remarkable achievement, technical and in construction, that marks a major stage in Birmingham’s development as a source of television programme production.

Programme-making switches from the Alpha Television Theatre at Aston Cross to the new city centre studios of ATV Network, part of a £6,000,000 [£84½m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] development.

When the administrative block is ready late next year, the TV unit will be the first completed section of the £15,000,000 [£211m] entertainment and hotel complex that is to rise on the site of the former West End Cinema and car park.

In design and fitness, the contrast between the two buildings could not be more vivid. At Aston ITV began in 1956 in a building converted from a former cinema which itself had replaced a theatre of Edwardian days.

The new building at ATV Centre houses the world’s most up-to-date complex electronic machines that create programmes for colour television — the new look viewing standard for the 1970s.

It could be a happy augury that ATVs new home goes on the air in little more than 15 months from the day construction of the building began.

Equipment

Progress on a complicated operation has called for the most exacting of timetables.

About half of the £6,000,000 outlay has been on studio equipment. The building, to which the administrative block is to be added, will occupy three acres of the six-acre West End site.

At the end of the year the Alpha studios will close, but the offices in Edmund Street will be occupied for another year. Then the new television headquarters will house a staff of 550.

What has most impressed the broadcasting world is the efficient, compact design that breaks away from the familiar system of lateral studio layout favoured in the past. ATV Centre embodies new architectural and acoustic features.

It has been planned so that the group of three main studios are at the heart of the structure, apart from essential service departments, but still within easy teach,

Control room design embodies a new principle that seems appropriate to 1970 thinking.

Now a producer, or director, must select his pictures for transmission solely from the array of monitor screens that light up the pictures captured by individual cameras.

Lighting and sound controllers command impressive galleries that include computer-regulated “memory banks” of lighting effects. By pre-selection these can store a vast range of patterns which can be “keyed” for use as the sdript demands.

Completion of the first stage of this development sets the seal on one of the most spectacular transformation scenes in a Birmingham accustomed to a major clearance projects and achievements that are re-shaping the city.

That achievement has earned the admiration of visitors from overseas and from many parts of Britain who have toured the building.

It required a dovetailing of building and operational priorities that depended on the installation of many thousands of pounds worth of intricate equipment for sound and vision.

Trend-setting colour

COLOUR TV is likely to prove an even more forceful mass persuader than it has been in the past. It will influence styles in many ways.

Girls won’t always be the trendsetters in fashion — though colour will emphasise the smartness of way-out clothes.

Masculine styles will encourage more attention for the peacock look.

Cosmetics will get sharper scrutiny because of colour’s “truth.” Blonde and brunette will be registered with a clarity that monochrome cannot match.

Pastel shades, too, will alter ideas about the household.

You can expect to see kitchen and cooking equipment in a wider range of colours — check how food really looks while it is being prepared and served.

Roasted meat joints, or poultry, will have to be seen to be the “lovely golden brown” the chefs proclaim.

We’re colourful in black and white… but look at us now!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15th. ATV the Midlands network goes colour. Programmes produced at our new colour studios in Birmingham’s Television Centre will be beamed to viewers from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Your favourite characters, drama, news, sport, outside broadcasts, all will have a new richness, a new reality — in living colour!

What colour are Tom Jones’ eyes? Can you tell the Sky Blue of Coventry from the Old Gold of Wolves?

Is Noele Gordon wearing the same dress as last night? In colour it all comes true! And ATV gives you colour at its most natural. After all, we’ve been producing colour programmes for the world longer than anyone else in Britain. As far back as 1964 American viewers were enjoying ATV colour programmes. But even if you’re not quite ready yet to switch to colour viewing, your ATV favourites will still be entertaining you, as colourfully as ever, in black and white.

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“The Company’s present position and prospects are both excellent”

• The improvement in the Group profit before taxation to £6,626,000 [£42.4m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] is attributable to the greatly improved results achieved by the Film Division and the economic recovery which has taken place within Independent Television. Earnings per ‘A’ Stock Unit were 7.56p [48.47p] and the total dividend is 4.3p [27.56p].
• Strict internal economies were introduced at ATV Network in every field, except that of direct expenditure on programmes. These measures, combined with an intensive drive by the Network’s admirably-directed Sales Department and an upturn in the national expenditure on television advertising, succeeded in producing a profit of £2,409,000 [£15.4m].
• Our most important recent development has been the formation of a new Anglo-American company, Associated General Films, which will serve to consolidate our position as a major force in the international film industry.
• Profits from investment in a greatly expanded programme of film production – £1,139,000 [£7.3m] against £337,000 [£2.2m] – have exceeded our expectations and I can confirm that really substantial earnings will accrue this year.
• Music Publishing continues to be a major contributor to earnings and Pye Records finished the year in spectacular style by winning the Eurovision song contest.
• In a year generally regarded as a difficult one for the theatre, Stoll-Moss has succeeded in coming forward with improved results.
• Our property company now owns some 1.8 million sq. ft. of lettable space and we have let twenty-four of the twenty-seven floors in the ATV tower block in Birmingham.
• Our policy of diversification has once more fully justified itself.

Copies of the Report and Accounts for the year to 28 March 1976 are available from the Secretary, Associated Television Corporation Limited, ATV House, 17 Great Cumberland Place, London W1A 1AG.

This illustration depicts some of ATV Corporation’s interests. In addition to the seven day-a-week television franchise for the Midlands, group activities include film making, theatres, record, tape and music publishing companies, and the manufacture and supply of telephone answering equipment. The Group’s prestige tower block in Birmingham – the ATV Centre – is also shown.

The post ATV financial results: 1976 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

“Thanks to the policy of diversification your Company is now very soundly based … all monies expended now are an investment for the future”

Results and Dividend

The Group profit of £5,746,000 [£42.4m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] before taxation, as against £7,268,000 [£53.7m] for the year 1973/74, reflects the reduced profitability of the operation of the television franchise and the increase in finance charges.

It speaks highly for the buoyancy of the other subsidiaries that in these circumstances the figure of Group profit should not have been more seriously impaired. Thanks to the policy of diversification the Company is now very soundly based.

Earnings per ‘A’ Stock Unit were 6.51p [40.04p] (1973/74 – 8.64p [63.76p]). The final dividend of 2.05p [15.13p] with the interim of 1.85p [13.65p] already paid, makes a total of 3.9p [28.72p] per ‘A’ Ordinary Stock Unit for the year.

Television

The reduction in the television profits from £3.07 million [£22.7m] to £1.68 million [£12.4m], after a payment of £2.85 million [£21m] as Exchequer Levy, is closely in line with the forecast made last year. Exchequer Levy and Corporation tax together consumed no less than 83 per cent of the profits of the Network.

Film Production

Benefit from investment in film production is never short-term, and profits should not be looked for before the second year. However, with careful forward planning of distribution, all monies expended now are an investment for the future.

I become more and more convinced that personal visits overseas are essential if the needs of the international film and television markets are to be properly understood. During the past year I made a total of 26 such trips.

Theatres

Stoll Moss has enjoyed a good year. “Billy” at Drury Lane has proved the most successful musical since “My Fair Lady”, and “Hans Andersen” at the London Palladium has established a new record as a family musical that has run from Christmas into the summer months and beyond. The results of Bermans & Nathans, the theatrical costumiers, though disappointing show improvement over last year.

Records, Tapes and Music Publishing

The success of Pye Records and Precision Tapes has proved outstanding in every way, and with profits now exceeding £2 million [£14.8m], these companies represent a major force within the musical industry.

ATV Music Publishing has again shown itself a source of major strength and is now one of the most important operations of its kind in the world today.

Ansafone, acquired in 1973 has continued to show steady growth and an entirely new range of apparatus has been developed for Continental and American markets.

Property

The results of Bentray Investments, at over £1.7 million [£12.6m], are most satisfactory. The company is responsible for 156 properties and in the major development — the ATV Centre, Birmingham — 18 complete floors of the Tower have already been let.

Copies of the full Report and Accounts are available from the Secretary, Associated Television Corporation Limited, ATV House, 17 Cumberland Place, London, W1A 1AG.

ATV Corporation interests, in addition to the 7 day-a-week television franchise for the Midlands area, include film making, theatres, record, tape and music publishing companies, the manufacture and supply of telephone answering equipment, theatrical costumes, and merchandising and property companies.

ASSOCIATED TELEVISION CORPORATION LIMITED

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“ATV Network remains the keystone of the Company’s operations. Nevertheless it is my firm intention that the corporation should comprise a wide variety of operations all with strong potential”

Results and Dividend

I am pleased to be able to report a Group Profit of £7,268,000 [£65.5m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] before taxation which is marginally above the record profit made last year. The earnings per ‘A’ Ordinary Unit after taxation were 8.64p [77.85p] (1972/73, 10.42p [93.88p]). Your Board has decided to recommend an increase of the dividend to 5.125705p [46.18p] per ‘A’ Stock unit. This is equivalent to an increase of 5 per cent in the rate of the dividend (the maximum permitted under Phase III of the Government’s Counter-Inflation Legislation) making a total for the year of 30.067 per cent.

Television

In the year under review the prosperity of your Company clearly reflected the economic state of the nation. It was thus a year of sharply contrasting fortune. The first nine months proved highly profitable. Indeed, if the results for that period could have been maintained, the figure of profit would have been conspicuously the highest in the Company’s history. The final quarter, however, spanned the disastrous weeks of the energy crisis. ATV Network, in particular, was gravely hit.

Here it should be borne in mind that, in the past, the operation of the television franchise has been responsible for approximately half the profits of the Corporation. It therefore speaks highly for the healthy state of the other diversified activities that the figure for Group profit should remain virtually unaffected.

I am happy, moreover, to be able to say that the severe setback suffered by Commercial Television in the winter of 1973 and the early spring of 1974 proved to be only temporary. Confidence in the medium as an essential element in efficient salesmanship has been re-affirmed by the manufacturers, and the advertising revenue of ATV Network already shows full recovery.

Your Board welcomes the statement by the Authority that, subject to appraisal during 1974 of the performance of the Companies, no change in the present allocation of franchises will be made before 1979.

Diversification

Your Board has vigorously pursued its policy of expansion into other fields, and future possible acquisitions are constantly being investigated. The acquisition last year of 80 per cent of Ansafone Holdings Ltd. has abundantly justified such a policy. Elsewhere, there has been steady growth in the principal divisions already within the Group.

Film Production

Your film producing and distributing subsidiaries ITC–Incorporated Television Company Ltd., Independent Television Corporation (U.S.A.), and ITC of Canada — have all been exceptionally active.

Theatres

Despite the dislocation caused by the power cuts, petrol shortages and impaired train services during the winter months of 1973/74, your subsidiary Stoll Theatres Corporation Ltd. enjoyed a reasonably satisfactory year.

Records, Tapes and Music Publishing

Your record company, Pye Records, and your cassette and cartridge tape company, Precision Tapes, have both experienced exceptional success. Together with ATVs music publishing operations, they have returned a profit 83 per cent higher than last year’s at a figure of £2,502,000 [£22.6m].

Property

The results of your property subsidiary, Bentray Investments, have been most satisfactory, and your major development, ATV Centre, Birmingham, is now a valuable contribution to Group finances.

The post ATV financial results: 1974 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

“Pretax profit highest in Group’s 17-year history”

The Seventeenth Annual General Meeting of Associated Television Corporation Limited was held in London on September 28th 1971. The following are extracts from the Statement by the Chairman, Lord Renwick of Coombe, K.B.E., for the year ended 26th March, 1972:

Results

The Group Profit of £6,240,000 [£70.3m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] before taxation is the highest in the 17-year-old history of your Company.

This wholly admirable result shows an improvement of 27 per cent on the profit for the preceding year and fully justifies the confidence which I expressed at the time of the half-yearly interim statement.

This confidence remains unimpaired. Accordingly, your Board has recommended an increase in the total dividend for the year from 28½ per cent to 30 per cent, and proposes to recommend an increase in the Corporation’s share capital and a scrip issue.

Approximately half the Group Profit was derived from the Network operation and half from diversified activities. This is entirely healthy. And it is in both these fields that a continuing growth is to be foreseen.

Prospects for Television

From the Autumn of this year, the enforced restriction on broadcasting hours will be lifted, and ATV Network will be able to transmit programmes from mid-day onwards and thus provide the housewife with a full afternoon service of news, entertainment and information. This long-awaited development in the ATV Network operation is something which your Board has always been seeking.

The lifting of the restriction will mean that Independent Television in the Midlands will be on the air for an extra 40 hours a week. This extension of the Service will offer entirely fresh opportunities not only for new programmes, both local and national, but also for both new and established local and national advertisers.

The market demand is certainly unquestionable, and the extension of hours should be seen against the background of the year’s trading in which advertising revenue rose by nearly 14 per cent, from £14,255,000 [£160.5m] for 1970-71 to £16,232,000 [£182.8m] for 1971-72. It was this increased volume of sales, together with the reduction of Turnover Levy (£2,483,000 [£28m] for 1971-72 as against £3,865,000 [£43.5m] for 1970-71) which enabled the Network to do more than absorb the increase of nearly £600,000 [£6.8m] in the rental payable to the Authority.

Export Potential

Nor is large-scale growth foreseeable only in the operation of Television in the U.K. The export potential both for film series and for Special Programmes is enormous, and your production and distribution subsidiary ITC-Incorporated Television, and your American distribution subsidiary, Independent Television Corporation, are once again in a dominant position in the market. This situation could not have been achieved without a massive investment of some £7,000,000 [£78.8m]. Benefits from the income generated by this investment will be reflected in the current and subsequent years.

The other main subsidiaries are all in good order and offer assurance for the future.

Theatres

Stoll Theatres Corporation and Moss Empires enjoyed a year which fell only slightly below the previous record year and the present year promises well.

It remains to be said, however, that over the whole world of the theatre hangs the ominous question mark of Value Added Tax. If this tax — from which newspapers, for example, are to be completely exempted — is applied indiscriminately to the theatre, then the results will inevitably be far-reaching and deplorable. Such a tax, without alleviation, may well compel the eventual closure of certain Provincial theatres.

Records & Tapes

I am happy to be able to report that Pye Records has more than maintained its 10 per cent share of the total UK record production. Precision Tapes has, in its first two years of trading, achieved sales amounting to nearly one-third of the total UK market for tape cassettes and cartridges.

Music

Northern Songs’ music catalogue has been further strengthened by a new seven-year co-publishing agreement to cover future compositions with Paul and Linda McCartney. In order to rationalise, the whole of ATV’s interests are shortly to be re-grouped and controlled by ATV Music Limited.

Planned Music, which provides the Muzak service is also steadily expanding.

Indeed, within the Group the results of only two of the subsidiary companies, Ambassador Bowling and Bermans & Nathans, have proved disappointing.

Property & Investment

Of especial importance to the Corporation is your subsidiary, Bentray Investments Ltd., which is responsible for all ATV properties.

The last valuation of Land and Buildings was made in 1966, and a full re-valuation is being undertaken during the current year. This operation will serve not merely to enable a realistic figure to be quoted under Fixed Assets, but to provide a proper financial basis for the development of various of the Group’s valuable properties in London and elsewhere.

Up to date, Bentray’s major development — representing an investment of some £12,000,000 [£135m] — has been confined to Birmingham. The 29-storey, 200,000 square-foot office tower at ATV Centre will be available for tenancies by December.

In the Spring of 1973 the Holiday Inns Hotel at the Centre will be ready for occupation. During the coming year, therefore, the greater part of the whole six-acre complex will become revenue earning.

In June 1972, ATV’s holding of 4,290,000 shares in British Relay Wireless and Television Ltd., was disposed of for a profit before tax of £2,519,810 [£28.4m] and the cash inflow will serve most usefully to reduce current finance charges.

Directorate, Management and Staff

To the Corporation’s Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive, Sir Lew Grade, I must extend not only my thanks but my congratulations. ATV and Sir Lew are by now synonymous.

Finally, I extend my thanks to Management and Staff at all levels in Birmingham, Elstree, London, New York, Toronto, Sydney, Paris and Lausanne.

The post ATV financial results: 1972 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

“Another highly satisfactory year…”

The Sixteenth Annual General Meeting of Associated Television Corporation Limited was held in London on 23rd September, 1971. The following are extracts from the Statement by the Chairman, Lord Renwick of Coombe, K.B.E., for the year ended 28th March. 1971:

This has been another highly satisfactory year; and one that holds great promise for the future.

For the third time in its history, your Corporation has been honoured by the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement.

I will now refer to the improved position in which your subsidiary Company, ATV Network Ltd., finds itself. During eleven of the twelve months under review the whole television industry was still labouring under the load of the high-rate Television Advertising Levy. In that single year ATV Network had, apart altogether from normal Corporation Tax, to pay a Levy of no less than £3,865,000 [£46.4m in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed]. It was to this level of forfeiture that I was referring in my last Statement when I said that if the rate of Levy were not reduced, Independent Television would no longer be commercially viable.

I therefore wish publicly to express my thanks to Lord Aylestone and the Authority for all that they did in presenting the facts of the case to the Government. It is not too much to say that the resultant action of the Minister in amending the scale on which the Levy is extracted from the advertising revenue of the Companies prevented inevitable financial collapse within certain sections of the industry.

Bearing in mind the current buoyancy in advertising revenue and the reduced rate at which the Levy is now operative, it is possible to view the future of the Network Company with a degree of confidence that would have been quite unthinkable a year ago.

Broadcasting Hours

It is a source of further encouragement that the awaited permission for further broadcasting hours cannot now be long delayed. ATV Network is already fully equipped to provide the programmes. All that is needed is the Minister’s approval.

Also, at the moment, only the BBC offers a dual service. There is no reason whatsoever why this should be so. It is wholly within the competence of the industry as it is at present constituted to provide ITV 2, and your Directors will continue to press for this highly desirable extension of the national broadcasting service.

Film Production

The current schedule of production is the strongest in the Company’s history and overseas sales — notably to the American networks and to Australia — have reached a level never previously achieved.

ATV Centre

The ATV Centre in Birmingham, of which the Network studios occupy a third of the total site area, is in itself a major piece of civic development. It represents an investment in excess of £12 million [£144.2m]. Building operations have throughout been most commendably on schedule, and the whole complex of office block, hotel, exhibition hall, restaurant and shops will be revenue earning by 1973.

Stoll Theatres

ATV is proud of its position in the theatrical world. Stoll Theatres under the chairmanship of Mr. Prince Littler has enjoyed a most excellent year. In total, half-a-million more tickets were sold at the box office than in the previous year and the profit figure improved by £96,000 [£1.2m].

Music

ATV is equally proud of the positions which it occupies in the world of music and music-publishing. The new management of your wholly-owned subsidiary company, Northern Songs, is certainly to be congratulated on its success. Moreover, the jointly-owned Company, ATV-Kirshner, has now established a worldwide organisation that is trading profitably in 14 countries.

Similarly, Pye Records which has steadily earned an increasing share of the disc market shows continuing improved results. The profit figure for music and records of over £1,800,000 [£21.6m] is substantially higher than earlier it had been felt safe to estimate.

Audio and Video Cassettes

Looking to the future when the use of audio cassettes will become wide-spread both in the home and in the car, your Board felt it wise to acquire the whole share capital of Precision Tapes Ltd., previously owned only 50 per cent by the Group. Already the sales of cassettes produced by this Company are mounting most encouragingly.

Again, in order to keep level with technical innovation your Corporation has entered the rapidly expanding market for video cassettes — the device which enables programmes of the viewers’ own choice to be shown on the home television screen. The potential here is enormous and, to exploit to the full the global opportunities which the video cassette offers, ATV has entered into 50-50 partnership with one of the three great American networks, the American Broadcasting Company. The entire programme resources of entertainment, information and education of both organisations have been pooled. It is an acknowledgment of the unique standing of this new Anglo-American enterprise that the National Theatre Company in London should have granted it the exclusive video cassette rights of the National Theatre productions.

Finally, for the future development of the Corporation, ATV has announced that it will seek to be active in Commercial Broadcasting as soon as legislation permits. ATV will both apply for a licence in its own right and in conjunction with newspapers, and will be ready and equipped to supply full programme services to other operators.

Summary

The Group, now widely diversified within the whole field of entertainment as well as in property, is both more securely based and more capable of further development than ever before in its history.

It is here that I must pay tribute to the one man who more than any other has made it so. When, for the third time, the Corporation was honoured with the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement, it was once more recognition of the fact that Sir Lew Grade is the master-salesman of the entire television industry. But it was more than that. It was also a recognition of the fact that Sir Lew is television’s supreme impresario. Indeed, his singleness of purpose, his energy and his farsightedness are displayed in every aspect of the Corporation’s activities.

Management and Staff

I will close by saying on behalf of the Board how grateful I am to members of Management and Staff at all levels in Birmingham, Elstree and London, as well as to our Corporation colleagues abroad in New York, Toronto, Sydney, Paris and Lausanne.

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