Unacceptable Profitability

Abstract

Between 1958 and 1962 Independent Television spread across the United Kingdom in the manner illustrated by the maps on the facing page and described in the extract from the ITA Annual Report for 1961/12 which is reproduced in Appendix 1. By the end of 1961 six companies additional to the seven already described had been appointed, and two more were to be added in 1962. How each of these appointments came to be made, and what befell those who received them, will be described in Volume 11. This rapid growth created problems, not just for each company as it arrived on the scene but for the system as a whole, and not least its supervising authority. Growing pains, however, were only to be expected: what was certainly not foreseen was the rapid and indeed fabulous expansion in the advertising revenues accruing to all the companies appointed on the mainland of Britain between 1954 and 1959. Fortunes were made, but, as regards the system itself, it seemed as if having too much money imposed stresses as great as, if not greater than, having too little.