Organization
The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in the production and distribution of te…
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The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in the production and distribution of television programmes.
The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in the production and distribution of television programmes.
Television mogul Lew Grade set up the Incorporated Television Programme Company (ITP) with Prince Littler and Val Parnell in 1954. Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's new ITV network, the company failed to win a contract when the Independent Television Authority felt that doing so would give too much control in the entertainment business to the Grade family's companies (which included large talent agencies and theatre interests) although the ITA said that ITP were free to make their own programmes which they could sell to the new network companies. ITP put most of the production budget into producing one show, The Adventures of Robin Hood (ITV, 1955–59).
However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Broadcasting Development Company, had insufficient funds to start broadcasting, so the ITP owners were brought into the consortium—now renamed the Associated Broadcasting Company (ABC)—and Lew Grade came to dominate it.
In 1957, now known as Incorporated Television Company (ITC), the company became a subsidiary of Associated Television (ATV)—the name ABC had adopted after threats of legal action from fellow ITV company Associated British Cinemas (Television) Ltd—and produced its own programmes for ATV and for syndication in the United States. It also distributed ATV material outside of the UK. From 1966 to 1982 it was a subsidiary of Associated Communications Corporation after the acquisition of ATV.
The initials 'ITC' stood for two different things: Independent Television Corporation for sales to the Americas, and Incorporated Television Company for sales to the rest of the world. The American Independent Television Corporation was formed in 1958 as a joint venture with Jack Wrather. In September 1958 it purchased Television Programs of America (TPA) for $11,350,000. Wrather sold his shares to Lew Grade at the end of the decade.
The large foreign sales achieved by ITC during the British government's export drives of the 1960s and 1970s led to ACC receiving the Queen's Award for Export on numerous occasions.
In the summer of 1980, two films released by AFD within six weeks of each other helped lead to the distribution company's dissolution. Can't Stop the Music, designed to be a showcase for the Village People at the height of disco music, was released 20 June 1980, by which time disco's popularity had diminished and the form was experiencing a backlash from music listeners. The poorly reviewed film ultimately grossed $2 million on a $20 million budget. On 1 August 1980, the release of the poorly received Raise the Titanic! met with pre-release criticism from the novel's author, Clive Cussler, and recouped only a fraction of its costs; Grade himself retired from active film production, commenting that it would have been cheaper to "lower the Atlantic." Cussler himself told People Weekly Magazine, "The film was so poor, it boggles the mind."
After the films' failures, ITC and EMI agreed to sell AFD and the distribution rights to its library to Universal Pictures, though the AFD films which were then in post production at the time were still ultimately released by AFD, to handle the release of the remaining pictures still in production at the time of the sale, beginning with The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and including On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice, The Dark Crystal, and The Great Muppet Caper. As of this writing. the various copyrights have reverted to their respective owners, but Universal still maintains theatrical rights to most of the ITC and EMI films initially released by AFD.
The AFD fiasco was just one blow against Grade's entertainment empire; Grade found himself essentially ejected from ITV following the 1980 franchise round, which stipulated that ACC needed to sell the majority of its shares in ATV and turn ATV Midlands into a new business, Central Independent Television; the Independent Broadcasting Authority had previously criticized ATV's lack of commitment to their Midlands broadcast area, in favor of creating big-budget productions alongside ATV at their Elstree studios (which were sold as a part of the transition from ATV to Central).
The final blow came in the summer of 1982, when majority control of ACC was sold to Australian financier Robert Holmes à Court. Grade had thought Court to be a friend, and allowed him to purchase majority control of ACC; upon doing so, Court promptly performed a boardroom coup against Grade and fired many of ACC and ITC's staff (even, as Grade sadly noted, his tea lady).
Following Court's assumption of control, ITC kept a low profile, largely subsisting on made-for-television films and other projects, as well as the distribution of their back-catalogue; the company also picked up television distribution rights to Kings Road Entertainment titles. The company also picked up distribution rights of future television movies by Moonlight Productions when the deal was signed in 1983. In 1987, ITC and HBO signed an exclusive agreement for ITC to handle distribution of HBO's original films. Later that year, the partnership was expanded on further as the two companies struck a deal to co-produce more HBO-exclusive films (HBO would retain home video rights, while ITC took foreign and broadcast television distribution rights).
Source: ITC Entertainment (CC BY-SA)
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During 1988, The Bell Group, the owners of ITC were taken over by the Bond Corporation. Subsequently, the new owners started an asset-stripping programme. In November 1988 ITC Entertainment was bought by its management. In 1990, ITC abandoned television production and concentrated on low-budget feature films. TV production at ITC would not resume until the company forged a deal with producer David Gerber in 1993. In the meantime, it entered into a financing agreement with Interscope Communications to handle U.S
