 A still from the 1973 ITC Entertainment "Spin Top" logo ident | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Media |
| Founded | 1954; 71 years ago (1954) |
| Founders | |
| Defunct | 1998; 27 years ago (1998) |
| Fate | Folded into PolyGram Television Library sold off toCarlton Communications |
| Successor | Studio: PolyGram Television Library: ITV Studios The Muppets Studio The Jim Henson Company |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Key people | Lord Grade |
| Products | Films TV shows |
| Services | Distribution |
| Parent |
|
| Divisions |
|
TheIncorporated Television Company (ITC), orITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in the production and distribution of television programmes.
Television mogulLew Grade set up the Incorporated Television Programme Company (ITP) withPrince Littler andVal Parnell in 1954.[1] Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's newITV network, the company failed to win a contract when theIndependent 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)[2] 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).[1]
However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Broadcasting Development Company, had insufficient funds to start broadcasting,[2] so the ITP owners were brought into the consortium—now renamed the Associated Broadcasting Company (ABC)—and Lew Grade came to dominate it.[3]
In 1957, now known as Incorporated Television Company (ITC), the company became a subsidiary ofAssociated Television (ATV)—the name ABC had adopted after threats of legal action from fellow ITV companyAssociated British Cinemas (Television) Ltd[4]—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 ofAssociated Communications Corporation after the acquisition of ATV.[5]
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 withJack Wrather.[6] In September 1958 it purchasedTelevision 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 theQueen's Award for Export on numerous occasions.
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ITC is best known for being the company behind many successful Britishcult TV filmed series during the 1960s and 1970s, such asThe Saint,Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased),Danger Man,The Baron,Gideon's Way,The Champions,The Prisoner,Thunderbirds,Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons,Stingray,Joe 90,Interpol Calling,Man in a Suitcase,Strange Report,Department S,The Persuaders!,Jason King,The Adventurer,The Protectors,Space 1999, andReturn of the Saint. Some ATV videotaped productions, usually recorded atATV Elstree Studios, were produced as 'international productions' and distributed overseas with ITC branding - these includedThe Muppet Show, Brian Clemens'Thriller andThe Julie Andrews Hour, the latter of which was taped at ABC-TV studios in Hollywood.
ITC got its start as a production company when former American producerHannah Weinstein approached Lew Grade. Weinstein wanted to make a programme calledThe Adventures of Robin Hood. Weinstein proposed making the series for ITV and simultaneously marketing it in the United States through an American TV distribution company,Official Films. The series was a big success in both countries, running from 1955 until 1959 onCBS and ATV London.
Grade realised the potential in overseas sales and colour television (the last 14 episodes ofThe Adventures of Sir Lancelot were filmed in colour a decade before colour television existed in the UK),[7] and ITC combined high production values with exotic locations and uses of variations on the same successful formula for the majority of its television output.
Although most of the ITC series were produced in Britain, ITC often worked withTelevision Programs of America (TPA) and several series were filmed in America. Possibly the earliest ITC series produced in the US wasFury, a Saturday morning live-action series, about a beloved ranch horse, which starredPeter Graves and ran onNBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In 1963Gerry Anderson'sAnderson-Provis (AP) Films became part of ACC and producedFireball XL-5, the hugely successful children's seriesThunderbirds and, under its successor companyCentury 21 Television/Cinema Productions,Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. ITC also funded Anderson-created programmes aimed at the adult market, includingUFO andSpace: 1999. It was at ITC's request thatFanderson, "the Gerry Anderson Appreciation Society," was founded. Another ITC children's series wasThe Adventures of Rupert Bear, the first television outing for theDaily Express cartoon character. ITC (in partnership with the Italian companyRAI) was also behindFranco Zeffirelli's Biblical mini-seriesJesus of Nazareth,Moses the Lawgiver, and the Gregory Peck television filmThe Scarlet and the Black.
In 1978, ITC launched a subsidiary,Marble Arch Productions, for American-produced programmes, which in 1982 was renamed to ITC Productions.[8] Outside of telefilms and mini-series, Marble Arch only ever produced two sitcoms,Maggie, whichABC aired from 1981 to 1982 andThe Two of Us, which aired on CBS, also that same season. After the renaming, ITC attempted to branch out more into series and the lucrative first-run syndication market.[9][10] In 1990, ITC placed Marble Arch up for sale amid financial losses; it was ultimately sold toInterscope Communications, a film and television production company who assumed Marble Arch's former duties in exchange for ITC's handling of distribution and co-financing of Interscope projects.[11][12] The company did not return to first-run television production until 1993, via a deal with producerDavid Gerber.[13] Interscope would eventually return to common ownership with ITC following its acquisition by PolyGram.
In addition to television programming, ITC also produced several films. In 1976, the company teamed up withGeneral Cinema Corporation to form Associated General Films, and produced films includingVoyage of the Damned,[14]Capricorn One, andThe Eagle Has Landed; the partnership ended the following year.[15]
Other films produced by ITC includeThe Boys from Brazil,The Return of the Pink Panther,The Last Unicorn, and a number ofJim Henson Company productions:The Dark Crystal and the first two Muppet films,The Muppet Movie andThe Great Muppet Caper. Initially, ITC productions were licensed out to other US studios for release until 1979, when ITC partnered with another UK-based production company,Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, to createAssociated Film Distribution, which would release films produced by each company, as well as pick-ups from other production companies. In 1979, the subsidiary Black Lion Films was founded in the manner ofEuston Films (owned byThames Television), but its best remembered production,The Long Good Friday, was sold on toHandMade Films.
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 theVillage 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 receivedRaise 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."[16] Cussler himself toldPeople 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 toUniversal 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 withThe Legend of the Lone Ranger, and includingOn Golden Pond,Sophie's Choice,The Dark Crystal, andThe 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; theIndependent 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).[17][18][19]
The final blow came in the summer of 1982, when majority control of ACC was sold to Australian financierRobert 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 aboardroom coup against Grade and fired many of ACC and ITC's staffers (even, as Grade sadly noted, his tea lady).[20][21][22]
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-catalog; the company also picked up television distribution rights toKings Road Entertainment titles.[23] In 1987, ITC andHBO signed an exclusive agreement for ITC to handle distribution of HBO's original films.[24] 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 TV distribution rights).[25][26]
During 1988, The Bell Group, the owners of ITC were taken over by theBond Corporation.[27][28][29] Subsequently, the new owners started an asset-stripping programme. In November 1988 ITC Entertainment was bought by its management.[30] 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 producerDavid Gerber in 1993.[13] In the meantime, it entered into a financing agreement withInterscope Communications to handle U.S. and foreign sales of its telemovies.[12]
In 1990, ITC briefly attempted to enter the lucrative American game show market, with a syndicated revival ofTic-Tac-Dough, which had previously run from 1978 to 1986 in syndication, alongsideBarry & Enright Productions. However, the show was off the air by March 1991, mainly due to a glut of syndicated game show offerings during the 1990–91 season, as well as several changes in gameplay which were criticized, as was hostPatrick Wayne.
In 1995,PolyGram purchased the company for $156 million.[31][32] with Grade once again returning to ITC to act as a consultant until his death in December 1998.[33][34] In 1997, it was absorbed intoPolyGram Television.[35][36]
On 10 December 1998, Universal Studios' parent,Seagram purchased PolyGram for $10.2 billion.[37] In early January 1999,Carlton Communications bought the ITC television and film library from PolyGram/Seagram for £91 million, which reunited the programme library of ATV andCentral Television and doubled the stock of its library division (Carlton International), giving it a total of 15,000 hours of programming.[38] Carlton chairman Michael Green said: 'The ITC library is a jewel in the crown. We can now unite it with the other gems from Britain's film and television heritage in our excellent library.'[39] In 2004, Carlton was acquired byGranada plc (which then renamed itselfITV plc).ITV Studios continues to release ITC's original output through television and Internet-streaming repeats, books and DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Today, the underlying rights are generally owned byITV Studios Global Entertainment viaITV plc and its respective predecessors, although in most casesShout! Factory now holds full worldwide distribution rights (with US theatrical distribution handled by Shout!'s Westchester Films division, passed on from former distributorsMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer andPark Circus). In turn, Shout!'s video distribution rights in North America to a majority of the ITC Entertainment library were assumed fromLionsgate Home Entertainment (whose predecessor,Artisan Entertainment, had held rights to ITC's back catalogue since the early 1990s, and had been licensing ITC's TV output since the 1980s).[40]
American video distribution rights to ITC's feature film catalog were originally licensed toMagnetic Video in 1980, and that company's successors –20th Century-Fox Video and CBS/Fox Video – retained the rights for several years afterwards; video rights were licensed toJ2 Communications beginning in 1988 (under theITC Home Video branding).[41][42] This came to an end following a legal dispute between ITC and J2 over the rights to theNational Lampoon IP then-owned by J2, which ITC had attempted to auction off without J2's knowledge or consent.[43][44]
As for ITC's television output, Carlton (and later Granada and now ITV) released some of these shows on DVD both in Europe and North America. There were however a few exceptions:The Adventures of Robin Hood and the other swashbuckling adventure series of the late 1950s and early 1960s were released on DVD by Network, as wasStrange Report. Many of the drama shows from the 1960s and 1970s have since been released by Network as limited edition box sets. In 2005, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company, Network released a DVD box set entitledITC 50 featuring episodes from eighteen different ITC productions.
The Walt Disney Company has owned theMuppets franchise since 2004, including ITC productionsThe Muppet Show,The Muppet Movie, andThe Great Muppet Caper, althoughUniversal Pictures retains domestic theatrical rights to the latter two productions.The Jim Henson Company owns the ITC productionThe Dark Crystal as it had bought the film from the company after production had completed. While Universal retains both domestic and international theatrical rights to the film, its home video and television broadcast rights are licensed to Shout! Factory.
ITC produced and distributed a wide range of content across both film and television, over several decades. ITC productions and distributions crossed many different genres – from historical adventure, tospy-fi and action, and later into both children's and adult science-fiction – as well as films covering many different subjects.
TheITC Distributions page offers a complete list of ITC produced and distributed programmes.
ITC had no studios of its own. Programmes were made in several facilities but most notably atABPC'sElstree film studios (not to be confused withATV's nearbyClarendon Road Studios, Borehamwood, which was a live/videotape facility, and now known as BBC Elstree). However, theMGM-British Studios complex atBorehamwood,[45] and theRank Organisation'sPinewood andShepperton Studios were also used.Ghost Squad was made at the Independent Artists Studio inBeaconsfield.
the ITA felt that the enormous amount of talent ITC controlled could easily lead it to monopolise the fledgling network
The battle for the initials 'ABC' had to be settled in court, where the cinema owner succeeded on the basis of prior use.
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