Hitler’s TV Franchise Disaster

This parody is based on real events in the UK, which happened back in 1991 to 1992, when there was a massive shake-up in British TV with the ITV franchise holders. 
It is a collaboration between Hitler Rants Parodies and Minoa.
== Trivia ==
=== The franchise auction ===
* Hitler’s TV Franchise Disaster marked exactly thirty years since the (ITC), the regulator of at the time, announced (on 16 October 1991) that , , , and had lost their franchises.
** The so-called ITV Franchise Auction was headline news in the United Kingdom at the time, because ITV at the time was run by 18 separate broadcasters (including and ORACLE), each actually providing a local service. Many households at the time could only receive four TV channels (, , ITV and /).
** Thames and TVS in particular produced a great deal of programming for the ITV network, such as Art Attack, Catchphrase, Mr. Bean, The Bill, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries and This Week, so the impact of them losing their franchises was substantial.
** Furthermore, and came close to losing their franchises, had it not been for the “quality threshold”. LWT and Granada also produced a lot of programming for the ITV network, such as Coronation Street, London's Burning, Poirot, World in Action, and You Bet!.
** The auction was criticised by Greg Dyke (then of LWT) as “sealed bid tenders”, because TVS and TSW lost their franchises for bidding too much. However, TVS’ bid would have obliged them to pay nearly £60 million per year: it was not a one-off payment.
** Ironically, successful companies like and were forced to negotiate a lower licence fee: HTV had suffered huge financial losses, and received a £27 million bailout by Flextech in 1994.
=== TVS and Meridian ===
* TVH would have actually won the ITV franchise auction by outbidding Fegelidian, if Hitler did not change his proposed bid from £37 million to £999 million. Fegelidian’s bid of £36.5 million is the same as ’s successful bid.
* Catchaquote is a reference to , a game show originally produced by (TVS).
=== ITV in general ===
* George Russell was the chairman of the ITC, the regulator of ITV at the time of the franchise awards.
* The bunny standing next to Koller is , the station mascot for from 1961 to 1981, and for TSW from 1982 to 1992.
** Due to TSW’s relentless legal action, took on little (if any) of the staff from TSW, and the bunny was among those laid off.
** , one of the other major faces of the region in 1991, went freelance after TSW went off air, although he did collaborate with Westcountry on a number of programmes.
* The newsreader in the ITN News Report clip is . ITN still produces the news for ITV.
* TVH’s early exit on 30 April 1992 references (TWW, aka Tellywelly), who also quit early after losing their franchise to HTV in 1968. According to Minoa, the early exit also references the financial collapse of of Leicestershire, in October 1983. However, TSW and TVS did make it to the end of their franchises, on 31 December 1992.
=== TV in general ===
* is one of the channels of ’s . The Mediaset name only saw widespread use from around 1996: the history of the Mediaset name before then is rather fuzzy, so Minoa used Canale 5 instead.
=== Everything else ===
* The House of Lords was the United Kingdom’s “Supreme Court” at the time. The UK did not get their own actual by name until 1 October 2009.