Meridian faces a financial squeeze: Celebrations and commiserations as independent franchise winners launch new stations to replace companies that lost the right to broadcast
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Your support makes all the difference.LORD HOLLICK, chairman of Meridian Television, finds a single ray of comfort in the withering process of launching a new television company in the depths of a recession.
He said: 'At least I'm thankful we launch on 1 January 1993, not 1 January 1992.'
His MAI financial services group is the majority shareholder in Meridian, which took over the ITV franchise for south and south-east England from TVS at midnight yesterday. At a party at the Southampton television studios, Lord Hollick conceded that the company's pounds 36.5m bid for the franchise looked a lot more formidable now than when the business plan was drawn up in 1991.
That sum will have to be found in each of the 10 years of the contract. Budgets for programmes - as for everything else - have had to be squeezed, as Lord Hollick tries to fulfil his objective of being in the black in the first year. Despite analysts' forecasts of a pounds 3m loss, he believes he can do it, on the assumption that the economy will pick up this year.
'I don't think the programmes have suffered from the cuts,' he said. 'We're just learning how to make them for less.'
The strains of launching a new television station were compounded by the last-minute row over the contract with Independent Television News for the network news supply.
Meridian was one of the last two companies to sign the contract, only hours before the midnight deadline.
The row was over the terms of the two-year review built into the five-year contract. Meridian, one of the new companies that has shares in ITN, was keen that it should be a full-scale review, allowing for a reduction in the pounds 53m annual fee if ITN made significant savings by increasing its efficiency.
'I'm like Marks and Spencer,' he said. 'I want to see my suppliers paid well, but I also want to see any cost-savings they make passed on to the customers.'
In the long term, after the one-year moratorium on takeovers expires, Lord Hollick expects to see the ITV system evolve from 15 companies to five larger and more efficient units. They would still need a strong local commitment within those units - which is why Meridian has introduced a new sub-region for the northern part of its region, based in Newbury.
The new company's first programme was a fast-moving 10-minute new year commemoration that went live to key points in the region, starting at the 900-year-old Winchester Cathedral (symbolising permanence and serious purpose) and ending at Dover, for the lifting of the last customs barrier at the start of the European single market.
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