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Channel Television

Based in	St Helier, Jersey
Broadcast area	Channel Islands
Launched	September 1, 1962
Channel Television ident
Website	channelonline.tv
Owned by	Yattendon Investment Trust

Channel Television (CTV) is a British television station which has served as an Independent Television (ITV) contractor to the Channel Islands since 1962.

The Channel Islands, principally Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, are located in the Gulf of St Malo, over 100 miles south of the British mainland, and very near the coast of France. They are not considered part of the United Kingdom, but as crown dependencies.

From the point of view of television coverage, the BBC has always treated the islands as an extension of their South West region, relaying programmes from Plymouth to the islands. (The BBC does now broadcast an opt-out of the regional news bulletin, Spotlight, for the Channel Islands.) However, as the smaller areas of Britain acquired their commercial television channel in the late 1950s and early 1960s, local opinion was that the Channel Islands should have their own franchise. This posed a problem to the Independent Television Authority as, constitutionally, the Television Act 1954 did not apply to the islands, so the ITA's ability to operate there had to be permitted by means of extending the Act to the islands by means of an Order-in-Council. Secondly, there was a problem of connecting the islands to the rest of the ITV Network - the solution was to build a relay station on Alderney, the northern-most island, which would then send the network feed from Westward Television and occasionally Southern Television to Channel Television's studio in Jersey; this was initially a problem, because the existence of the relay station meant that Alderney itself could not have a broadcast service from the start of broadcasting, and the local authorities refused to lease land to the ITA for the relay station. This problem was eventually overcome, and Channel Television went on the air on September 1, 1962 - the penultimate ITV franchise to begin broadcasting (followed by WWN), and serving the smallest population: only about 150,000 people in 54,000 households. Channel's arrangement with Westward changed over, in 1982, to TSW, the new ITV contractor for the South West; however, in 1986, Channel changed over to TVS, and this continued with Meridian from 1993 onwards.

Due to a technicality that prevented the Channel Islands from receiving colour television, Channel could only broadcast in black and white until 1976. The small size of the station, once described as 'television in miniature', while having implications for the profitability of the company, has on the whole been to its advantage: it has an extremely close relationship with its viewership, reflecting daily life and government in the islands, and while not producing large numbers of programmes for the ITV Network at the start of the 21st century, it does produce some five-and-a-half hours a week of programmes for its own area, including the local nightly news magazine Channel Report. This has posed a challenge, as the Bailiwicks are politically separate not only from the UK, but also from one another. Channel also produces the daily children's programme Puffin's Pla(i)ce, now in its 44th year.

Channel was the only ITV franchise not to be affected by the technician's strike in the summer of 1968, as it was understood by all that any strike action would probably put the company out of business. Similarly, it was not severely affected locally by the ITV strike of August-October 1979, when the rest of the ITV Network was blacked out for ten weeks by another technicians dispute; while the rest of the network was displaying an on-screen caption, Channel Television continued to broadcast twelve-hours-a-day of films and local news bulletins, as well as other programmes from the ITV archives.

Channel Television was not challenged for its license in the 1967 and 1981 franchise rounds; they defeated a challenger for its franchise, CI3 TV, in the 1991 franchise rounds, with a bid of £1,000 (the minimum bid possible). Channel have since kept their franchise and, in 1999, signed contracts (along with the other ITV companies) to keep their franchises for the next ten years.

Channel, whilst being fiercely independent and regional, have now adopted the national ITV1 network branding and continuity, and are the only ITV company to take the network branding without being a part of ITV plc.

By 2013, the UK plans to complete its five-year process to cease analogue broadcasts region-by-region, with Channel Television being the last area to switch over to all-digital broadcasting.

• Channel Report
• Report Sport
• Puffin's Pla(i)ce
• Simply the Best

• channelonline.tv
• Channel Television (corporate website)
• Original animated Channel TV ident, 1962, from 625.uk.com (Requires Macromedia Flash version 4 or later).