Assess the factors which led to the creation of ITV in 1954

Commercial Television has been playing big role in our lives for about 60 years already, whether it is the Morning News, Downton Abbey or The Britain’s Got Talent show (Johnson, Turnock, 2005: 1). Commercial television is entertaining, educating and informative and tries to fulfil viewer’s wishes of what they want to watch. British audience has been able to choose what they watch since 1954, when government published the Act of Television which allowed the creation of the first independent television in the United Kingdom. The creation of ITV broke the BBC’s monopoly and introduced country a new era with free market and diverse television channels (Williams, 2010:151). …show more content…

As well as Conservatives were in favour of democratic view of the free market, they managed to prove the Prime Minister that breaking the BBC’s monopoly would benefit for the country’s economic situation as well as it would give people a freedom to watch what they want. According to Wilson’s ‘Pressure Group’, new conservative members’ attitude towards broadcasting differed significantly from the attitudes prevalent in the years immediately after the Second World War (Negrine, 1998: 20).Many people in tory party wanted to develop commercial television. They thought that independent television would engage business and entertainment as television was.
Secondly, ideological factors were weakening the belief in the BBC’s monopoly. It is claimed that commercial television provided a convenient battleground for a group of Tory MP’s desperate to undermine the monopoly principle in British industry and to extend the free market (Freedman, 2009:19). The Conservative government under the leadership of Winston Churchill opposed to any kind of monopoly which did not meant only broadcasting but other media monopolies (Johnson, Turnock, 2005:15). BBC’s monopoly was deemed unacceptable by a minority in the ruling Conservative Party who set about ‘liberating’ British broadcasting through the introduction of competition into television (Freedman, 2009: 19). As well as government tried to regulate the press from being monopolized, television should have been