Franchise
resources available for programme-making and
thus for competing with the cheap products on
off er from the American television industry’.
Th e original plan of the Conservative govern-
ment was to auction-off the franchises to the
highest bidder in a blind sale. This was later
modified by the introduction of a so-called
‘quality threshold’. Eight of the sixteen licences
did not go to the highest bidder and thirteen
applications were judged not to have passed the
quality threshold. One notable characteristic
of the new franchise-winners was the declared
policy of running lightly staffed publisher-
broadcaster stations, on the lines of Channel
4, buying-in programmes from independent
producers rather than the companies originating
most of their own material.
Frankfurt school of theorists Founded
in 1923, the Institute for Social Research in
Frankfurt became the meeting point of several
young Marxist intellectuals, among whom were
Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max
Horkheimer. Th e members of the ‘school’ placed
at the forefront of their thinking and analysis
the centrality of the role of ideology in mass
communication. When Hitler came to power in
1933, the Institute moved to New York and until
1942 it was affi liated to the Sociology Depart-
ment of the University of Columbia. In 1949,
Horkheimer led the Institute back to Frankfurt,
though Marcuse remained in America.
Th e Frankfurt school posed the questions: why
had the prospect of radical change in society so
little popular or natural support? Why was there
so little consciousness of the need for politically
radical change – indeed how had that sense of
need been apparently eliminated from popular
consciousness? Marcuse, in One Dimensional
Man (Sphere Books, 1968), contended that in
advanced societies capitalism appears to have
proved its worth; by ‘producing the goods’ it is
deemed a successful system and therefore one
which has rendered itself immune to criticism.
The Frankfurt school believed that culture- traditionally transcendent of capitalist ethic
and thus in many ways potentially subversive of
it – had been harnessed by the mass media (see
hegemony). Classical art had been popular-
ized, yes; but in the process of media-adoption,
it had been deprived of its oppositional values
(see dominant, subordinate, radical). Th e
Frankfurt school has had considerable infl uence
upon thinking about the media and its power
to shape cultures, but has been criticized for
condemning existing reality without proposing
how it might be changed for the better. See
▶Dietram A. Scheufele, ‘Framing as a theory of media
eff ects’, Journal of Communication, Winter 1999.
Franchise Contractual agreement; most
commonly associated with the licensing to
broadcast, for fixed periods, of commercial
television and radio companies.
Franchises for Independent Television
(UK) Royal Assent to the television act,
1954 was received on 30 July, and on 4 August
the Independent Television Authority (later to
become the Independent Broadcasting Author-
ity) was set up by the Postmaster-General under
the chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Clark, and
the fi rst commercial television franchises were
issued in 1955, with the Associated Broadcast-
ing Company (ATV) beginning its fi rst London
transmission on 24 September 1955, and its fi rst
Midlands transmission on 17 February 1956.
Franchises from 1993 (UK) What the UK
Guardian called ‘the biggest shake-up in
television’s 36-year history’, with an estimated
loss of some 2,500 jobs, occurred in October
- Th e Independent Television Commission
(ITC) chaired by George Russell announced
the winners of the ‘auction’ for sixteen regional
commercial TV franchises, including a break-
fast TV licence, to extend over ten years and
commencing on 1 January 1993.
Four existing stations lost their renewal bids:
Th ames Television (replaced by Carlton Commu-
nications), Television South (Meridian Broad-
casting), Television South West (Westcountry
Television) and the breakfast station TV-am
(Sunrise Television). Th e stations empowered
to continued broadcasting through the 1990s
were: Granada Television (for the North West),
London Weekend, Yorkshire, Anglia Television,
Tyne-Tees (North East), Harlech Television
(Wales), Ulster Television, Channel Television
(Channel Islands), Central Television (Midlands)
and the Scottish channels Grampian, Border and
Scottish Television. Russell declared that though
the process had caused ‘undoubted turmoil’
within ITV, ‘the quality and the viewers will win
out’. Th is point of view was not shared by George
Walden in an article ‘Is this merely a lottery,
or is it a serious business?’ (Daily Telegraph, 17
October 1991). ‘Sadly,’ he wrote, ‘what has been
at stake in this lottery is the quality of British
television.’
The Times leader of 17 October called the
whole aff air an ‘ITV auction fi asco’ and said ‘the
government should never ask such a task again
... auctioning terrestrial commercial television
was always intended to benefi t the Treasury not
the television viewer. Th e result must be fewer