The NBC team, "Daybreak Television Limited" and the Disney group, "Sunrise Television," say there is room for tremendous growth for a breakfast show and claim they can provide programming that will draw more Britons to the telly each morning.
"It's a great business opportunity," said Etienne de Villiers, managing director of the Disney subsidiary. Among the companies participating with NBC are Britain's well-entrenched Independent Television News, which currently provides the nightly news for the ITV stations; the Daily Telegraph, Britain's best-selling broadsheet newspaper, and the film and television group Carlton Communications.
Disney is joined by a newspaper and TV company, the Guardian and Manchester Evening News, as well as London Weekend Television, which currently holds one of the two regional franchises serving London, and Scottish Television, which holds the ITV franchise in Scotland.
HBO has entered the fray much more gingerly. The cable-TV company has agreed to take a $26-million stake in an incumbent franchise holder, TVS Entertainment, but only if the troubled British broadcaster first retains its license.
TVS holds the franchise for an especially lucrative region in the well-to-do south of England. But the broadcaster made a massive blunder buying the U.S. production company MTM Entertainment for $320 million in 1988. Known then for making intelligent shows such as "Hill Street Blues," MTM's fortunes soured soon after TVS arrived, and it has been a huge drain on the parent company ever since.
TVS had been trying to sell MTM but pulled it from the market after failing to find a buyer that would pay more than $70 million.
The fight for TVS' franchise is among the most intense, with three bidders trying to overrun the incumbent's turf, including a consortium led by Richard Branson's innovative Virgin Group and TV figure David Frost. The Branson-Frost group, which includes the U.S. broadcasting company Chris-Craft Industries, is also bidding for the weekday London franchise now held by Thames Television.
Denver-based cable company United Artists Entertainment is part of a group bidding on HTV, the franchise serving Wales.
Hoping to restore confidence in his company, TVS Chairman Rudolph Agnew appeared at a press conference Wednesday to announce the conditional cash infusion from HBO and several other companies.
Although HBO and TVS have co-produced shows in the past--movies about Simon Wiesenthal, Edward R. Murrow and Nelson Mandela among them--the current agreement covers only financing, with no joint programming provisions.
