[Steve in Pudsey]

I think it's right to say that Granada handled the networking of the daytime morning schedule, so the likes of Chain Letters, The Time the Place and the various ITN bulletins around and during This Morning would all be routed out to the network via Granada.

That made the 9.25 junction where Richard and Judy would preview This Morning, throw to Mike Scott and introduce Chain Letters much simpler for the rest of the network, it was one neat package rather than three separate circuits. (as an aside, I know it was a requirement at one time that the company networking a programme always had to have a circuit from ITN into them so they could switch any newsflash to air without any BT involvement.)

But from what has been said, would it be fair to say that Thames were still officially nominated contractor, although in reality things like timings of ad breaks were largely delegated to Granada's control and communicated to the other regions through cue dots (durations were pre-agreed and would not change but the precise time had some leeway). Thames would probably only get involved if there was a significant change of plan like ITN wanting to do a newsflash?

Much like when Central was handling Schools or CITV, officially Thames was nominated contractor but the reality was that most things were delegated to Central?

[Spencer]

A friend who used to do a bit of continuity at Border told me once how for a while the studio output from This Morning would still be fed to the network on the circuit from Granada while ad breaks were playing.

Apparently after Richard and Judy had ‘words’ one day, they started putting up a caption instead.