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Ulster Television Plc Business Information, Profile, and History

Havelock House, Ormeau Road
Belfast
BT7 1EB
United Kingdom

Company Perspectives:

UTV is one of the most successful media groups in Ireland incorporating Television, Radio and New Media.

History of Ulster Television Plc

Ulster Television PLC (known as the less politically sensitive UTV) is Northern Ireland's leading television broadcasting group, and one of the top television broadcasters in the entire Irish television market. UTV is also the Northern Ireland ITV (Independent Television) license holder. As such the company is one of the smallest of the ITV licensees and, together with Channel, one of the last of the true independents. UTV more or less limited its operations to its ITV franchise from its founding in 1958 to the end of the 1990s. The company's broadcasts also are available to much of the Republic of Ireland, and the company has long been one of the most-watched stations in that market. Since the beginning of the 2000s, however, UTV has begun to redevelop itself as a full-fledged media group. The company's primary expansion has been into radio, particularly in Ireland's radio market. UTV now controls radio stations in Cork (96FM and 103FM), Limerick (Live 95FM), Dublin (Q102), and in Liverpool, England (Juice FM). In 2005, the company acquired Coderidge Limited, which operates the LMFM radio station in Drogheda, Dundalk. In March 2005, the company was awarded a license to operate a radio station in Belfast as well. In addition to its television and radio operations, UTV has extended into the New Media market. In 2000, the company acquired Internet provider Direct Net Access, which was renamed as UTV Internet. That company provides broadband Internet services to both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. UTV also operates the BOCOM International joint venture, which provides satellite broadcasting services to plasma screens, such as at the Dublin Airport. Television remains the group's largest activity, generating some 74 percent of the group's 2004 sales of £63 million ($110 million). Radio revenues added 17 percent to sales, while New Media contributed nearly 9 percent to group sales. UTV is listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges.

Independent Television Broadcaster in the 1950s

In the late 1950s, the British broadcasting authority created a rival network to the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation. The new network, known as the Independent Television network, or ITV, was established in 1958, under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority (ITA). That body then assigned licenses to the various regions in the United Kingdom, including a license for the Northern Ireland broadcast area. The Northern Ireland license was awarded to Ulster Television in 1958.

Ulster Television formally incorporated in February 1959. The company launched its first broadcast on October 31, 1959. The first transmission was hosted by Sir Laurence Olivier. Ulster Television went public in 1961, listing its shares at first on the Belfast Stock Exchange, before extending its listing to the London Stock Exchange as well. The company remained quite modest; in 1966, the company's advertising revenues barely topped £1.25 million.

Over the next decade, television came to play an increasingly important role in Northern Ireland, as penetration of households increased, and as television came into its own--particularly as a source of immediate images reflecting world events. This became especially true for Ulster Television, with the eruption of the Troubles, and the beginnings of a near-war that tore apart Northern Ireland. Ulster Television at times found itself embroiled in the conflict between loyalists and nationalists, often accused of partiality by one side or the other. Indeed, near the end of the 1970s, the company's headquarters were bombed in a terrorist attack. The company's journalists, as well as its management, often found their lives under threat.

The situation led the group to de-politicize its name, as it began to refer to itself, both on-air and off, as UTV. In 1993, this appellation, at least on-air, was made more or less official. By the end of that decade, the company had begun to call itself UTV Group.

The new name reflected in part the company's expanding focus. In the 1990s, UTV had remained the smallest member of the Independent Television Group. By 1995, the company's sales remained at slightly more than £34 million. The company, which was subsidized by the larger ITV players, including Granada and Carlton, also was accused of being "unambitious," in that it invested comparatively little in new production and focused its existing broadcast production on regional programming.

The liberalization of ownership rules among the ITV members in the mid-1990s appeared to place UTV's future as an independent company in doubt. The company was considered one of the most obvious candidates for takeover, especially by one of the larger ITV groups. Indeed, in 1997, Scottish Media Group (SMG), holder of the ITV franchise in Scotland, appeared to be in the process of a takeover attempt, building up its stake in UTV to more than 18 percent.

By 1998, however, SMG, denying it had ever been interested in an outright takeover of UTV, sold its stake in the Northern Ireland broadcaster to CanWest Global Communication, a broadcasting group based in Canada, which was involved in establishing TV3 in the Republic of Ireland. CanWest's acquisition of SMG's stake boosted its own shareholding position in UTV to slightly less than 30 percent. Nonetheless, CanWest announced its shareholding to be no more than a strategic investment, and not the prelude to an outright takeover. In the meantime, UTV's association with TV3 through its major shareholder allowed the company to begin planning a strategy of cooperation to reinforce the company's position in Ireland. UTV had long been one of the most popular broadcasters in Ireland, and by the 2000s, UTV's broadcasts were estimated to reach nearly 80 percent of the Republic of Ireland.

Full-Fledged Media Group in the New Century

Through the 1990s, UTV had become interested in expanding its range of operations, targeting areas such as interactive television services and future digital terrestrial television services. As part of that effort, the company acquired a stake in the European satellite broadcasting network, SES, operator of the Astra satellite service. UTV sold off its stake in SES, however, in early 2000, for £10 million.

That sale enabled the company to make its first real expansion effort soon after, when the company turned to a new market--Internet services. In March 2000, the company ac- quired Direct Net Access, paying £4.25 million for the Northern Ireland market's largest Internet services provider. UTV quickly moved to roll out its Internet services across greater Ireland, renaming its service as UTV Internet and launching the market's first free web service in June 2000. UTV Internet also became an early entrant into the race to offer broadband Internet access services.

UTV now began to target another area as it rolled out a strategy to re-develop itself as a full-fledged media group. At the beginning of 2001, the company launched a takeover offer for County Media, which operated three radio stations in Cork, in the Irish Republic. The company's offer was initially blocked by the Irish government, because of existing media ownership rules restricting cross-media ownership. Those rules were slated for review in March 2001, and the lowering of restrictions during that review enabled UTV to complete its purchase of County Media in April 2001. By July of that year, UTV had boosted its stake in County Media to more than 60 percent, before taking full control of the company in early 2002. The purchase gave UTV control of Cork's 96FM and 103FM, as well as the radio sales service, Broadcast Media Sales.

UTV next turned to Limerick, where it paid £10.5 million to acquire that city's Treaty Radio, and its Live95FM station. That acquisition gave UTV control of Limerick county's leading radio station, with a market share of more than 38 percent. UTV's next media extension came later in 2002, when the company acquired the newly launched LiteFM radio station in Dublin. The company then renamed the station as Q102.

The growth of UTV Internet, which emerged as a leading broadband provider in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, encouraged UTV to expand its New Media interests. In March 2002, the company acquired a 50 percent stake in BOCOM International. That company specialized in providing satellite broadcasting services to public-area plasma screens, such as those found in airports, train stations, and the like.

In 2003, UTV teamed up with Absolute Radio International and Eurocast to launch Absolute Radio UK. That partnership then acquired the license to Juice FM in Liverpool, England, marking UTV's first extension outside of the greater Irish market.

UTV's continued independence once appeared under threat as the two largest members of the ITV consortium, Granada and Carlton, agreed to merge, creating ITV PLC. The new company then announced its interest in acquiring its smaller, regionally oriented ITV partners in order to refocus the ITV network as a unified, national broadcaster. Yet UTV, joined by SMG and Channel, resisted ITV PLC's takeover plans.

Instead, UTV continued to seek out new expansion opportunities of its own. In early 2005, the company grew again, with the acquisition of Coderidge Limited, an operator of an independent local radio station in Drogheda, Dundalk. Soon after, UTV announced that it had been awarded a license to operate a radio station in the Belfast market as well. While television broadcasting advertising revenues continued to represent nearly 75 percent of the group's turnover, which topped £63 million ($110 million) in 2004, UTV had successfully reinvented itself as one of the greater Ireland market's major media groups.

Principal Subsidiaries: 96FM; 103FM; Live 95FM; Q102; Absolute Radio UK; Juice FM; UTV Internet; BOCOM International (50%).

Principal Competitors: British Broadcasting Corporation; News Corporation Ltd.; British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC; ITV PLC; SMG PLC.

Related information about Ulster

pop (2000e) 232 300; area 8012 km族/3093 sq mi. Province in Ireland, comprising counties of Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan; Donegal separated by part of Connacht, lying W of Northern Ireland; Cavan and Monaghan lie to the S of Northern Ireland; chief towns include Donegal, Letterkenny, Cavan, and Monaghan; a former kingdom; land confiscated by the English Crown, and distributed to Protestant English and Scots settlers in the 17th-c; partitioned in 1921 into the present-day division. The name is used as an alternative for Northern Ireland.

For other places and things named Ulster, see Ulster (disambiguation).

For an explanation of often confusing terms like Ulster, Northern Ireland, (Republic of) Ireland, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology).

Ulster (Irish: C炭ige Uladh, ) forms one of the four traditional provinces of Ireland.

Geography and demographics

Ulster has a population of just under 2 million people and an area of 24,481 square kilometres (8,952 square miles). Its biggest city, Belfast has a conurbation of well over half a million inhabitants.
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Six of Ulster's nine counties, Antrim (Aontroim), Armagh (Ard Mhacha), Down (An D炭n), Fermanagh (Fear Manach), Londonderry (Doire) and Tyrone (T鱈r Eoghain), form Northern Ireland, and remained part of the United Kingdom after the rest of Ireland set up a separate political unit in 1921. Many people (especially some unionists) refer to the six-county Northern Ireland as "Ulster". Three Ulster counties, Cavan (An Cabh叩n), Donegal (D炭n na nGall) and Monaghan (Muineach叩n) form part of the Republic of Ireland. About half of Ulster's population lives in Antrim and Down.

Most people in Ulster speak Mid Ulster- or Hiberno English as their primary language. The exception to this are native Irish-speakers in Donegal who prefer to conduct their business through the Irish language, those throughout Ulster for whom Irish is their first language, as well as many immigrants. Cantonese forms the third most common language, mostly due to the considerable Chinese community of Belfast, the province's largest city. The Ulster variety of Scots is also partly spoken in parts of Antrim, Down, Londonderry and East Donegal.

Some sources refer to the inhabitants of Ulster as Ultonians - from the traditional Latin form of the name of the province: Ultonia.

The biggest lake in Ireland, Lough Neagh, lies in eastern Ulster. The most northerly point of Ireland, Malin Head, and the highest (601 metres) sea cliffs in Europe, at Slieve League, both form part of Donegal. Volcanic activity in eastern Ulster led to the formation of the Antrim Plateau and the Giant's Causeway, one of Ireland's three UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Its name derives from the Irish language C炭ige Uladh (pronounced "KOO-gah OO-lah"), meaning "Province (literally 'fifth') of the Ulaid", named for the ancient inhabitants of the region.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_names_in_Irish The Irish Uladh with the addition of the Old Norse stadr (meaning "place" or "territory") yields "Uladh Stadr" or, in English, "Ulster."

The province's early story extends further back than written records and survives mainly in legends such as the Ulster Cycle. In early medieval Ireland, the U鱈 N辿ill (O'Neill) dynasty dominated Ulster from their base in T鱈r E坦gain (Eoghan's Country) - modern Tyrone. After the Norman invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century, the east of the province fell by conquest to Norman barons, first De Courcy (died 1219), then Hugh de Lacy (1176-1243), who founded the Earldom of Ulster - based around the modern counties of Antrim and Down.

In the 1600s Ulster functioned as the last redoubt of the traditional Gaelic way of life, and following the defeat of the Irish forces in the Nine Years War (1594-1603) at the battle of Kinsale (1601), Elizabeth I's English forces succeeded in subjugating Ulster and all of Ireland. The Gaelic leaders of Ulster, the O'Neills and O'Donnells, finding their power under English suzerainty limited, decamped en masse in 1607 (the Flight of the Earls) to Roman Catholic Europe. This allowed the Crown to settle Ulster with more loyal English and Scottish planters, a process which began in earnest in 1610. Counties Donegal, Tyrone, Armagh, Cavan, Londonderry and Fermanagh comprised the official plantation. Dispossessed Catholics slaughtered thousands of Protestants, an event which remains strong in Ulster Protestant folk-memory. In the ensuing wars (1641 - 1653, fought against the background of civil war in England, Scotland and Ireland), Ulster became a battleground between the Protestant settlers and the native Irish Catholics. In 1646, the Irish Catholic army under Owen Roe O'Neill inflicted a bloody defeat on a Scottish Covenanter army at Benburb in county Tyrone, but the Catholic forces failed to follow up their victory and the war lapsed into stalemate. The war in Ulster ended with the defeat of the Irish Catholic army at the battle of Scarrifholis in 1650 and the occupation of the province by the Cromwellian New Model Army. The atrocities committed by all sides in the war poisoned the relationships between Ulster's ethno-religious communities for generations afterwards.

Forty years later, in 1688-1691, the former warring parties re-fought the conflict in the Williamite war in Ireland, when Irish Catholics ("Jacobites") supported James II (deposed in the Glorious Revolution) and Ulster Protestants (Williamites) backed William of Orange. At the start of the war, Irish Catholic Jacobites controlled all of Ireland for James, with the exception of the Protestant strongholds at Derry and at Enniskillen in Ulster. The Protestant Williamite fighters based in Enniskillen defeated another Jacobite army at the battle of Newtownbutler on July 28, 1689. The war provided Protestant loyalists with the iconic victories of the Siege of Derry, the Battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690)and the Battle of Aughrim (12 July 1691), all of which their descendants still commemorate today. The Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland excluded most of Ulster's population from power on religious grounds. Roman Catholics (descended from the indigenous Irish) and Presbyterians (mainly descended from Scottish planters, but also from indigenous Irishmen who converted to Presbyterianism) both suffered discrimination under the Penal Laws, which gave full political rights only to Anglican Protestants (mostly descended from English settlers). However, this did not stop many thousands of Ulster people from emigrating to British North America in this period, where they became known as the "Scotch Irish". In the 1790s many Catholics and Presbyterians, in opposition to Anglican domination and inspired by the American and French revolutions joined together in the United Irishmen movement. The United Irishmen had particular strength in Belfast, Antrim and Down. However, paradoxically, this period also saw much sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants, principally members of the Church of Ireland (Anglicans, who practised the state religion and had rights denied to both Presbyterians and Catholics), notably the "battle of the Diamond" in 1795, a faction fight between the rival "Defenders" (Catholic) and "Peep of Day Boys" (Anglican), which led to over 100 deaths and to the founding of the Orange Order. Loyalist militias, primarily Anglicans, also used violence against the United Irishmen and against Catholic and Protestant republicans throughout the province.

In 1798 the United Irishmen, led by Henry Joy McCracken, launched a rebellion in Ulster, mostly supported by Presbyterians. In the wake of the failure of this rebellion, and following the gradual abolition of official religious discrimination after the Act of Union in 1800, Presbyterians came to identify more with the State and with their Anglican neighbours, who perceived them as the lesser of two evils. To resist Home Rule, thousands of unionists, led by the Dublin-born barrister Sir Edward Carson and James Craig, signed the "Ulster Covenant" of 1912, pledging to resist Irish independence. In response, Irish nationalists created the Irish Volunteers - forerunners of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - to ensure the passing of the Home Rule Act 1914.

The outbreak of the Great War in 1914, in which thousands of Ulstermen and Irishmen of all religions and sects volunteered and died, interrupted this armed stand-off.

In the aftermath of the War, Ireland saw several years of political violence, with Irish nationalists launching a guerrilla campaign against British rule as part of the Anglo-Irish War (1919 - 1921). This was confirmed by the Anglo-Irish Treaty (6 December 1921) which ended in the partition of Ireland between the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) and Northern Ireland. In 1922, six of Ulster's nine counties became collectively Northern Ireland and remained in the United Kingdom, whilst the rest became part of the Irish Free State. For the subsequent general history of Ulster see History of Northern Ireland and History of the Republic of Ireland. For current politics in Northern Ireland refer to Demographics and politics of Northern Ireland.

Although a large number of its Catholic citizens have long opposed the existence of Northern Ireland, the Protestant citizens of the three Ulster counties in the Republic of Ireland have assimilated well (although a good deal of migration into the new Northern Ireland state took place following partition). The Orange Order freely organises in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, with a large 12 July march taking place in Rossknowlagh in Donegal annually with the full co-operation of the Garda Siochテ。na and the local Catholic population. All political parties welcome members of all religious persuasions, with one Church of Ireland Teachta Dテ。la (TD, a member of the lower house of the National Parliament) who had represented Monaghan, Erskine Hamilton Childers, winning election as President of Ireland after having served as a long-term minister under Fianna Fテ。il Taoisigh テ餌mon de Valera, Sean Lemass and Jack Lynch.

As of 2006, Northern Ireland has eight Catholic Members of Parliaments (of a total of 18 from the whole of Northern Ireland) in the British House of Commons at Westminster;

The flag of Ulster served as the basis for the flag of Northern Ireland, which functioned as the region's official flag until the proroguing of the Stormont parliament in 1973.

Sport

In Gaelic games, Ulster counties compete with the other Irish counties in the All-Ireland Championships and National Leagues, as well as in the All-Ireland inter-club championships. Gaelic football is by far the most popular of the GAA sports in Ulster but has counties Antrim, Derry, and Down existing as both hurling and Gaelic football counties.

The border has divided Association football (soccer) teams since 1921: there exists a Northern Ireland (international) team, but not an Ulster team; separate football championships take place: (Irish League in Northern Ireland, League of Ireland in the rest of Ulster). There have, however, been cup competitions between teams from both sides of the border such as the recently formed Setanta Sports Cup.

In Rugby union, the Ulster branch of the Irish Rugby Football Union plays as a professional club in the Magners League formerly the Celtic League, along with clubs from Wales, Scotland and the professional clubs from the other Irish Provinces (Leinster, Munster and Connacht).

Chronology

Key Dates:
1958: Ulster Television is created as the license holder for the Northern Ireland part of the Independent Television network.
1959: Ulster Television begins broadcasting.
1961: Ulster Television goes public on the Belfast Stock Exchange.
2000: Direct Net Access is acquired as part of an expansion into other media markets; UTV Internet is launched.
2001: Ulster Television acquires County Media Ltd. in Cork, entering the radio broadcasting market in the Republic of Ireland.
2002: Treaty Radio, based in Limerick, and LiteFM (renamed as Q102) in Dublin are acquired; 50 percent of BOCOM International is acquired.
2003: Ulster Television joins the Absolute Radio UK partnership, which acquires Juice fm in Liverpool, England.
2005: Ulster Television acquires Coderidge Limited in Drogheda, Dundalk; UTV wins a radio broadcasting license in Belfast.

Additional topics

Company HistoryBroadcasting

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