In the UK ITV Companies are contracted to provide programme services for a fixed period set by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).
TVS operated from the old Southern Television studios in Southampton and Dover. Part of TVS' franchise promise was to build new studios to cover the eastern part of it's region, a site in Maidstone was chosen. The new studio at Vinters Park would be the most advanced in the UK, costing TVS around £15m, it would have a News Department, supported by six news covering teams at either end. In addition to the news film facility, there were three complete feature film crews supported by a computer controlled rostrum camera, eight-head dubbing facility, stills department and feature cutting rooms. TVS also converted an old Television Theatre in the Medway Towns into a studio using it for some of its current affairs output.
The main stay of TVS' output would be 800 hours of local and regional programmes, bult around it's flagship news programme, Coast to Coast transmitted from Southapton and Maidstone. TVS hoped to specialise in Science and Industry output, having brought in Michael Blakstad from the BBC's Tomorrow's World, his department being responsible for a new programme, The Real World featuring topical scientific and technical developments, the failures as well as the successes. In the area of children's television, TVS hoped to achieve more than Southern had, Anna Home producing The Haunting of Cassie Palmer and The Boy Who Won the Pools which was aimed at challenging the BBC on Saturday afternoons. Weekday afternoons TVS hoped to meet the needs of the house-bound audience with a thrice-weekly programme provisionally titled Not for Women Only, which would recognise that the household audience for daytime TV is expanding. TVS also hoping to produce various programme for the still to begin, Channel Four.
The TVS Trust
TVS wanted a close relationship with its audience, both through its programmes and also its local offices. TVS set up a charitable trust to fund local arts, educational and recreational enterprise. Martin Jackson, Controller of Public Affairs said "Our research suggests that viewers are generally cynical about broadcasters, feeling that whatever changes may be made behind the camera, on screen it will be much of the same. We hope to dispel that suspicion".
