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Incorporated Television Company (ITC, or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the US) was a British television company involved in production and distribution. ==History== ITC was founded by television mogul Lew Grade in 1954 as the Incorporated Television Programme Company.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher =BFI )〕 Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's new ITV, the company failed to win a contract when the Independent Television Authority felt that doing so would give too much control in the entertainment business to the Grade family's companies (which included large talent agencies and theatre interests) although the ITA said that ITPC were free to make their own programmes which they could sell to the new network companies. However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Broadcasting Development Company, had insufficient funds to start broadcasting, so ITC was brought into the consortium and Lew Grade came to dominate it. From 1955 to 1966, ITC (known from 1954 to 1957 as ITP) was a subsidiary of the ''Associated Broadcasting Company'' (ABC) which soon changed its name to Associated TeleVision (ATV) after threats of legal action from fellow ITV company Associated British Corporation - and produced its own programmes for ATV and syndication in the United States. It also distributed ATV material outside of the UK. From 1966 to 1982, it was a subsidiary of Associated Communications Corporation after the acquisition of ATV.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher =BFI )〕 The initials 'ITC' stood for two different things: Independent Television Corporation for sales to North and Latin America, and Incorporated Television Company for sales to the rest of the world. The American Independent Television Corporation was formed as a joint venture with Jack Wrather〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher =405 Alive )〕 in 1958. In September 1958, it purchased Television Programs of America (TPA) for $11,350,000. Wrather sold his shares to Lew Grade at the end of the decade. The large foreign sales achieved by ITC during the British government's exports drives of the 1960s and 1970s led to ACC receiving the Queen's Award for Export on numerous occasions until ITC's association with the broadcaster and success actually led to the demise of both ATV as a broadcaster and ITC as a production company in 1982. During 1988 The Bell Group, the owners of ITC were taken over by the Bond Corporation.〔Holmes à Court announces reverse takeover at Bell.Richard Battley. The Times, Tuesday, March 01, 1988; pg. 27;〕〔Bond plan to merge with Bell empire. Richard Battley. The Times, Saturday, July 02, 1988; pg. 25〕〔Bell recommends Bond Corp offer.(Reuter). The Times (London, England), Friday, August 19, 1988; pg. 25〕 Subsequently the new owners started an asset-stripping programme. In November 1988 ITC Entertainment was bought by its management.〔Bond's sale of ITC estimated at £60m. John Bell, City Editor. The Times, Thursday, November 10, 1988〕 In 1989, ITC Home Video was formed in the United Kingdom, to make use of the many hours of programmes in the archive, then unseen for years. This short-lived home entertainment division would end in 1991. In the following period, ITC continued to distribute its past library. In 1995, PolyGram purchased the company for $156 million.〔( PolyGram filmed entertainment acquires ITC Entertainment Group. ) ''Business Wire'' January 10, 1995. Retrieved on November 21, 2010.〕〔PolyGram buys Itc for $156m. The Times, Wednesday, January 11, 1995; pg. 25〕 with Grade once again returning to ITC to head the company one last time, until his death in December 1998.〔http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1998/Entertainment-Tycoon-Lew-Grade-Dies/id-91bdc1130bd4a0418a44430317e2adcd〕 On 10 December, 1998, Universal Studios' parent, Seagram purchased PolyGram for $10.2 billion. PolyGram's properties were later folded into Universal.〔(Seagram swallows PolyGram ) money.cnn.com December 10, 1998, Retrieved on July 19, 2014〕 In early January 1999, Carlton Communications bought the ITC television and film library from PolyGram/Seagram for £91 million, which reunited the programme library of Associated Television and Central Television and doubled the stock of its library division ''Carlton International'', by giving it a total of 15,000 hours of programming. Carlton chairman Michael Green said: 'The ITC library is a jewel in the crown. We can now unite it with the other gems from Britain's film and television heritage in our excellent library.' ITV plc continues to release ITC's original output through television repeats, books and DVD releases. In 2005, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company, Network DVD released a DVD box set entitled ''ITC 50'' featuring episodes from eighteen different ITC productions. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ITC Entertainment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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