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Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network covering London and surrounding area on weekdays from 30 July 1968 at 19:00 GMT until the night of 1 January 1993 at 00:00 GMT.
Formed as a joint company, it merged the television interests of British Electric Traction owning 49%, and Associated British Picture Corporation owning 51%. It was both a broadcaster and a producer of television programmes, making shows both for the local region it covered and for networking nationally across the ITV regions. The British Film Institute describes Thames as having "served the capital and the network with a long-running, broad-based and extensive series of programmes, several of which either continue or are well-remembered today."
Thames covered a broad spectrum of commercial public-service television, with a strong mix of drama, current affairs and comedy. The company's logo remains widely recognizable and was accompanied by a fanfare called Salute to Thames, composed by Johnny Hawksworth.
After Thames was acquired by FremantleMedia it was merged with another Fremantle company, Talkback Productions, to form a new independent production company Talkback Thames; consequently Thames ceased to exist as a separate entity. However, it was announced on 22 November 2011, that from 1 January 2012, the Thames brand was to be revived and Talkback Thames has now been split into four different labels; Boundless, Retort, Talkback and Thames within the newly created FremantleMedia UK production arm.
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