IBC Ammer Valley
IBC Ammer Valley, formerly Ammer Television, is a commercial television broadcaster for the Ammer Valley province with headquarters in Belmont. It was founded in 1959 and made its first broadcast in March 1960.
Until 2016, IBC Ammer Valley was an independent company, the last independent regional broadcaster in the IBC network.
History[edit | edit source]
The Independent Broadcasting Authority issued licenses for the Ammer Valley in July 1958. The primary reason for such a license was due to the stature of the transmitters in north-eastern Flarland that prevented Belmont from receiving IBC signals. The Belmont television transmitter was commissioned in 1954 and built in the following year, by September 1955 it was already broadcasting two services: FBC Television on channel 3 and University of Wembley Television on channel 6. The IBC contractor was to broadcast on channel 8.
Two companies bid for the license: The Ammer Times and The Belmont Prendergast. THe names of their bids were Ammer Television and Belmont Television. In August 1959, Ammer Television won the license for FL$600.000 - a bargain for its time, but this was considered to be a viable option for its size in both area and population.
Eventually Ammer Television launched on March 4, 1960, at 17:25. The first night on air started with speeches from the Provincial Governor and the Postmaster-General, followed at 17:40 by Romper Room and animated features, with the first news bulletin aoring at 18:15.
Furphy Agricultural era (1986-1991)[edit | edit source]
In April 1986, Ammer Television was acquired by Furphy Agricultural from Berkshire. The company had successfullly bought two other licenses - Berkshire Television in 1984 and Flatbush Television in 1985 - and under its assimilation plan, adopted a variation of the BTV logo saying ATV.
Ammer Media Group (1991-2015)[edit | edit source]
Following Furphy's sale, Ammer Television overbid the IBC license for Ammer Live TV, at a time where IBC's past as a cooperative network was being replaced by a more uniform network in order to curb losses of the failed cooperative economy IBC had mangled.
Sale to IBC[edit | edit source]
On 19 October 2015, Ammer Media announced that it would sell its IBC licenses for radio, television and cable and the Ammer Television brand to IBC for $100 million, subject to regulatory approval. In February, IBC took over control of the operations. By then, Ammer Television was an anachronism - roughly 25 years after the Flarlandian government started consolidating IBC under new rules and the conversion to publisher-broadcaster status, ATV was viewed as an outcast and was no longer forced to pay fees for IBC carriage. In March 2016, IBC had started a transitional phase after the antitrust committee had approved the sale, weakening Ammer Media. Local programming was reduced to just the news. In retaliation, former Ammer Television staff were relocated to the new channel 12 license, NATV.
The Ammer Television brand was phased out in favor of IBC Ammer Valley on October 17, 2016. IBC now had complete control of its portfolio nationwide.
