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→History: the 17th and last of the original ITA franchises |
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The ITA was pressured, by a consortium of Welsh-speaking businessmen, into setting up a new North and West Wales region; the ITA asked the Postmaster General to allow this, which he did, with strict provisos: the new service must not offer viewers in Wales a choice other viewers did not have, and at the last minute, the Postmaster General insisted that the new station should, on its own, produce ten-hours-a-week of programmes in Welsh, without relying on Welsh language programmes produced by Granada (and ABC) and TWW.<ref name=transdiffusion/>
These punitive regulations were accepted, and the contract was awarded in 1961 to Wales Television Limited, which was later changed to Wales (West and North) Television Limited, following objections from TWW who felt that the original name was intruding on their area, though WWN dropped the parenthesis at every possible opportunity. WWN was to use three [[Very high frequency|VHF]] transmitters, at [[Preseli transmitting station|Preseli]] (covering the south west), [[Arfon transmitting station|Arfon]] (north west) and [[Moel-y-Parc TV Mast|Moel-y-Parc]] in the north east. When the Preseli transmitter came online on 14 September 1962, so did WWN, making it the 17th and last of the original ITA franchises to launch. However, the delay in introducing the transmitters at Arfon and Moel-y-Parc, until later in 1963, destroyed the morale and the finances of WWN. Free programming from the ITV network, plus other support from its neighbours ABC, [[Associated TeleVision|ATV]] and [[Television Wales and the West|TWW]] just about kept the ship afloat, but Granada decided to dispense with its productions in the Welsh language, and the loss of this valuable programming stream proved fatal to WWN.<ref name=transdiffusion/>
TWW offered a generous package to WWN's shareholders, in order to gain control of the territory, and kept the '''Teledu Cymru''' name on the air for four years after the demise of its parent company on 26 January 1964.<ref name=transdiffusion/>
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