Carlton Select was UK's leading entertainment channel owned by Carlton Television. It originally launched in June 1995 as SelecTV, by the independent production company of the same name, before being purchased by Carlton in 1997 who relaunched it as Carlton Select.
During 1985-1991, the channel was part of a bid for an ITV franchise after the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) prevented them from purchasing Thames Television and were only fortunate to provide a news service to the channel.
Other aspects that occurred in that timeframe was the purchase of Ladbrokes (Central), the sports betting company owning up to 30% which finally gave them its first stake in a terrestrial broadcasting company.
During 1992-1994, Carlton launched a news station London News Network as part of a joint venture with London Weekend Television broadcasting news and other regional content and acquired full ownership of Ladbrokes.
They also faced some heavy backlash from the Independent Television Communication (ITC) for providing a wide range of "unimpressive and very disappointing" programmes for the ITV network which were "neither distinctive nor noticeable high quality".
Between 1995 and 1996, Carlton launched its first channel Carlton Food Network and SelectTV was introduced broadcasting various content from their Food Network alongside other content like Airline, Birds Of A Feather, The Golden Girls and Yesterday's Dreams.
It also formed part of DStv's initial offering when it was introduced in 1995 and was eventually purchased by Pearson a year later.
SelecTV programming traced back to the 80s and Carlton Select was introduced in 1997 as part of an attempt to change the image of the channel of course there was not much difference from either one as the timelines were kind of close to each other.
Things were only moving up for Carlton as they were able to launch DTT platform British Digital Broadcasting as part of a joint venture with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) before having full control as ITC forced BSkyB to retract and purchased a Racks Film Distributor which had 740 films in their collection.
In 1998, The Guardian publishes a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a 1996 Carlton documentary, The Connection which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that The Guardian's allegations were in large part correct and the ITC, fines Carlton £2million for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes.
Around that period, BSkyB launched their DTT service carrying their set of channels alongside Carlton Select, Carlton Food Network (another DStv channel) and new entries Carlton Kids, Carlton Cinema and Carlton World.
A year after the launch, Carlton began phasing out the company name from all their products and it wasn't until the 2000s that Carlton Select, Carlton World, Carlton Kids were eventually discontinued.
Carlton World followed shortly after and Carlton Food Network became a joint venture with Sainsbury to form Taste CFN which lasted a year leaving Carlton with a movie channel, Carlton Cinema.
Carlton partnered up with BSkyB (now Granada PLC or Sky UK) to launch ITV Digital from existing brands and that lasted a few months as well. Granada PLC had various brands which were scrapped for ITV1.
Carlton Cinema ceased transmission and in 2003 the Carlton brand was no more as it merged with Granada PLC to form ITV PLC. All the products from Carlton were credited to ITV.
ITV PLC went on to form an international channel ITV Choice (formerly Granada UKTV, Granada TV and ITV Granada) which some may see as a reincarnation to SelecTV and various other entertainment channels from the two former brands.
Just like every other carnation, ITV Choice was eventually discontinued by 2020 in its last region Africa. There hasn't been a reason for the sudden dismal in various other markets but the local provider in Africa being MultiChoice opted to supply their content to various other channels.
ITV Choice brought shows like Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Tipping Point, The Jonathon Ross Show, The Chase and Doc Martin. Modern and original programming that past counterparts had the misfortune of excluding.
In the end, ITV hasn't been successful in the linear space with the likes of BBC and regional providers. Of course, ITV provides various channels in the UK with Ginx TV also being British being the only linear channel available internationally.
But if you look at it the content can be viewed on multiple stations globally so that has to count for something.
