Andrew Quinn joined Granada TV’s personnel department from General Motors in 1964. He took on a variety of roles within the company including head of production services and general manager before being appointed the managing director of Granada Cable and Satellite in 1983. He became managing director in 1987 and chief executive five years later. …
Read MoreHow Andrew Quinn joined Granada
After Durham University, I went looking for a job. And the first job I ever had was with a division of General Motors, which was based in Dunstable, which is near Luton, which is where Vauxhall cars got made. The division that I worked for made car parts and accessories. Fuel pumps and thermostats, and…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn remembers meeting Sidney Bernstein for the first time
I did eventually meet Sidney, three months in. By which time, I’d encountered the Sidney Bernstein myths and legends. Didn’t like suede shoes, didn’t like cord trousers, didn’t like men with beards, and all this stuff that… anyway, I didn’t own any suede shoes or didn’t have any cord trousers, and I didn’t have a…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn’s impressions of the personnel department
Anyway, so I joined the personnel department. One of the biggest changes was that Derek Roberts said to me, “We have to trade union in here, and you’ll be looking after NATKE. National Association of Theatrical, Television and Kine Employees. And I’ll be doing the ACTT and the ETU he said, because they’re a slippery…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn’s role as head of Production Services
Forman said to me, “I want you set up a new thing called head of production services,” and that means everything behind the camera. The creative guys and the director… they’re in front of the camera and the whole point is to service them, and we’ve got to find a new way of forecasting costs,…
Read MoreHow Andrew Quinn became general manager and recruited other managers
In 1977, the guy who was the general manager, Leslie Diamond, died suddenly from a heart attack, and so Denis said to me, “You’re general manager” and I joined the group, the board at that stage, and being general manager just meant I went on doing what I was doing, but got the rest of…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on Granada’s move into satellite
Let me just say, the satellite thing came along next. And it was pretty much the same thing. Putting a consortium together. The famous club of 21. BBC were given the job to do. Said they couldn’t do it. Government came back and said, “You’ve got to do it. You have 50%. And we’ll get…
Read MoreAndrew Quinns’s thoughts on the 1990 Broadcasting Act
The 1990 Broadcasting Act brought in this ridiculous idea that you had to bid away a proportion of your profits on a ten-year horizon. Ridiculous. At the same time, Channel 4, which had up to then, been funded by the ITV system, in return for the ITV system selling the air time, that came to…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on the arrival of Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen.
The Granada Group were in trouble. Remember there’d been a takeover bid from Rank, which successfully we escaped from simply because the IBA said they wouldn’t let Rank have the television franchise. It wasn’t a transferable asset. They’d give them to Granada and in the bidding for it they’d have to do it without. So…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn describes how he became managing director of Granada
After the satellite thing, I’d been on the group board for just over a year, with a division called Services to Business, which was a group of companies, one was Computer Field Maintenance, mending people’s computers, and frankly, I wasn’t very thrilled with it. And then I was approached by head-hunters, on behalf of Central…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn talks about Granada Studio Tours
The Studio Tours project, tell us a little bit about that. Was that Plowright’s idea? Very much so, yes, yes. It was a good idea in an inadequate location basically. Really? Yes because we put a lot of work into it in advance, even to the point I would go to America on National Association…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on his highlights of working at Granada
What are the highlights looking back over these times? What are your highlights of your time at Granada? Well, I don’t know. If I look back on it and I sort of couldn’t have had a better progression in life. I mean I suppose the norm for many people is that you hit your peak…
Read More