By William Gallagher

Coronation Street has been an ITV staple for decades

When the Queen attends ITV's 50th anniversary dinner at London's Guildhall next month, it will be a nod to the channel's opening night back in 1955, and the speeches made in the nearby Mansion House about the bright new future of television.

Only 100,000 people watched that first night but what they saw was all of television changing.

At 12 minutes past 10 on the evening of 22 September 1955, host Jack Jackson announced: "Here's the moment you have all been waiting for - it's time for the natural break".

Famously, the first ad shown was for Gibbs SR toothpaste and it was followed by many products we still know in the UK such as Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate and Shredded Wheat.

Yet ITV did not just bring ads, it brought a fresher, more youthful and generally less stuffy approach to television and its shows became incredibly popular.

Staples of the 1950s like Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Take Your Pick and Double Your Money in turn brought a new audience to comic Tommy Trinder, to Michael Miles and Hughie Green.

Golden age

Then the '60s were the time of the low-brow Golden Shot game show, the higher-brow drama The Prisoner, the soap Coronation Street and what seemed then to be revolutionary: the half-hour long News at Ten.

Some things never seem to change, though, as even as far back as 1971 Rupert Murdoch tried to get a foothold in British television by investing in London Weekend Television. He was blocked by regulations saying he could not do that and also control newspapers.

As that happened behind the scenes, though, what we saw throughout the '70s was a golden age for ITV as some of its finest programmes were ratings-grabbers throughout the decade.

Alfred Burke starred in Public Eye, Barry Foster was Van Der Valk while Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins brought us Upstairs, Downstairs and Arthur the cat (really Samantha) was eating tinned cat food with a paw to plug Kattomeat.

Hughie Green hosted Opportunity Knocks and Double Your Money

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman were The Sweeney and in 1977 churches across the nation were emptied as everyone was at home watching Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth.

It looked as if the '80s would be much the same, with superb dramas like Brideshead Revisited and the famously awful game show Bullseye beginning.

But instead the decade was ITV's most difficult so far as the franchises that allowed companies to broadcast were regularly reviewed.

The shuffle that turned ATV into Central also led to the creation of a new, nationwide ITV franchise for the early mornings; TV-am was born and began broadcasting on 1 February 1983 - two weeks after the BBC's rival Breakfast Time.

Shortly afterwards we got our first glimpse of Duty Free, before Inspector Morse and David Suchet as Poirot began in 1988 and 1989 respectively.

Highest bidder

Yet what we saw on screen had little bearing on the future for ITV.

In Margaret Thatcher's eyes at least, TV-am was the new way forward for ITV. It had famously battled the unions and won, for example, and it made money after Greg Dyke was brought in to raise the ratings.

Mrs Thatcher wanted to see the whole of ITV change that way and she introduced the Broadcasting Act in 1990.

Despite a so-called "quality threshold" it was effectively about awarding the ITV franchises to the highest bidders. TV-am lost out, to Mrs Thatcher's personal regret, and GMTV was in.

Then perhaps without intending to, that round of franchise negotiations eventually led to the ITV firms starting to merge into just one or two companies.

The last episode of Inspector Morse was shown in 2000

Instead of more than a dozen smaller companies, ITV edged towards being one and the power of its increased size came as new competition from satellite and cable channels came in.

ITV took on the ailing Ondigital service and, as ITV Digital, blew around �315m on buying rights to screen football. That deal, and ITV Digital as a whole, collapsed in 2002.

Right now ratings have been slipping steadily, as have those of all terrestrial TV channels, and the company is positioning itself for a very much changed future.

Back in 2001 it renamed itself ITV1, for instance, to match its digital siblings ITV2 and ITV3.

The main channel's schedule of reality TV and soaps appears to do exactly what it needs and keep high audience figures which should in theory ensure that ITV continues to thrive.

Yet the youthful image it once had has gone and arguably it is now so over-saturated with old soaps such as Emmerdale and Coronation Street that it is no longer bringing in new audiences.