This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Bryan Cowgill
Last updated: 9:43 PM BST 15/07/2008

Bryan Cowgill, who died on Monday aged 81, was the combative television executive responsible for changing the course of ITV's labour relations by standing up to the powerful technicians' union.

When the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT) called its third all-out strike in five years in November 1984 Cowgill, who was managing director of Thames TV, determined that his company would not give in to the threat of a blank screen. While other ITV companies yielded to demands for 20 per cent pay rises for film editors in return for using new technology, he defiantly mounted a service supplied by 40 members of his management team.

Former technical operators, who had been promoted to managerial positions, re-learned old skills to keep programmes on the air. The station's head of publicity read the news. Gaps in schedules were filled with repeats or films. Other ITV companies, who had talked of running management services during the three-month strike in 1979 but were afraid of the consequences, watched from the sidelines.

Thanks to Cowgill's foresight and the behind-the-scenes strategy of his chief lieutenant, Richard Dunn, Thames was in a strong position to defy the previously unchallenged union. They had carefully stockpiled some of the company's biggest audience winners, including Minder, Yarwood and The Bill, intended for showing across the full network. For two weeks Thames's 11 million viewers in London and the south-east enjoyed a preview of new episodes while the rest of the network waited for the strike to be settled.

It ended in effective capitulation by the ACTT. Cowgill, who could have faced a revenue loss of £3.5 million a week, was jubilant. "Never again," he proclaimed solemnly, "will the tyranny of the blank screen be an ultimate weapon in the hands of the union."

Besides dealing a blow to the ACTT's power, from which it never recovered, Cowgill claimed that his action had shown up many prevalent overmanning practices. "Fortress Thames" had demonstrated that four men could successfully run a central control shift where 16 were normally employed, and that technical skills could be learned in a fraction of the time the union claimed.

George Bryan Cowgill was known to colleagues (though never to his face) as "Ginger", because of his hair colour and combative style. He was born on May 27 1927 at Clitheroe, where he attended the Grammar School before leaving at 15 to become a copy boy with the Lancashire Evening Post, where his father was a printer. The following year he joined the Royal Marines, rising to become a Lieutenant in 3rd Royal Marine Commando. During the Second World War and the two years that followed he saw service in South East Asia.

On demobilisation he rejoined the Evening Post as a reporter and feature writer, then for five years edited his local weekly paper at Clitheroe. In 1955 he joined the BBC as a production assistant in Outside Broadcasting, and within two years was producing programmes like Sportsview and Grandstand.

By the age of 35 he was Head of Sport, responsible for Match of the Day and Sportsnight, and for introducing slow motion repeats in the BBC's coverage of the 1966 World Cup. He coined the term "action replay".

In his mid-forties, with no television experience beyond sport and outside broadcasts, Cowgill was given the key job of Controller BBC1, in succession to Paul Fox, who had defected to ITV. For three years Cowgill pursued a scheduling policy described in the voluminous Annan Report as "brutally competitive", switching such popular series as Kojak to slots where they would maximise BBC audiences and cause most damage to the ITV opposition, and backing audience-pleasing documentaries such as Sailor and Esther Rantzen's The Big Time. At the height of Cowgill's era, BBC1 could claim a ratings victory over ITV for 18 months in succession.

At the same time, though his own instincts were populist, he gave a prime time slot to Tony Garnett's controversial anti-establishment drama series Days of Hope, and was believed to be in favour of screening Dennis Potter's dark drama Brimstone and Treacle, which was banned by Cowgill's boss Alasdair Milne.

In 1977 Cowgill was promoted to the newly-created job of Director of News and Current Affairs, with a seat on the BBC's board of management and a mission to add analytical depth to news coverage. But before he could take up the post, Thames offered him the job of managing director. Like Fox before him, he succumbed to the lure of a doubled salary – close to £30,000, more than the BBC paid its director-general – and the chance to run his own ship.

This cross-channel move was seen as part of an ITV campaign to poach experienced talent in the hope that it would help the network secure a second channel. The ploy failed, though Cowgill and his fellow ex-BBC executives were to create a slate of programming which reinforced Thames's pre-eminence among the 16 ITV production companies. Though barred by IBA rules from doubling as programme director, he took a close interest in his company's contributions to the ITV network. One of his earliest coups was to woo Morecambe and Wise away from the BBC; other audience-winning entertainers such as Kenny Everett and Mike Yarwood followed. Cowgill's time at Thames was also marked by high-profile drama series, notably Rumpole of the Bailey, Minder and The Bill.

It was his idea to commission John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole, to write the 13-part series Paradise Postponed, which gave the world the character of Leslie Titmuss. But for the recession of the early 1980s he would have added a further series, Clemmie, based on Mary Soames's biography of her mother, which was to follow Thames's earlier costume successes Edward and Mrs Simpson and Jennie.

Cowgill's eight-year reign at Thames ended in near-farce. Still basking in the approbation of fellow ITV bosses for his handling of the 1984 strike, he entered into secret negotiations to buy the American soap Dallas, long a BBC preserve, for £55,000 an episode against the BBC's £29,000.

The deal infuriated not only his former colleagues at the BBC but his peers at ITV, who accused Thames of breaking a gentlemen's agreement not to poach the other side's bought-in programmes. They refused to show the series. Carpeted by his own directors and the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Cowgill was forced to resign, losing his executive job and the prospect of becoming the next Thames chairman. He went complaining bitterly about "twits who did not understand the free market", but with a pay-off said to be about £400,000. He used some of it to buy a holiday home in Spain which he christened "Southfork".

Effectively this was the end of Cowgill's television career. He made a brief comeback as deputy chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers under Robert Maxwell, with a brief to oversee the group's satellite and video interests, and was involved with Mark MacCormack to set up a sports channel that was to be a forerunner of BSkyB. He was also connected with the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

Brusque of manner and rough of tongue, Cowgill was an oddity among the BBC's university-educated ranks when he was promoted to take charge of BBC1. According to a colleague, "his verbal lashings could reduce strong men to tears". As Head of Sport, he would push aside the director of a live sports relay and take over when coverage was not going to his liking. "He got on at the BBC," said one competitor ruefully, "because at first everyone thought he was thick. But in fact he was busy making his way up the ladder".

Bryan Cowgill married, in 1966, Jennifer Baker. They had two sons.

Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2303123/Bryan-Cowgill.html