In 1990, changes in broadcasting law meant that commercial television franchises were no longer allocated on merit or potential, but rather through a blind auction, the results of which were made public on 16 October 1991. TV-am bid £14.3m, but was outbid by another consortium, Sunrise Television – renamed GMTV when it launched – which had bid £36.4m. Ironically, in the years following GMTV's launch, the group approached the ITC to retrospectively obtain a reduction in this fee, reducing it to a level below TV-am's original bid.