A division of one of Great Britain's largest broadcast television and video companies, Carlton Communications plc, since 1993, Central Independent Television (CIT) was established in Birmingham in 1982. By the mid to late-1980s CIT had begun to tap into the growing international system of co-production, co-financing, sales, pre-sales, and sponsor-packaging to reduce the cost of its own program production. This pooling of resources with other organisations and television networks not only secured more markets for CIT's output but also meant that the company was able to keep pace with rapid changes in the technology. In 1989 CIT was operating through offices in London, New York, Sydney and Hamburg, with these satellite operations functioning as news-gathering centres and facilitating international sales and sponsorship of CIT's programs. As the 1990s unfolded CIT became the United Kingdom's top commercial exporter of programming to the United States.

CIT's involvement in Australian television began as early as 1986 through the ABC-TV co-production Golden Pennies. Two years later the same two networks collaborated on the mini-series Edens Lost.