SMG Television was last night accused of stripping the final asset from the station which has served the north-east for 45 years - its name.

Grampian TV will disappear on Tuesday when it unifies with Scottish TV under the single name stv.

This is the name by which Scottish was known for several years and is still identified as by many people in central Scotland.

According to the company the single brand paves the way for stv's development of a new e-commerce strategy on the internet, mobile phones and other potential new platforms.

A "romantic online dating service" and bingo will be two of the features which stv is planning on a new website it will launch later this year.

SMG said the Scottish TV and Grampian TV licences will be unaffected by the launch of the unified identity and it will work the way the ITV brand works in England where 11 regional licences are responsible for regional production but exist under the ITV1 identity.

However Ted Brocklebank, Tory MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife and a former head of news and current affairs at Grampian, said the direction the company had gone in was unbelievable. "How this company has gone backwards. We made headlines for things like the eight-part series for Channel Four on the world oil situation and another on alternative energy, the exclusive documentary Selina Scott made with HRH Prince Charles on the island of Bernera and the series on the Gaelic diaspora The Blood is Strong.

"We won awards and were known as a great little station which punched above its weight and it seems terribly sad that now not only has it lost its name, it has lost all direction.

"To think the company is now going to be involved in online dating says pretty much everything about where it seems to be going."

He said when STV took over Grampian they disguised that bycalling it Scottish Media Group and saying it was a merger when it was in fact a takeover.

"Now we are seeing the final asset being stripped away. They have stripped all the other assets. They sold their building and they sold everything else and all that was left was the name."

However, SMG insists only the on-screen and on-line identity of Scottish TV and Grampian TV will change and separate regional programmes will continue to be produced by both companies and key brands such as Scotland Today and North Tonight will remain.

Bobby Hain, managing director of Broadcasting SMG Television, said: "We are creating a broadcasting business for Scotland, which is a very exciting prospect for both us and our viewers.

"The television landscape is changing and it's essential that we adapt to effectively compete in an increasingly multi channel environment."

Scottish Television was launched in 1957 by Canadian newspaper magnate Roy Thomson, who famously described it as "a licence to print money". In 1985 it was relaunched under the new identity of STV. In 1997, the company changed its name to Scottish Media Group, but the Scottish and Grampian Television brands remained.