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ITV Christmas Hearts era

1999-2001 (December 2016)

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AN
Andrew Founding member
Carlton's were fantastic (and their whole hearts set has aged really well IMO). Granadas on the other hand. - I think the clips speak for themselves.


I thought the GMG 1999 ones were great.

Yes not at the level of Carlton's but if that's the bench mark of greatness, it's a very high bar, and the majority of presentation both before and after would fall short.
TT
ttt
Carlton's were fantastic (and their whole hearts set has aged really well IMO). Granadas on the other hand. - I think the clips speak for themselves.


I thought the GMG 1999 ones were great.


They were fine until they cut the audio and an announcement would be played out on minidisc, only to be cut short as said ident crashed into the next programme.
TV
TVDP
For LWT, 1999 was like the last picture of HTV.
After 2000, I don't know.
NW
nwtv2003
I believe the 1999 Granada North package was created in house at Leeds? They were decent to be fair (agreed Carlton's were better). They were a nice surprise at the time as we'd only got generic ITV branded idents about 6 weeks earlier
CO
Colm
UTV's Christmas presentation in this era:

1999 - A rehash of previous years' idents, including the Barney and Busker animations from 1997, and the reindeer ident sometimes used between 1993 and 1995

2000 - The "mobile", which introduced the new UTV logo:

https://tvr.metropol247.co.uk/thetvroom.com/itv/itv-utv-99-120.html

Not seen on the page linked above, but while the ident and the trails used this new logo, the IVC backdrop still used the 1993 UTV logo.

2001 - The ident adapted one of the network's trail opening animations, replacing the ITV1 logo with a UTV one:

https://tvr.metropol247.co.uk/thetvroom.com/itv/itv-utv-99-130.html
JA
JAS84
I believe the 1999 Granada North package was created in house at Leeds? They were decent to be fair (agreed Carlton's were better). They were a nice surprise at the time as we'd only got generic ITV branded idents about 6 weeks earlier
They weren't a surprise in YTV's region. They actually matched our new local idents.
MK
Mr Kite
^^ Both vestiges of GMG North's planned rebrand.

I don't think they were expecting the generic idents to come at all; considering that they failed to launch in October '98 like they were originally supposed to and then Carlton broke ranks and launched their own look at the start of the '99 Autumn season. And I think the hearts idents arrived at fairly short notice too. Both the Yorkshire local idents and these Christmas idents were a result of them not wanting their own work going to waste. That's why they chose to forgo the network offering that year, despite adopting the trailers and promos. I never understood why they didn't use any Christmas idents in 2000. There were network offerings. A bit of a mystery that one.

LWT, Border and the UNM regions took the network offerings in '99, plus Channel, albeit with their customised music and animated logo. It was just the usual ident with an angel flying about over it, if I recall correctly. In 2000 it was a robin and the same regions took that; although I'm not sure about Border and whether GMG North had took over its presentation by then.

In 2001, the same regions plus GMG North took that year's network offering which was the white ident with the fairly, branded ITV1 with no regional station logo. It was justified at the time that it was too much messing about customising the design for several regions but it was clearly testing the water for what was to come in October 2002.
FA
fanoftv
^^ It was justified at the time that it was too much messing about customising the design for several regions but it was clearly testing the water for what was to come in October 2002.


Just a shame that come 2002 there was no sign of a Christmas ident, just terrible Stars over the celebrity idents.
AN
Andrew Founding member
It was my understanding that the 2001 Christmas ident wasn't a network offering as such, it was a GMG North invention and it didn't appear anywhere else?

The 1999 GMG Christmas idents were a surprise, in those days when there wasn't as much internet around, nobody knew what was going on, as the generic hearts had only been in use a month, then you had Tyne Tees using their old ident in front of regional programmes, but Granada using the hearts all the time, and then a month later they went back fully regional at Christmas!
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Well there may not have been "much internet around" if you want to put it like that but it would have possible in 1999 to get access to the various regional services through the Sky boxes of the time by just adding them to Other Channels. So on that basis you didn't need internet as such to see them but you couldn't record through Other Channels, in fact you still can't IIRC.

This was one of the boons of satellite TV for pres buffs, it probably used to be kind of like a forbidden thrill to see an STV ident when you're in Devon.
:-(
A former member
Well there may not have been "much internet around" if you want to put it like that but it would have possible in 1999 to get access to the various regional services through the Sky boxes of the time by just adding them to Other Channels. So on that basis you didn't need internet as such to see them but you couldn't record through Other Channels, in fact you still can't IIRC.

This was one of the boons of satellite TV for pres buffs, it probably used to be kind of like a forbidden thrill to see an STV ident when you're in Devon.


Im sure ITV was never added to SKY Digital system until 2001? Of course wasnt there TV clubs back then via Mags etc? or newsgroups etc?
BR
Brekkie
That's right - was ONDigital exclusive for 2-3 years, partly I guess to give ONDigital a supposed advantage and also I guess due to the cost of getting all the regions on to the platform as well.

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