Historical details of Central and other ITV Companies

Crossroads of course, I can't think of the others.

Perhaps Bullseye? I was led to believe, by TV Ark, that the Central/ATV hybrid frontcap was standard for at least a short while in 1982.

Bullseye 1982 when aired on Challenge just had a regular Central front ident. The first series has the regular ATV zoom.

I'm sure I read that the "Central presents an ATV production" hybrid front cap was done on transmission and therefore doesn't appear on any programming/tapes.

It was done to programmes that were 'in the can' before Central took over so that makes sense

I think it was used in some schools programmes too.

It seems very odd that they couldn't plan for this though - since ATV > Central was a restructuring/rebranding rather than a true change of contractor, you'd think they would have just put the Central ident and production slide on things which were going to be aired in 1982 and be done with it, a bit like how today the copyright dates on soaps manage to change over exactly on January 1st even though for several weeks the episodes aired would have actually been made in the previous year.

It does seem odd that they continued slapping on what was soon to be a defunct brand for everything made in 1981.

Problem being central were looking for a name and it took them a while, also once there did find a name, the company took awhile for new logo.

http://www.tv-live.org.uk/wp/media/inthepast/central/firstcentrallogo981.jpg

Have a good read at this: http://www.transdiffusion.org/2010/10/04/central_pre_lau

Big Q: when did Central come up with the Global idea that might give you a clue as to has long it actually had?

Also here is what Central would have used if IBA allowed ATV to keep its name: http://www.transdiffusion.org/2010/10/04/atv_midlands_un

Mind you Maybe the ownership should have been kept as it was? it had a trouble history trying to sell off the company 49%

It was actually very rare to see the ATV ident after 1982 except during schools broadcasting. Repeats of ATV schools programmes had 'Central Presents' followed by the ATV frontcap, and no attempt was made to hide the ATV endcap. This continued until the end of 1984, after which everything was re-edited with Central front and endcaps.

Outside of school hours though, Central were more brand conscious. Very early 1982 episodes of Crossroads started with 'Central Presents' (but no ATV zoom) and closed with a 'Central Production' or 'Presentation' slide superimposed. Family Fortunes in 1982 had the Central ident played out 'live' (noticeable as the source was once switched to Central IVC after the ident, instead of the opening titles. The endcap was also added live, and often mistimed so brief glimpses of the ATV endcap went out on air. Bob Monkhouse often referenced ATV during the show, eg. 'ATV will double the prize money'.

Several repeat series, such as ATV's Vet in 1983,were rebadged 'live', and often clumsily.

After Central updated their logo in 1983, even repeats of 1982/early 83 programmes were rebadged live, before the tapes were re-edited. For example, I have the same 1983 episode of Starting Science from three different transmissions (83,84 and I think 86) and they all have different endcaps!

I seem to remember some old (presumably ATV programmes) rebadged as © Carlton 1975 when repeated about 10 years ago. Not sure which ones.

I'm not a fan when that happens, it's not uncommon to see Morse repeats that are copyrighted to Carlton Television 1987, with credits circa 2003. ITV are still up to their old tricks, if you see reruns of Jeeves and Wooster or The Darling Buds of May, then they're often credited to ITV Studios from circa 1991, which doesn't look the slightest bit right.

BBC 2 "Money programme" talks about the 1991 franchises in 1992