There's no doubt that the UTV name will be ditched. They've got the same issue that ITV had with HTV - because it's name is 3 letters ending in TV it doesn't fit with the name ITV.
Those regions with words for names work fine: 'ITV Central', even if they're non geographic: 'ITV Granada. But ITV HTV or ITV UTV doesn't.
ITV Harlech was obviously a no-goer is ITV Ulster a possibility? The BBC use the word, but is it still politically ok these days?
It's BBC Northern Ireland, not BBC Ulster. NI includes more than the Irish province Ulster.
Opposite way around. Three counties in Ulster (Donegal, Monaghan, and Cavan) are not in Northern Ireland.
One text I once read claimed that the only reason the BBC went for BBC Radio Ulster and not BBC Radio Northern Ireland was that the latter was considered too much of a mouthful to be regularly said on air.
Correct. For some odd reason BBC TWO NI was digital only. BBC One NI was not digital only.
Something to do with BBC Choice Northern Ireland closing I believe.
Sounds like the same idea as BBC 2W in Wales which replaced BBC Choice Wales and was on BBC2 digital only.
Choice lost its opt outs so they turned the national Choices into national digital versions of BBC2 with the programming budget going to add extra 'local' programmes in the evenings.
So there in the evenings there was BBC 2 England, BBC 2 Wales and BBC 2W!
Yeah, they had BBC Two Northen Ireland and BBC Two NI....
Only they didn't. There was a slight twist. Because this was the yellow idents/purple box era, and they were already using "NI" as short for Northern Ireland in the box, they decided that the analogue version should only be referred to on air as "BBC Two", without the "Northern Ireland". Really odd. The analogue service was still referred as "BBC Two Northern Ireland" in print materials and TV listings but only as "BBC Two" on air, as if it were the English version.
After the services merged again, they went back to BBC Two Northern Ireland. More recently of course, we have "BBC News NI" and "BBC Sport NI".
Yeah, they had BBC Two Northen Ireland and BBC Two NI....
Only they didn't. There was a slight twist. Because this was the yellow idents/purple box era, and they were already using "NI" as short for Northern Ireland in the box, they decided that the analogue version should only be referred to on air as "BBC Two", without the "Northern Ireland". Really odd. The analogue service was still referred as "BBC Two Northern Ireland" in print materials and TV listings but only as "BBC Two" on air, as if it were the English version.
After the services merged again, they went back to BBC Two Northern Ireland. More recently of course, we have "BBC News NI" and "BBC Sport NI".
It was such a weird period.... at the time I thought it was a waste of money and a great shame to hide away local programming for digital viewers only.
Anyway, back to UTV.
I would reckon for local news they'll keep it as UTV news/live. I would assume the reason for creating a new UTV logo was to accommodate UTV live news. But everything apart from the local news will just be branded ITV I guess.
