26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

Those videos posted by Mark Lipscomb are amazing. I wonder how many people in the gallery knew what Carlton's presentation was going to look like - it was quite a startling change from the Thames style. (That's ML himself on the opening Carlton announcement, isn't it?) And, of course, that for some of those there, it was no different from what they'd done at 5.15 on a Friday for years, just with a few boozed-up spectators...

Slightly off-topic - Thames had handed over to LWT hundreds of times, but LWT never handed over to Thames, did it? The 1969 Moon landings were on a Sunday so might have provided an opportunity, but otherwise closedowns and TV-am must have separated them. (I remember Thames Weekend News, but that was technically just another programme, wasn't it?)

Shame that switch at the BT Tower never made it to a museum after 1992.

Carlton were rehearsing transmissions for about a month before they went on air. I think the most time consuming part for the staff associated with it was trying to integrate the three different commercial scheduling systems (LWT/Carlton/GMTV) to work together with LNN's central core systems, I think Ken Louth was the brains behind it.

Thames weekend news was just a another programme/feed into the SouthBank.

There was a discussion regarding what happened on moon landing night on DS a year or so ago. The conclusion was no one knows ! Does anyone here know what happened ?

All I seem to recall was the BBC's coverage and an Omnibus special afterwards (which must have been at about 5am, (Genome had it billed for 22:00hrs, which makes sense because the landing itself was delayed by 6 hours or so) Anyway, way off topic now, sorry.

Carlton's presentation was really modern for its times, even the one launched in 1991

Too bad it replaced a too strong brand (also in terms of programming) such as Thames

And the final montage at 0:30 was fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTmtaWMpHU

Nope, it was Graham Bannerman on the opening night. I remember hearing a new and not very Thames-sounding voice was all part of the shock at the time, though not quite as much a shock as seeing that new ident!

Another thing that was a bit odd about that changeover was that New Year's Day was a Friday in 1993, meaning that Carlton had to wait until Monday 4th before being able to have any peaktime output.

Talking of the LWT handovers, growing up in London I used to think (and somewhere in the back of my mind I still do) that 5:15pm on a Friday is the 'official' start of the weekend, it never occurred to me at the time that it was just a telly thing.

Ha! I remember watching that first link at the time and thinking "ah, it's one of the Thames announcers!" That's me told, then!

And it's just dawned on me watching this clip again - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTmtaWMpHU - THREE different shots of Big Ben, surely? The ITN one, the Carlton one straight after midnight, then the one which opens A Carlton New Year which seems to come from a slightly different spot to the ITN one. Were they all live? (Feel like a bit of a conspiracy theorist asking that...)

I take it the rest of the country which didn't have a franchise change saw all the chimes, then Dermot Murnaghan wrapping up the news?

Aren't TVS/Meridian using a different shot too? To be honest in those days when there was no big London/river firework display to speak of you could easily have used a recording. It amazes me given the ceremony that surrounds the whole thing now how ITN spend forever showing highlights of the year and miss the first chimes completely, only going in for the bongs themselves, then Carlton cut them off just after they've started and they're still going when they go back to Chris Tarrant!

And the "1992 in review" highlights reel looks so cheesy all these years on, too.

Mind you, pre-fireworks (first took place for the millennium, then regularly since 2003/4) the London New Year was always preceded by dire warnings *not* to go to Trafalgar Square (spot the grim "Metropolitan Police wishes you a happy new year" message behind Tarrant) so there probably wasn't the ceremony then for ITN to report on. And that bulletin must only have been in place because of the franchise handover, so I suppose they didn't want to go to the expense of anything from Edinburgh or elsewhere.

I think it was New Year 2003 when just one, possibly unauthorised firework went off around Big Ben at midnight - I wondered at the time if that was either a feeble official allowance, or just some bloke with one in London who let it off illegally.

The Carlton one straight after midnight is ITNs. If you look at the Thames control room video that Mark Lipscombe uploaded to Twitter, the close up of the clock face is also on Thames' output straight after midnight (he pans away to the clock but it's definitely there when he pans back the same Big Ben shot is on the output monitor as well as what is now Carlton's off air).


It looks like ITN cut from the long shot to the close shot exactly at midnight, it just got obscured by the picture roll and any variations in timing between the two broadcasters

So it's still three shots, two from ITN and one from Carlton which presumably was from the OB in Trafalgar Square.

Whos feeds is this?