Granada GMG ident

I think it was a classic case of design by committee - far too many parties involved, all with their own opinions. What we ended up with was a compromise, with all of the most distinctive and interesting elements of the concept removed, making it entirely unobjectionable but also bland and pedestrian.

Sadly though it wasn’t bland and pedestrian enough for GMG North. The washing line ident had to be removed quickly - far too quirky and interesting. But then the rest of the live action sequences also had a grain of personality remaining, so also had to be axed.

Ironically it was probably less dated than the other three northern logos, especially Granada's. The 1998 TT one was a terrible evolution of the 1992 logo (which itself was pretty poor), and the chevron was starting to look nearly as old as Granada's disabled wheelchair and umbrella nonsense.

It was quite jarring though going from the stunning Carlton animations to the spinning blue hearts. It was a shame they didn't cut to something nicer - indeed that purple version I mentioned earlier would have fitted quite well.


Better than just the name in italics in a non-discript font.


Yes, worth remembering Granada was pretty safe when it came to their own idents.

I know a lot found it jarring but I never really hard a problem with it. I liked the way the blue box containing the logo would also animate during the transition.



I posted a mock a few years back trying out the HTV logo on a star background:



I do think the HTV logo looks better contained in the blue box.

What's good about the HTV variant is that the three note jingle sounds like it's meant to represent the letters H.T.V.

Border were hardly known for exciting presentation though.

They Embraced the italic font logo quite a bit including on Border News (although not on Lookaround!)

This might be obvious, but did both HTV West and Wales use the same idents? I think I remember reading somewhere that West’s continuity came from Southampton for a while, but Wales’s stayed at Cardiff.

When the Carltonised versions of the HTV idents were launched they featured a htvwest.com or htvwales.com caption depending on the region. It was the first time since 1992 that HTV had idents that distinguished each sub-region.

Then ITV.com was added so the idents looked the same but continuity remained separate. When the regions became ITV1, HTV Wales was more distinguished as ITV1 Wales and kept its own announcements until 2006.

Also the very last HTV ident to be played out (on the same night LWT had their goodbye tributes), they removed any ITV branding and turned the hearts red. Sadly the announcement was very generic but it was typically understated HTV (and of course the HTV brand remained on the news).

More tastefully done than Bob Preedy claiming to speak for "all the TT/Granada/Border announcers since 1959/55/61" when in reality these stations' continuity had shut in previous years.

Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t with that one.