What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

It is, but my recollection was that this was merely a longer variant of the "bing-bong" sting, used on short PSAs at the time. Some PSAs required a long message, others didn't, and TTT used this approach so they could have a few PSAs in rotation.

This was dropped in late 1985 when the rotating PSA animation was brought in.

Regarding scheduling, it depends what era people are talking about

It’s true that towards the end Community broadcasts and Crimestoppers would be limited to regional variation slots, such as after the regional news, but go back a few years before that, maybe the hearts era and they used to air in peak as well. You might get one before Corrie.

Yes, the version Ghost posted was the very first one I was referring to. The shorter version posted by Robert is the part of the same animation (you just don’t see the beginning of it with the TTT logo zooming in).

I don’t think these two versions were ever used at the same time. The longer jingle was replaced by the bing-bong seemingly around 1984-85. I may be wrong of course.

Given I have that exact same PSA (on the page already linked to by Ghost), but recorded from Channel 3 North East nearly 2 years later in 1997 before their pan-regional 'Eastern Film' strand, that particular YTV community announcement must have been doing the rounds for some considerable time!

91-98 I believe.

Staying on the topic of PSAs, when did they actually start on the ITV network, and which company was the first to introduce them?

1999 Community Link

Given the football team I support, Liverpool, has just won tonight, it's an apt moment to ask about sports. In the 1980s and 1990s, which ITV region was good at covering local sport? Now, obviously, in this regard, STV had Scotsport, which Grampian also showed. What about other regions, how good were they at covering local sports?

HTV had rugby union. In this regard, HTV Wales had in the 80s and 90s a joint deal with the BBC for welsh club rugby. In 1997, HTV and S4C won the rights to welsh club rugby, but that deal ended at the end of the 2000-2001 season, when HTV decided not to bid again, partly due to a change in management, and so BBC Wales and S4C have held the rights ever since.

HTV West occasionally showed club games in the 80s and early 90s, when the BBC had the rights to english games, but weren't to bothered about exclusivity. So, HTV were allowed to go and cover an english club game, as long as it wasn't the same as the BBC, and both shared pictures.

HTV were also behind the early 90s night time show Sports AM, presented by Bob Symonds and vaguely along the lines of a Channel 5 proposition - usually consisting of highlights (and only highlights) of golf, boxing, maybe some less seen European football league like the Eredivisie or somewhere, and some other minority sports that wouldn't even be considered being shown in the daytime.

There's overnight continuity from 1992, on youtube, which starts off with the ending of an edition of Sports AM. The ending has action from what was on that nights edition, which included highlights of the South Africa v Australia rugby union international, at a muddy Newlands stadium in Cape Town. South Africa lost, 3-26, in what was their second international back, since their ban from rugby union was lifted.

When tyne tees, and meridian, had their sub regions for news, were these sub regions also used during the regional bulletins on gmtv? As an example, did viewers in the south of the Tyne tees area get their gmtv Tyne tees bulletins from Teesside or Newcastle?

Not sure about Meridian, but TTTV ran pan-regional news bulletins during GMTV, as well as the late bulletin during the week and weekend bulletins.