Coronation Street

I meant the credits that appear at the start over the opening scene of the programme (there’s only a couple)

I know it’s very minor, I just think it looks extremely rubbish, especially after the nice opening titles.

Yes, I'm not sure why they did that. Emmerdale kept their own font when Reem was introduced.

Needless to say, it was also a bad decision to introduce a completely black BG for the end credit sequence...

Both these changes, of course, took place on 14 January 2013, the first day of the current ITV logo.

Emmerdale also went over to a black BG for *its* ECS that day - but kept *its* custom font for the writer and director credits at the start. Which leaves one not only wondering if ITV were really saving *that* much money with these changes - but also why they made the font change for one soap but not the other...

(Obviously, Emmerdale's writer and director credits are left- or right-aligned at the bottom of the screen whereas Corrie's are centre-aligned - but was that *really* a factor?)

(EDIT: James got there first regarding Emmerdale keeping its custom font.)

The generic credits are one of the worst things about ITV. 20 years we've been stuck with them (but at least pre-2013 versions had more going on than a plain black screen), and none of the other terrestrials have done it. I don't know why they couldn't at least allow custom backgrounds even if they do make every show use the same font.

Interesting this week they opted to run all episodes as hour long editions, rather than splitting them into half hours. I do think now it is at six half hours a week that changing it to three hour-long episodes would make sense, especially as the first episode can sometimes just basically be padded out to create the mini-cliff hanger at 8pm.

I still think they'd have been better off keeping it at 3 half-hours a week at least until social distancing is over, as it would at least give them the time to be able to use the sort of techniques EastEnders are using to have characters appear close together on screen, rather than everyone being unnaturally apart, which sticks out quite often in both Corrie and Emmerdale.

But I guess the extra advertising revenue from the 6 episodes is more important.

The Channel 4 approach - the only requirement being that the credits are left-aligned - can't be *that* much more expensive, surely?

Or the BBC approach, which has them centred (though has had them aligned in the past).

Watching the 2010 episode now, a shame they didn't show the tram crash itself, I find the footage of the driver so cheesy it takes away from much of the drama.

Yes I've always thought those shots of the driver were really bad. I seem to remember Metrolink insisting that they showed the driver in a certain way to prove that he did all he could and this fictional crash wasn't the fault of the tram or driver to avoid people thinking their trams were unsafe in real life. Maybe that's why it looked so bad and they didn't reshoot it.

As an aside on the credits issue the ITV black credits are something that have never bothered me and I've always found it interesting that people on here really loathe them!

For me the only bit that I didn’t like was when the rear carriage lifts up before smashing into the Kabin. The rest of it, including the crash into the corner shop and indeed the footage within the shop and kabin was well done.

On the whole they don't bother me and look pretty smart, but I think for specials like an anniversary an exception would have made a difference. Back in February they used old credit shots, though to be honest that didn't work with the ITV font scrolling as well as black does.

I think a simple shot of the cobbles in the dark with a bit of rain on the would work well though as the credits - I get why ITV might not want something that competed visually with what they were promoting, though IMO British channels as a whole really do so little with the ECPs they might as well not bother. At least during the hearts era and the brief lower fifth ECPs (which worked well IMO) they would run promos during them. Indeed switching from cropping credits to the side to reducing them to 1/4 screen was very much a backwards step in the 2013 revamp which made little sense, especially as credits are still made to the previous specification.