ITN - The Classic Years

I've come to realise from watching clips on YouTube that the ITN rebrand of news on ITV during 1995 happened in stages. It seems the main weekday bulletins rebranded with the new studio, graphics and music some time in early 1995, but the daytime and overnight summaries, as well as the weekend News & Sport retained their previous look and music (but adopted the new blue colour scheme) for quite a few months. Some examples to demonstrate:









I never knew this to be the case until these videos appeared and I was wondering whether anyone knows why these bulletins were held back for a few months? Also, when were the summaries and weekend bulletins brought into line with the new look? It seems strange in this day and age for a network to undergo a rebrand but for some elements to remain untouched for a while. It all happens at the same time nowadays.

Didn't this happen after the 1999 rebrand as well? Overnight bulletins were rebranded with the ITV logo instead of ITN like the rest but stayed in the old 1995 studio for a while before being brought in line with the other bulletins

EDIT: Here's a video of it. http://youtu.be/XWrg3I52vAQ?t=2m11s

Thanks, I'd forgotten about that. Yes it happened exactly the same as four years before. In fact, it lasted like that for over a year, as some YouTube examples of the Morning News from 2000 are still using the 1995 look/music. I can't get my head around it at all!

As I recall, it was the Lunchtime News that rebranded first. I don't think the Early Evening News rebranded until a few weeks later. I think this was the same time that other bulletins started changing too.

That's really interesting; I never knew that. Come to think of it, that makes perfect sense. ITN had never rebranded all its bulletins in one go. As we discussed elsewhere a couple of weeks ago, the 'computerised' rebrand of the late 80s happened over the period 1987-88, with each programme changing on its own in a staggered fashion. Again, the Early Evening News got its new look in March 1992, but it wasn't until a few months later that the same look was rolled out to the weekend programmes (and the rest retained their own designs). I guess the first time ITN attempted to rebrand everything in one go was in February 2004.

A personal favourite era of mine. On a slightly related note, on TV Ark there is a clip of a morning summary which opens as usual with a shot of the studio and the words ITN News Summary at the bottom, except - there is nobody sitting at the news desk. While I can work out why this happened, I can't recall ever spotting that so did it happen often I wonder?

The titles and theme for the Early Evening News are brilliant, it has links with the News at Ten but in a subtle way - you know it's an ITN bulletin but it's not News at Ten.

I've noticed that too. I know ITN have always had a history of pre-recording opening (and some times precom/postcom and closing) sequences so my best guess is that they cued the wrong bit of footage on that particular occasion.

Anyway, yes I loved that era too. Personally, my absolute favourite era is 1987-1995 when so many different graphics and music packages were used at the same time. It's nice to see such variety on one channel when compared to the repetitive presentation these days where everything looks identical all day and night. But, I do agree that the 1995-99 era was a good one. The music was a nice orchestration of the NAT theme and the Lambie-Nairn titles were simply outstanding. I think things started declining in 99, with a much cheaper-sounding version of the theme music and very boring titles. And the less said about what came after that, the better!

The thing I like most about 1995 is how there were very subtle musical differences between bulletins, which most people would probably not spot. And of course those voiceovers. I don't think they were ever better than during that era; I loved the "From the studios of ITN, the NEWS..." voiceovers. It's a shame that just a few years later they'd hacked away at them to leave merely "The ITV News...". And the 2009 voiceovers are dire compared to Andrew Burt's versions.

The 1999 graphics were not the beginning of the dark period of ITV News, in my opinion this began a couple of years down the line when they refreshed the graphics to be blue and yellow to fit in with the ITV brand at the time.

The 1999 graphics and theme were still professional, although I never understood why they had a "high definition screen" in the studio if TV viewers at the time wouldn't be able to see the difference anyway. The studio was quite good too, but it did lose the unique view of the ITN atrium.

This example shows how great the look was for the time in my opinion.

You're right, I'd forgotten how powerful that theme music could be given serious news stories like that. As I recall they started messing around with the music in 2003 as well as the colour scheme. I think one of the changes was replacing the headline music with little more than a drone and having bongs played at random over it. The 1999 music had a proper beat underneath the headlines and fixed bongs in time with the music. I think it was that memory that made me say it was the start of the decline. Certainly the theme music used since 2004 has been fairly poor. 2004 sounded very weak and when they tried to strengthen it in 2006 it just sounded more percussive. And the current music sounds a bit too much like a police siren wailing on and certainly doesn't have the gravitas of the late 90s music. I don't think it would work well with pictures like those in the 9/11 clip above.

The only other event of such importance as 9/11 you could compare it with is the 7/7 attacks which happened during the 2004-2006 look, and see if that theme music works with such an event. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any ITV bulletin for 7/7 on YouTube

I'm another fan of the 1995-1999 era. It was such an accomplished look for news bulletins - as said above, the bulletins were all tied together so you knew it was ITN, but there were several unique and distinct features for certain bulletins. The themes for the Lunchtime and Early Evening bulletins, for example, both had different arrangements of the same basic theme. One thing I found "distinctive" about the studio as a child was that strip of colour at the top of the desk, which was yellow for daytime bulletins but red for evening bulletins. I don't know the significance of using those two colours amid a sea of blue (!) but was it possibly a nod to the News at Ten logo of the time? You know, the red/yellow bars next to the text?

The titles were also great, and I can't even tell whether it's CGI or a physical model of the clock tower. Great stuff from Lambie-Nairn, and with that Hewson theme, well, you've pretty much got the best cohesive branding. The 1999 branding was nice to see at the time as I recall, but looking back, I really don't think it has aged as well as the previous look.

Robert thanks for starting the topic as you've thrown light on some oddities - was there any particular reason for the overnight service sticking with the '95 look for more than a year after the '99 relaunch? Revamping in stages just seems to be something they did back then, I guess!

While we're on the subject, didn't the look of News at Ten undertake several "amendments" after the initial November 1992 relaunch? There were at least two different sequences showing the studio in the newsroom (one from inside the newsroom and the other looking in from the atrium IIRC). There were also changes to the music - the music used in the first year or so sounds almost "too" subtle! It was re-recorded but seems to have been changed yet again at some point after that, to add in the long drumroll at the top of theme. I don't think it settled until 1995 or so. Weird - this kind of thing would never happen now, would it!