26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

If somebody had blurted out "West", would Les have given them "HTV West"?!

Did the contestant genuinely have some notion of TVS but couldn't quite remember the exact name, or were they literally just saying a compass direction on a "wild stab in the dark" basis, I wonder?

The pedantry of e.g. Pointless is *exactly* the standard of accuracy that any kind of quiz should have, otherwise it is wholly inadequate.

Some shows make it blatantly obvious where their answers have come from. Blankety Blank is the obvious example here. Other shows make a point that they've actually gone out and asked people (Play Your Cards Right in the revived 90s version made a big deal out of it, stressing all the polls were genuine).

At the other end of the scale... quiz TV and their cryptic clues leading to a four digit answer - how one got to them was never explained.

Were what the initials of TVS stood for in common usage back then, or was it basically just TVS to 99% of people, like HTV.

If they’d have said West, he would have said “West? You mean Westward, which is now known as TSW. TSW our survey said...”

The on-screen identity was originally just TVS, from 1982-1987.


They then added "Television South" to the idents from 1987-1989 (below the TVS logo).

It then became "TVS Television" from 1989-1992.

So it was known on-screen as "Television South" at one point, but only for a short period.

This sort of thing ruptures my Common Sense Gland.

A bit like "ITV Channel TV" (or is it "ITV Channel Television"?) nowadays.

let's be frank, it's a gameshow, its not life or death as in 'The answer on my card is Yorkshire, not York. Eat lead and die, <insert suitable profanity here>". And yes, Pointless would probably not given it, neither would University Challenge (and that sort of question would now be seen as national history!) but it may have just scraped through as a 'I get what you're saying' on the open question segments of Tipping Point and Chase. Sometimes the network its on plays a part too.

Reminds me that there was apparently a vox pop on the ‘First Night on Meridian’ programme where they were asking members of the public what they would like from their new ITV station, one woman saying on the lines of as long as Coronation Street is still on I don’t really care. I think that was the general consensus, let’s face it ITV’s didn’t drop on 1st January 1993 did they?

And certainly there are some or have been some who call ITV, Channel 3 or by the old old name, such as Southern or Westward. Although not the same, you still hear GMTV referenced to these days.

It won the franchise as TV South, and that's what the S stands for, so accepting South is no different to accepting London Weekend. They no doubt would have accepted Harlech also, had HTV been an answer.

Would have been more controversial to deny South in my opinion.

There's no excuse for accepting York TV though.

It's still called "ITV Channel Television", with the news service being called "ITV News Channel TV"

I think that was because of the (bad) decision to buy MTM Enterprises which saw the company restructured as TVS Entertainment with TVS Television as a subsidiary. Not sure why they decided to use the TVS Television name on screen though.

The main difference with LWT though is that it was originally known as "London Weekend", so was a perfectly valid answer, whereas "South" wasn't.



If they had just said "London" rather than "London Weekend", that would have been a completely different matter.

The issue for me (in as much as there is one) is her insistence that it's called York TV, despite Les desperately trying to nudge her the right way. Whereas the person who says South pretty much nods "that one" when Les says it, and technically it is Television South anyway. Same for London Weekend (Television).

ITV stations are a bit awkward like that. You're into the territory of what would have happened if someone had said STV.