30th Anniversary of ITV 1989 presentation

Can you believe it's been 30 years since first failed attempt,

At 5.15pm most ITV station started to use the package in some from or another, this included stings ( sport,drama etc, ) CITV, or even the idents. But of course with 2 years ( give a take a few months) it had all feel apart with only HTV, YTV and Grampian still only using it.

Many broke ranks straight way with Anglia, Channel, TSW, TVS and UTV not taking the idents, Scottish used it when it could be bothered until early 1990, Central did weird and wonderful things with it, while Granada its very unclear if it used the original before altering it.

Here is that 2min promo... Did everyone broadcast this?


Of course the were sport stings as mention: https://youtu.be/z80Ht4syDk0?t=377

Mind you we never did find out more infor about that test ident

Why did they bother in 1989? Was it due to the upcoming Broadcasting Bill which would provide the basis for the 1991 Franchise Auction?

The 1989 corporate relaunch was a botched job, as no region had to take the look. It was optional, and as we see regions either ignored the look, adopted it and dropped it after a short time, or tweaked it to suit their own needs.

What a waste of time, money and effort, to create an ident package and have it trampled on by the whole network. What were ITV thinking in 1989?

Could the 1988 ITV Telethon have been a catalyst for this? AFAIK the 1988 Telethon titles had at the start photos of each of the ITv companies being stacked to make the ITV logo, which was different from the 1989 version. Whilst there had been networked programmes on ITV before, this was in effect unifying the whole ITV network, with regional opt outs for 27 hours, and so a standard livery, as it were, was required for the show. After the Telethon in 1988, I wonder if a decision was made to create the corporate ITV logo, with some regionalisation.

It must also be remembered that in 1989, the structure in ITV was changed; instead of the "big 5" deciding networking arrangements, the ITV Network centre was created, slightly independent of the Big 5, and it was the network centre which decided networking arrangements, and so that was probably another reason the 1989 corporate logo came about.

According to Wikipedia (take from that what you will) the Network Centre wasn't established until three years later.

I thought it was created by the 1990 broadcasting act?

My guess is that the 1989 generic look was an attempt to strengthen and unify ITV’s voice ahead of the 1990 Broadcasting Act and the associated challenges that many feared it would bring.

Rather than anything to do with Telethon 88, I’d see it more as an extension of the ‘Just The Way You Are’ promo which appeared to be the ITV companies’ not-so-subtle way of saying to the government, ‘don’t go changing’ things. Like the Telethon opening, it also featured the regional logos stacking up, and the previous ITV logo.

(From the start of this video)

Itv was so much interesting and diverse with lots of opinion and decisioning making at a local level, it’s so different now.

I unashamedly enjoy listening to the ‘Get Ready for ITV’ theme with vocals. Why not make an aspirational upbeat song about a TV channel rebranding?

The 1989 package brought some really good pres. There was loads of themed variants of the new ITV logo in trailers & promos. It proved to be a very adaptable logo.

Did the region's that ditched the ident keep the surrounding pres or do their own trails?

Remember that the 1990 Broadcasting Act was (it is alleged) bought forward so to speak in the wake of the Death on The Rock documentary; how true that is is probably up for debate. After all Thatcher had previously wanted to make other wider changes to broadcasting (including scrapping the licence fee, even setting up the Peacock Committee with the intention of it supporting her view - it did the complete opposite in that regard, however some of its other recommendations did make it into law, such as Channel 4 doing its own advertising, a franchise round and an indie quota).

I live in the Granada region. They DID use a modified version for a short time for only the 7pm junctions. They showed a brief clip of their own ident which morphed into the 1989 ITV ident and the announcer would state "This is Granada, your station on the ITV network". The ITV logo was the generic "blue" within the V. I seem to recall this only lasted a few months and for all other junctions, Granada used their own idents.

Although ITV did provide a 1989 ident for Granada to use, it was never aired as the logo within the V was actually incorrect. The vertical line (connecting the G to the arrow at the top) was missing.

So Granada only used the altered version then?