Branding Carlton

I believe the inclusion of "Tyne Tees Television" was a compromise at board level, rather than any requirement by the ITC (although that has been a long held belief)

I didn't know that. I assumed it was the ITC, hence the news programmes (and other associated regional shows) didn't lose the Central or Westcountry names

Presumably Carlton reasoned that it simply made sense for the existing regional programmes (especially news) to retain their regional-sounding names, irrespective of whether there was any such ITC requirement? After all, there was never a "Carlton News" even in their London region.

All three sub-regional versions of Central News ended up with "logos" (pah!) that consisted of the programme name written in 2D white Gill Sans text - i.e. exactly like the Carlton logo. At least the "West" edition of Central News also incorporated Carlton's star-within-a-star symbol into the branding for a period. Dunno whether the East and/or South editions ever did likewise?

As early as 1997, there was a report which called for the ITV regions to adopt a single "Channel 3" brand, initially just in the evenings. Carlton's rebranding of Central and Westcountry may have been their way of trying to prevent this from happening.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/itv-regions-urged-to-adopt-single-channel-3-brand-1251886.html

But why would the ITC have cared about the on-air names of the broadcasters? After all, the likes of Carlton and Granada never had any regional references in their names.

And Border and Yorkshire don't have regional references in their news programme names - Lookaround and Calendar.

They did make some headway onscreen with this, there were a number of promos filmed along the lines of "Press Three for ITV" - with a low res green ITV logo - one included Kim Tate in Home Farm tuning in.

Although Border's short bulletins do mention "Border" in the title. "Lookaround" has always* been for the main weekday evening programme only. (*Apart from during the predominantly pan-regional Tyne Tees & Border News era, when the 10:30pm Border-only bulletin was also called "Lookaround")

Likewise for Granada Reports and Meridian Tonight (and formerly HTV News, Coast to Coast, Day By Day, ATV Today etc etc).

Again, no ITC rules over the name of the regional news programme.

Channel 3 might have worked as a brand. It doesn't mean there has to be a loss of regional identity - the programmes is where that matters, right? Interesting that Scotland (as they often do) considered themselves a special case even back then.

Ultimately although we all hated it at the time, hindsight proved that uniting under the ITV brand was probably the right thing to do. It didn't make sense to have that hotchpotch of brands up and down the country.

If STV gets bought out tomorrow and ITV is used there and in NI, nobody is going to be bothered except for a few career politicians in the national assemblies. With the sister channels, on demand players etc, it just makes more sense now.

Can you imagine having the Yorkshire Player, the Central Player and then a separate one for 2/3/4/Be? Nightmare.

I would guess that the early situation would have continued: Each ITV station would have maintained their own website with local programmes becoming available there as on-demand became a thing. Network programmes would have continued to be promoted via the main itv.co.uk (.com, as it became) site which would eventually become home to ITVPlayer for corrie/etc.

G-Wizz Player, anyone?

There could have had their own section on such a website.