Carlton 1999-2002 Idents

Actually, as they have no voiceovers, these are worth putting up with the TV Ark video player for.

That's the absolute brilliance of this package: a wide variety of idents, clearly labelled to show what kind of programme to put them in front of, at various different lengths. Such a flexible set of idents suited for each mood. And it helps that they look and sound great too.


Wasn't it more that ITV was using the slogan 'TV from the heart' at the time, so if ITV is the heart, then Carlton is the star. Clever use of both the national ITV and corporate Carlton identities of the time.

Yes. This is from Lambie-Nairn:

They simply wanted to have an expression of the heart which was theirs alone. So we were asked to somehow square this circle, that they were part of ITV and therefore of the heart but they were also unique as a brand. And we came up with the proposition that, okay, if ITV is the 'heart', Carlton is the 'star' of the ITV network.

The day before HTV got these, there was a rumour going around on the NotBBC TV Forum (basically the TV Forum of its day) that they were just going to rebrand it as Carlton. Things weren't quite as they are now, with social media etc, and people were genuinely unsure what was going to happen on the day.

There was a sigh of relief when the adapted HTV ident hit the screen just after GMTV, but a slight panic from latecomers when the first peak time ident of the evening was a Carlton variant which they played out by mistake!

Much prefered the Carlton version though didn't like the HTV hybrid - surely they could have worked the logo into their own backdrop.

I remember that! I wonder if it was a deliberate mistake?

I still don't understand how it could have been an accident. The idents were played out from Culverhouse Cross so unless the server was loaded with a rogue ident...

It was all a bit of a rush job, and in some of those HTV edits you can make out a flash of the Carlton stars background. Pause on 2:00 here:



However, it was still a good package and was the best the ITV generic hearts had looked. Even the animation of the box around the logo made all the difference.

We even got a programme slide!

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/itv_wales_west/wales_west_images/htv_presentation/htv_next_2001.jpg

And of course, a special mention to the last ever HTV junction. They were told not to refer to the changes as HTV News was continuing, so someone in Cardiff stripped the hearts of their ITV branding and the hearts turn red, as a very subtle way of saying goodbye.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the 96-99 set of idents were actually rather good. Sure, they're not in the same league as the 99-012 ones, look like they were made in Adobe Flash and will always be tainted by association of having sister Central versions which killed off the cake but they were colourful, highly varied and had a lot of charm to them. Designed by Lambie-Nairn (like the 99 set) it was recognised that Carlton not having a symbol, their own equivalent of the Granada 'G' arrow or Yorkshire chevron was a bit unfortunate; so instead, they put the emphasis on the letters, with quite some success in my opinion. They weren't without issues; some individual idents like the upside down Home & Away one were withdrawn early after being deemed too obscure, whilst at least one was purported to have given people seizures and there were so many different length variation plus the widely different variations of the jingles meant they must have taken some getting used to by the continuity announcers. Still, they certainly weren't dross.

The short-lived ones that immediately preceded them from 1995, made by Central's presentation department, were dull as hell. The people idents they launched with were cheesy and I don't care much for them but in a way they were ahead of their time, as short films featuring people would become mainstream for idents. The celebrity idents from the first homogenised ITV look in 2002 bear more than a resemblance to them and so, for London viewers, the whole thing kind of came full circle.

The '99 set was Lambie-Nairn's second stab at sorting Carlton's branding issues out. With mixed results from focusing on the letters to compensate for the lack of a symbol, the decision was made to just go for it and create a symbol: the Carlton star. And it was executed wonderfully; only to disappear a little over 3 years later due to pan-ITV branding. Tragic really but then being cut down in their prime might have done it a favour. Like BBC Two after their 91-01 set, it would've been tough for Carlton to have replaced that set with anything anywhere near as good.

Well Westcountry and HTV were both played out from Culverhouse Cross so it's fairly likely that there were both 'Carlton' and 'HTV' idents on the same server

And not only that it is highly likely whoever was putting the transmission schedules together at that point - probably Carlton in London - could easily have dropped the wrong ident version onto HTV Wales. It's a lot easier than you think to put the wrong thing in when it's just an ID number, or if it's not labelled properly in the system.

Your opinion that you're entitled to but personally I didn't like them, coming from the Central region and having had a cake for many years, the post cake era up until these idents just felt, well, cheap really I feel. Perhaps "dross" was the wrong adjective, but I don't personally think they were much cop.



Agree there; everything has its day and ideal longevity period, and three years of regular use was probably about right for them as it turned out - as you say, whatever would have replaced them would have had a hard act to follow.