Carlton's different sized logos

carlton.com was designed to be more than just a telly related website - it was a portal to their web portfolio including popcorn.co.uk (film reviews) jamba.co.uk (online games) and simplyfood.co.uk (joint venture with sainsburys). a bit like granada group's isp g-wizz.net

iirc, the itc later ruled that commercial services could not be promoted on idents, and thus carlton changed theirs to carlton.com/tv and the granada stations replaced g-wizz.net/tttv with a more sensible domain like tynetees-tv.com (i know that's wrong, but there was a dash in it - and it was before the .tv domain existed)

I had actually thought about whether they had to remove it because of the G-wizz URL fiasco, but I'd always thought Carlton's site was a portal for the three different stations. Obviously I'm thinking of carlton.com/tv

Ahh yes, G-Wizz...... www.g-wizz.net/granadatv which later became www.granada-tv.com , which was the same thing, which eventually in November 2001 became itv.com and the same graphic was seen on the bottom of the screen in all Granada and Carlton regions.

G-Wizz plus ONdigital is one of the reasons why Granada lost millions and had to eventually merge with Carlton.

Did they lose much from G-wizz? certainly it's not ITV's biggest web-based disaster which of course was Friends Reunited. I'm not sure that the losses from ITV Digital were that much of a reason for the merger either, consolidation was a long process and it was inevitable eventually no matter how good a shape the constituent parts were.


ITV's appalling web presence and lack of new-media strategy over the years is a good argument for having a single ITV company. They've only recently got their act together but were messing around with things like G-wizz when Channel4.com was way ahead

Has there ever been a massive web success story which uses a hyphen in the URL?

I don't think that's true. If you look back you'll see that Granada regions were the first to use idents that didn't contain their logo. There were ITV1 Brit Awards idents that Carlton adapted to include their logo, and Christmas idents. In both cases, the Granada regions had ITV1 and no regional name.

itv-f1.com was quite a good F1 website while ITV had the rights.

tv-ark.org.uk has done quite well over the years.

There was a file on TV-Ark (almost certainly plagerised on Youtube if you look for it) with a much more embryonic version of the music. This used the 'small logo' and was in 4:3, so it was a very early ident. I don't ever remember that version being used on screen though, so either it's a pre-release version or it didn't last long before being replaced with the standard version.

Well they maintained the Carlton brand while it was 'active' (if you like), yes - but they didn't have to give up their in September 2002. They could have done a Channel/UTV and adapted the idents or continued with their own.

With regards to the Brit/Star Wars/Christmas idents, one could argue it was rather easier for Carlton to author an ident with 1 (later 2) brands (Carlton and later HTV) than it was for Granada to author several different ones for all their regions.

They knew their future was tied with Granada's, and that regulatory change would make their merger inevitable. They had worked together on ONdigial (amongst other things), and the two had preferred each-other as buyers for enforced sales such as HTV broadcasting, all baring with future merger in mind.

The end line is that Carlton had a great identity, produced great idents (from 96 onwards) and had a really professional identity. However, their content was very very weak, I think the only hit they produced that is still running is Police Camera Action, and even that's just a clip show of police footage with commentary.

Thames may not have had the style Carlton had but they certainly had the content, and that continues today with the ever successful talkbackTHAMES productions.

Yes the merger was inevitable, but it's nice to think Carlton fought to the end to give their brand at least one good show to it.