Channel 4 pre-1993 regional opt outs

Presumably made by LWT along with their own break bumper, as part of their revamp around the same time.

I wonder why C4 allowed TVS to do this, rather than making their own versions -- and didn't get other regions involved in injecting bumpers into the ad-breaks. Surely these bumpers "polluted" the C4 brand?

I get that some regions' equipment might not have been capable of implementing them, but I'd imagine that at least by 1988 or so the majority could.

Why would anyone care? It's not as if there was another control room downstream who would get confused by the cue dot. Most viewers wouldn't even have seen it let alone care


It's not ideal but not really an issue. I imagine C4 liked the extra branding, it's probably not something they could do as it would be too quick to provide a decent opt out point

It might have been all the ITV companies were authorised to do it (though you have to ask the question, why didn't C4 supply them with ready made bumpers !?) but only TVS opted to ?

However, in the 70s and 80s and early 90s, Southern/TVS/Meridian (in other words, give or take, the same pres dept) were the only ITV region to have break bumpers on the main ITV channel, so was there someone at Northam particularly keen on the idea ?

Westward had a rotating hexagon between ads when they were run off film I believe, but thinking about it yeah I don't remember any other region running bumpers much before 1989.

At the time I thought TT were behind the curve when they introduced them in 1990, but in fact they were relativey early adopters... I don't remember UTV ever using them during the pre-1993 period, nor have I seen them outside TVS/Ang/Thames/LWT/YTV/TT at all during that time, YTV only seemed to be an experiment, and apart from TVS all were introduced during 1989-90.

ETA I've just noticed that all those stations mentioned used a bumper that starts with some form of ident that de-forms into the break. TT seemed to have kind of missed the point here (which looks to be that you cut to a logo that breaks up), as all of theirs had a quick form- up...

I think the Southern one was used in the 60s, of course back then on film (so ironically easier than VT cart), and probably remained on film well into the 70s ?

Wasn't the Southern one an electronically-colourised piece of film in the 70s/80s... which would have meant it would have been on VT?

The front cap for programmes, and the one used to lead into a CA announcement was I think a b/w film, stuffed 'live' through a colouriser box (just like BBC 1 globe, and Granada, ATV, and Border slides ) . I'm not sure the break bumper one was, too risky getting the colouriser in and out of circuit at the right points ! ?

https://youtu.be/i560HsDxOVA?t=37

Someone in a position to know tells me there were only one set of ads for C4 across the region.

It definitely looks like it was colourised from the examples on Youtube, and as you say switching the colouriser in/out would be prone to disaster on-air I'm sure, which is why I assumed they must have colourised it and recorded that onto VT. This is 1980/1 of course rather than the 60s!

I'm not sure what the situation was with cart machines that early -- certainly most companies were still running a mix of tape and film until the mid-1980s which suggests a high degree of manual work, but Southampton seems to have been advanced compared to others. Editing that manually on each break on tape would have been a total ballache I have to say.

EDIT no it wouldn't would it -- I guess you just have a clock VT with the bumper edited onto the end and use that as the start of each break? I definitely got the impression TT were using something very like that technique in the 90s, rather than the bumper actually being an item loaded into the cart unit.

I was surprised to read a post earlier on referring to C4 and LNN. LNN never had any involvement in the C4 ad insertion process at any point.

Yes.