Crossroads One Hour Special - TONIGHT at 5! (4.30 N Ireland)

What will probably happen is that CITV will simply not trail any programmes after 4.30 today, then UTV will cross over to local presentation at the end of the programme preceeding Crossroads, which will probably be shown with full credits rather than putting it into a small box as normally happens.

Or, knowing ITV's attitude to small stations, it'll be a horrible, ugly mess, with no effort made to hide the fact that UTV is opting out. I remember once there was some Snooker on at 10.40 on most regions; YTV opted to show local stuff until 11.10 and Tyne Tees until 11.25. YTV showed a full introduction into the snooker recorded by the presenter especially for them (reference to YTV was made). Tyne Tees had to make do with the intro sequence then straight into the game.

So I'd guess the latter. ITV don't give a toss about the smaller stations.

Well, whatever the 4:35 junction brings, my Sky box and video will be there taping it all.

i have more faith in central, they havent shown a single trailer regarding todays line up as its back-to-back week (same programme all afternoon) - so i suppose as long as they dont refer to the the eppisode starting at 4:30, and use full credits, theyll be ok.

Well, for not being a Crossroads fan. What actually happened then?

At 4.30 UTV screened the network CITV presenter saying 'more Angry Beavers coming up...'. They then went to adverts while the presenter was still talking!
At the other end of the break a UTV ident appeared with no announcer explaining the situation.
I don't think CITV should have to make special announcements for a very small part of the audience and I think it 's correct that they carried on as normal.
However, local presentation should have kept viewers up to date - isn't that one of the reasons they are there? Sadly, they failed!

Yep, watched on Sky this afternoon, and I have to say I was very dissapointed. It wouldn't have been too much trouble for the Irish to go without half of UTV Live and have UTV show it with the network, let's face it, the 5.30-6 segment of Live is crap anyway. They'd get more viewers showing Crossroads in that slot.

UTV are amateurs. Fact. It's amazing how they can't manage it when Channel work with somebody else's broadcast feed the WHOLE time yet you never see as much as a single flicker of Meridian presentation.

Points to them for showing local stuff and actually having the balls to opt out of the network but they're still crap.

OK, so they could have taken the repeat that'll come after the football's over so you can't complain.

The episode was clearly two episodes sandwiched together though, when Rocky suddenly was in the hotel in uniform!

I thought the ending was a bit weak, "I'm gonna kill 'im!" is just slightly cliched, especially when we saw that Brian is far better at fighting than Phil is. Maybe he'll take a baseball bat with him next time. (Crossroads fans will understand this joke.)

And we didn't get the long version of the music either - whenever there's a 60-minute Emmerdale they always play the long music! The last time there was a long Crossroads (which I think was the primetime showing of the first two episodes!)

A damn good episode though. Let's hope it gets recomissioned, and possibly even promoted to primetime. It's more worthy of the 7pm slot than Emmerdale is, that's for sure.

How can you say that?! No matter how small the station, there should be professionalism, especially on something like ITV1. It woudln't have been too much bother for Central to record a quick seperate sign off for them that said "That's it for our Back2Back Angry Beavers today, next here on UTV it's a one-hour special of Crossroads!" then send it down the same line that they sent today's ep down.

And while we're at it, do we remember when London opted out of the network for 2 nights running so they could show a different football match to everyone else? It was on the day that ITV1 came onto the EPG, in fact.

And do we remember when Central opted out of a network programme at the last minute to show a programme on Birmingham's bid for the national stadium?

Both done without any hint to the average man in the street (or in front of the telly - ie not us TV anorak types) that they were doing regional opt-outs. NPU quite happily did 2 lots of ECP's and trailers.

Just to show it can be done.

It's not politically correct to describe everyone living in Northern Ireland as "Irish"... however, while I am pointing this out, I am not going to be drawn into a debate on the issue.