Logo Presentation

The title action shots certainly are dated, slowmo lips/typing etc? But the design idea/concept could work well if revisited.

The music sounds better without the VHS hiss from the recrodings too!

This couldn't look any more like 1997 if Geri Halliwell was draped in a Hong Kong flag straddling Cherie Blair.

Many of the best ITV symbols disappeared not because they were bad designs but because of franchise changes or the disappearance of regional identity.

If the original ITV companies had instead been organised as three-four competing national networks, then I can imagine some of their logos remaining on screen today. The ABC triangle, the Rediffusion star and the ATV eye were all universal enough to be used as symbols for a national TV channel (although the shadowed eye design didn't stand the test of time as well as the others).

That 1997 Central news Music is still phenomenal - and a desk to sit behind! How novel (and it actually looks good!)

Screams generic sports report music to me.

Suppose there is an element of that, but it was unlike any other local news at the time. Composed by Tom blades iirc.

Take the Central cake monochrome or at least lose the 80s colour vomit and it would still work today. Think of the evolution of the Channel Four logo. Timeless symbols are timeless... they don't need to change.

I've said before the late Bruce Gyngell's Channel 3 project at Yorkshire Tyne Tees was ahead of its' time. There's no reason why Channel 3 couldn't have been brand that we ended up with.

Take the Central cake monochrome or at least lose the 80s colour vomit and it would still work today. Think of the evolution of the Channel Four logo. Timeless symbols are timeless... they don't need to change.

I've said before the late Bruce Gyngell's Channel 3 project at Yorkshire Tyne Tees was ahead of its' time. There's no reason why Channel 3 couldn't have been brand that we ended up with.

ITV was already the established generic name for the network. I don't think you would have been able to force something else when there was already a logical solution - and by that point the ITV name had been used in branding for years, and you could say the 1989 logo was the first proper official logo used by all of the network.

It was locally changed to Channel 3, though, in 1993. Before that, it was a bit murky to some of us what the definition of ITV was. I remember asking my mum, after I saw the ITV Schools On Channel 4 branding what ITV was. She told me it was TV that had averts on it, thus those that aren't the BBC. So, as far as I was concerned, we had two ITV stations: Granada and Channel 4. This was reinforced because of the TV set we had, which had buttons (no remote) saying 'BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, ITV2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9' and Channel 4 was on the ITV2 button.

Still, the ITV brand was a lot stronger in some regions, especially London, after 1989, so it was always more logical than starting again with a new name.

I believe there was something of a plan to rename ITV nationally as Channel 3 in the mid 90s which got as far as the '3 - Britain's Favourite Button' campaign. I presume most of the regions resisted this, except for Tyne Tees and Yorkshire.

But the difference is that 4 is still called 4. ITV isn't called Central, neither does it begin with a C