Identify the correct year for the Pres.

You mean 8th November 1999. Also, this ident not used for local use from that date onwards. There was a different ident involving rotating purple chevrons. Apparently, this was the product of a rebrand GMG were planning, as they'd given up thinking network ITV idents were ever going to arrive after constant delays.

That's even more confusing. What was the situation when HTV were independent? Was transmission for both West and Wales in Cardiff? I know HTV West had its own continuity announcers back in the day. If UNM wanted to save costs and HTV Wales were doing most of the continuity anyway (albeit pre-recorded) wouldn't it have made sense to allow Cardiff to look after HTV West rather than Southampton?

I'm still trying to imagine the arrangement when Meridian, Anglia and HTV West were all coming from Southampton. Although presentation at Southampton often made efforts to give Meridian and Anglia separate continuity, they often got generic announcements. On these occassions then, was HTV West given separate continuity? Also, surely once Carlton bought HTV and introduced its own idents, Carlton must've insisted that HTV West gets its own dedicated continuity, in the same way Westcountry did from Cardiff.

Strange how he just went to ground - am amazed he has never appeared doing continuity on one of the satellite channels like Dave or Gold or one of the ITV channels given his pedigree, he'd be perfect for ITV3 or ITV4 as well.

I would guess they wanted to make Southampton the playout centre for UNM and - had their merger happened as proposed - Carlton regions. However, at the time, believe it or not, there was a DCMS requirement that HTV Wales's continuity came from Wales, being a 'national broadcaster of Wales'.

When HTV was independent, I'm sure West continuity came from Bristol, but playout was from Cardiff.

That happened until 2002, im sure

I'm pretty sure that whilst Westcountry's transmission came from HTV in Cardiff from Day One, continuity always came from Westcountry themselves in Plymouth. This continued all of Westcountry's relatively short life, including the Carlton-branded years. In October 2002, when Carlton and Granada created a single ITV1 brand, both Westcountry's transmission and continuity moved to London. I don't think Bristol ever figured.

But what of HTV pre-UNM? Certainly, pre-1993, HTV had 'HTV Wales' and 'HTV West' idents, as well as generic 'HTV' ones for joint continuity. This suggests that when they were showing the same programme, a generic announcment from Cardiff was heard in both Wales and West, yet HTV West had in vision announcers back then, which surely, at least in prime time, did all the West's junctions? What about after 1993? Both region's used the same ident and apparently schedule variations between the two were reduced outside of region-specific programming, so does that mean joint continuity was heard much of the time?

I mis read what was written: my response was about long the transmission come from Cardiff, thanks for confirming it did stay that long.

It may surprise you but HTV west and wales still diff in the afternoon and after 10.30pm not sure why.

And it would appear that HTV West's transmission came from Cardiff too until sometime in 2000 when it was moved to Southampton. This left only HTV Wales and Westcountry at Cardiff. Of course, in October 2002, they were reunited with HTV West in London, though Cardiff retained its own announcers for a few years longer.

Before the launch of S4C there were three HTV services: a Wales service with Welsh & English language news programmes (the half hour programme was 15 mins in each language), a West service with the West's news programmes and a 'General Service' which would have the first bit of the West's news and the English version of the Wales news. The General Service was run from Wales, and I would assume that throughout the 80s and 90s, Wales continued to provide the backbone of the continuity, and at times where there were no announcers on duty in Bristol, it was just simply "HTV" on air.

There were certainly announcers based in Bristol during the 1990s. HTV West actually continued in vision continuity until about 1994. Perhaps this is when things were scaled back in Bristol. It's a shame that Phillip Banks doesn't post on here anymore. He was HTV West's last announcer, having started in 1994. Several sources say he finished in 2000 when continuity moved to Southampton, but there are clips of him on HTV West in 2001, and at several points on here he referred to playing out announcements over a feed from Southampton.

I've got a vague memory of him becoming freelance after the move to Southampton, and he used to announce from home via an ISDN line.



From October 2002 onwards the local Wales announcers would pre-record something like a week's worth of announcements in one sitting and they would get played out at the relevant times.

Thanks for that. Just to clarify: HTV West had their own announcers in Bristol but Cardiff always did a lot of joint continuity for both regions. This continued until 2000 when HTV West's transmission was moved from Cardiff to Southampton. However, HTV West retained some separate continuity in the form of pre-recorded announcements from Cardiff and freelancers sending pre-recorded announcements down the line. This is in stark contrast to Anglia, who by that point were always getting continuity from Southampton, often shared with Meridian.

It seems a strange set up. There's not much on youtube in regards to HTV West of this period. TV Ark has five examples of continuity on this page. They're from 2001 and have the Carlton form ups and music. However, on all five, the station is not name-checked at all, which suggests to me that it may well be joint continuity with Anglia and Meridian from Southampton, despite the different owners and despite the different ident sequences. I'm not familiar with most southern regions' continuity announcers, so I can't identify who's talking on them, which might shed some light on what the situation was.

From the evidence that's out there, the separate HTV Wales announcements ended on New Year's Eve 1992. Of the team at the time, Margaret Pritchard and Jenny Ogwen left the station, Arfon Haines Davies moved first to news and then programme production, while Dilwyn Young Jones seemed to come and go doing various stints in weather and continuity again.

It seems Sue Powell-Reed was the only Culverhouse Cross announcer to remain among the HTV announcing rota after 1993, staying onto until the wind-up of separate continuity in Wales.

Among the HTV West team post-1993, they seemed to stay on, even in the dual-role of announcer/newsreader, for a few years - even after the weekend in-vision links were dropped towards the end of 1993.

Peter Crawford in 1993 (includes scenes some viewers may find disturbing):


Gill Impey in 1993:


Sam Mason in 1994:


It's uncertain at the moment when announcers stopped reading regional news bulletins from Bristol - perhaps that's something which could be clarified here?

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itv_wales_west/htvwales_continuity.html

Have a nosey down to the Arfon clip from Christmas Day 1992 and his last introduction to Coronation Street, I guess that must have been an awkward time to have been working for HTV.