TV Home Forum

End of the road for UTV?

Split from UTV - From City Quays 2 onwards (November 2020)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
OC
Otis Crump
nwtv2003 posted:
JAS84 posted:
Could be worse. At one point it was called Granada Tonight - and replacing the region name with North West would result in the name of the BBC counterpart, North West Tonight. I wonder if that's why they reverted to Granada Reports a few years before the local news graphics went generic?


I think there were a couple of reasons for changing the name back to Granada Reports. One of them was that the programme was still being called Granada Reports by a lot of viewers. It had been called Granada Reports from 1973 until the end of 1989.

However, I believe the main reason for the name change was it was a total change of programme outright. Granada Tonight was a very sofa-led programme, which felt like a cheap evening version of This Morning. In comparison to the rest of the regional news on ITV it stuck out. When it became Granada Reports, whilst the content remained almost the same, it ditched the sofa and was back behind a desk, looking like an actual news programme. It looked refreshed and sold a new image of itself.

I also believe at this time North West Tonight was rating very well, partly as a result of Gordon Burns’s arrival. I guess there were a number of reasons for the change, but I believe the change at that time was the right one.


Granada Tonight was actually desk based when it initially launched. I don't think the sofas (actually, they were big armchairs really) were introduced until a few years later in 1993.
BR
Brekkie
rdd posted:
The region itself is still referred to by ITV as “ITV Granada”, isn’t it? It hasn’t been renamed “ITV North West” or suchlike? (That said, are there much if any regional programmes other than the news in England now?). It might be argued that whatever sense it made to Sydney Bernstein in branding his company after a city in Southern Spain in the 1930s it makes little sense now.

Then again, it may also be about maintaining Granada as an active brand, on the basis that even into the first years of the 21st century it was one of the best known brands in British broadcasting and better to maintain it even in this small form than to allow someone else to adopt it as an abandoned trademark.

Other than HTV and the London brands, both changes for logical reasons, all the ITV regional brands rename, although Yorkshire use the news brand rather than the channel brand. Indeed arguably had Thames still been around at merger the heritage associated with that compared to Carlton might have seen it survive for the news programming - though of course in reality it's survived as a brand for some of ITV's biggest shows.


Can't recall if Granada Media became ITV Studios on Day 1 of ITV Plc, and IIRC the brand remained abroad for a few years on the channel that ultimately became ITV Choice.
RI
Rijowhi
Mr Kite posted:
Coast to Coast people sounds like an extension of the regional news programme, so it makes sense, I suppose. Not sure about the entertainment things. Never heard it.

I've never known Central, as the other "dual region", to show anything different outside it's news. Then there were the far more informal regions that the likes Anglia and Yorkshire had.


Central made arguably the most famous (or infamous) Non-News Regional programme in Central Weekend. It was so good that other Regions such as Yorkshire started taking it. Then there was the likes of Gardening Time...Central was no stranger to Non-News Regional programming.
MK
Mr Kite
I've heard listings referring to "the Calendar Region" on occasion in recent years. As there's pretty much no regional programmes outside of news, apart from the aforementioned political programme, and there being no regional branded idents even before these programmes, it may as well be called that.
MK
Mr Kite
Rijowhi posted:
Mr Kite posted:
Coast to Coast people sounds like an extension of the regional news programme, so it makes sense, I suppose. Not sure about the entertainment things. Never heard it.

I've never known Central, as the other "dual region", to show anything different outside it's news. Then there were the far more informal regions that the likes Anglia and Yorkshire had.


Central made arguably the most famous (or infamous) Non-News Regional programme in Central Weekend. It was so good that other Regions such as Yorkshire started taking it. Then there was the likes of Gardening Time...Central was no stranger to Non-News Regional programming.


But they all went out pan-regional, so far as I'm aware.
RD
rdd Founding member
Brekkie posted:
rdd posted:
The region itself is still referred to by ITV as “ITV Granada”, isn’t it? It hasn’t been renamed “ITV North West” or suchlike? (That said, are there much if any regional programmes other than the news in England now?). It might be argued that whatever sense it made to Sydney Bernstein in branding his company after a city in Southern Spain in the 1930s it makes little sense now.

Then again, it may also be about maintaining Granada as an active brand, on the basis that even into the first years of the 21st century it was one of the best known brands in British broadcasting and better to maintain it even in this small form than to allow someone else to adopt it as an abandoned trademark.


Can't recall if Granada Media became ITV Studios on Day 1 of ITV Plc, and IIRC the brand remained abroad for a few years on the channel that ultimately became ITV Choice.


It didn’t. The regional logos stayed on network production endcaps for a little while, until 1st November 2004. After that productions were branded Granada (with a purple “G” logo) but on ITV at least still maintained an element of the old regional structure, in that they were “A Granada Manchester Production”, “A Granada Yorkshire Production” etc. Iirc the original intention was to maintain the Granada brand for the production business.

However at some point (2006) they decided they wanted ITV on the endcap of programmes actually produced for ITV, so this odd situation developed where the same company used “ITV Productions” for productions on ITV and “Granada” for everything else. Then in 2009 the entire domestic production business was rebranded “ITV Studios”, and finally the whole production business was rebranded with that name.
BA
Ballyboy
VT clock briefly shown before the 10:30 bulletin
TI
This Is Granada
TV Forum's favourite announcer who talks at 100mph just announced UTV Life's Pamela as 'Plamela' Rolling Eyes

Had to rewind it back several times as I thought I was hearing things.
DE
denton
This Is Granada posted:
TV Forum's favourite announcer who talks at 100mph just announced UTV Life's Pamela as 'Plamela' Rolling Eyes

Had to rewind it back several times as I thought I was hearing things.


Really? Eugh. It would be absolutely fine if it was a live announcement, but it's going to have been a pre-rec... which really makes it rather poor.
SC
Si-Co
denton posted:
This Is Granada posted:
TV Forum's favourite announcer who talks at 100mph just announced UTV Life's Pamela as 'Plamela' Rolling Eyes

Had to rewind it back several times as I thought I was hearing things.


Really? Eugh. It would be absolutely fine if it was a live announcement, but it's going to have been a pre-rec... which really makes it rather poor.


Exactly. Are local announcements for UTV recorded on the night by the duty ITV announcer? One would hope there is enough time for either the announcer or someone else to listen to them back before “signing them off”. Is the lack of quality control perhaps due to skeleton staffing at present?
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Mr Kite posted:
I've heard listings referring to "the Calendar Region" on occasion in recent years. As there's pretty much no regional programmes outside of news, apart from the aforementioned political programme, and there being no regional branded idents even before these programmes, it may as well be called that.

They use that because it fudges the elephant in the room that is a station called Yorkshire Television that also broadcasts to Lincolnshire.
TI
This Is Granada
Si-Co posted:
denton posted:
This Is Granada posted:
TV Forum's favourite announcer who talks at 100mph just announced UTV Life's Pamela as 'Plamela' Rolling Eyes

Had to rewind it back several times as I thought I was hearing things.


Really? Eugh. It would be absolutely fine if it was a live announcement, but it's going to have been a pre-rec... which really makes it rather poor.


Exactly. Are local announcements for UTV recorded on the night by the duty ITV announcer? One would hope there is enough time for either the announcer or someone else to listen to them back before “signing them off”. Is the lack of quality control perhaps due to skeleton staffing at present?


There is no quality control in place at ITV, hence 'Plamela', 'Views from Storm Front', 'New Breed' are put out on air during regional announcements.

I really would be interested in hearing from ITV Wales/Border Scotland viewers to see if their regional pre-recorded announcements are treated so poorly by the network continuity team or if this is a specific problem since they took on the UTV pre recording announcements since April 2020.

Newer posts