Granada production endcap confusion

The only time HTV showed the ITV logo was between 1989 & 1993 and that was mainly on the generic ident. It rarely ever showed a ITV logo on its promotions.

When I say generic, I mean the trailers each ITV company would produce for showing by Channel 4, TV-am/GMTV and some ITV regions (Tyne Tees and YTV included). They weren't produced centrally but all followed a loose corporate-ish style, although each ITV region had its own interpretation of that style.

Do you not recall YTV using the ITV trailers in this way, pre-1994? Both Tyne Tees and YTV used them somewhat sporadically, interspersing them with their own home-grown efforts (and in the case of Tyne Tees, trailers would frequently be put out with the captions and voice-over added live as part of a package with some IVC and a slide with a programme rundown).

I'm sure there were generic ITV trails for many years, normally voiced by a CA from the production station. Tyne Tees always used them until the early 90s, but some other regions nearly always made locally-branded versions.

EDIT: As jason explained much better than me above.

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/ia_itv81autpromoc6.jpg

An early ITV promotion! These promotions were mainly made by the likes of ATV (later Central), Thames, LWT & Granada.

Pic credit: Mark Boulton/MBVS

More here.... ITV Promos

ITV branded trailers have been around for many years, but they were usually made by the big 5, ie Thames, LWT, Granada, Central and Yorkshire, though it was not specific for one company to make them, they were made by these stations and were sent out to other regions usually. So say for instance if you go on a pres site, you may see an ATV Trailer, but also see an ITV Trailer in the same style. If you've been hovering around MHP PP recently, there was a file with a promo for Mexico 86, which was promoting ITV Sport, clearly made by LWT, as the game promoted fell on a Sunday, LWT also used the same style (See LWT pages on TV Ark for that) and most of ITV Sport output at that time came from LWT.

The same goes for Christmas on ITV in the old days, usually all of the promo making was down to Thames or LWT, who would send out promos and even ID's to other regions. Though I'm certain Granada did it in 1987, as their graphics and promos were sent out to other regions such as HTV and Anglia, from what I have seen on Video and on the Net.

I don't know when the NPU was set-up, but more appeared across the late 1990's, when UNM was getting strong, and probably after Granada bought up Yorkshire-Tyne Tees.

The ITV-branded trailers seemed to peter out around 1992 or so when ITV stations seemed to become more stridently regional than ever before in terms of pushing themselves as say "YTV" or "Central" as opposed to ITV, somewhat ironic given what happened in later years.

Certainly between 1993 and 1997 there did not appear to be any set style for ITV trails; apart from Channel I can't think of a single station who wasn't making their own independent promos during this time (even tiny Border and Grampian were in on the act). As a result, the ITV trails that were made seemed to have no corporate form to them at all other than the ITV logo appearing. YTV did produce ITV-branded trails using their own graphics which were fairly consistent until 1994, when I think they were one of the last (along with Tyne Tees, who had by then abandoned their rebranding efforts) to brand more tightly. I guess that was due to the precarious financial position they were in at the time. Somewhat bizarrely, when TTTV were making their own trails they tended to take the true generic ITV trails and rebrand them rather than rebrand the ones YTV were making for themselves, but branded as ITV. Strange.

Then of course the NPU was formed, and the rest is history.

> The same goes for Christmas on ITV in the old days, usually all of the promo making was down to Thames or LWT, who would send out promos and even ID's to other regions. Though I'm certain Granada did it in 1987, as their graphics and promos were sent out to other regions such as HTV and Anglia, from what I have seen on Video and on the Net.

Yeah, in 1988 the graphics were Thames/LWT (the "ITV brings you the look of Christmas" campaign), and the programme menu and "coming next" slides were utilised by both Tyne Tees and YTV. TTTV rebranded them with their own logo; YTV used the standard "ITV" design.

In 87 TTTV's Christmas presentation did look suspiciously like Granada's.

Yep - Anglia and Meridian presentation was pretty much identical for both channels for trails, with a gap left for the Anglia flag or Meridian Sun - which I guess meant you could version the same trail for both regions pretty easily.

Westcountry had a similar oddity themselves. They refused to take any network promotion, instead making all their own trails from day 1 right up until the day that NPU trailers debuted. But the final set of in-house trails made in summer 1998 carried ITV branding (with the then current old ITV logo) rather than Westcountry branding, even though they were still locally made and would only air on Westcountry. They looked particularly odd when they were just simple re-edits of (Westcountry-branded) material introduced in autumn 1997 - eg the 'blue strap with W logo' which had been used as a DOG on trailers for all of Westcountrys life suddenly became a 'blue strap with ill-fitting ITV logo' for their final set of in house material.

That said, I still find it somewhat bizarre that 1993-1998, when the plot to create the shambles that is the ITV network (sorry, 'ITV1') today was firmly in play, also resulted in stations becoming more regionally branded than they ever were in the days when ITV truly was a regional network (TSW for instance, might have been big on keeping their own brand prominant, but they also wouldn't think twice about airing some generic 'on ITV' trailers to save on the expense of making their own).

Agreed. Of course, in 1997 I was actually rather pleased when the odd ITV reference came through -- anything was better than "Channel 3 NE". In fact I welcomed the network trailers with open arms, and the god-awful Granada "ITV" trailers that spilled over to the Eastern half of the Pennines in 1998 with Col Weston's voiceover livening things up.

Those Granada trails were terrible though. YTV had taken LWT's style, with an iffy font and some pleasant enough graphics. Granada dispensed with the graphics, and made a near-approximation to the font used on the YTV/LWT trails with basic, graphic-free astons that looked as if the caption generator used to produce them was at least 15 years old (they were fuzzy, pixellated and shimmery). TTTV was making a better effort 10 years previously.

Actually thinking about it, Granada's trails were always rubbish. The graphics were bland, the captions badly-defined and as often as not the picture quality was marginal as well. Anglia's weren't much better.

Granada have always been evil.

My head is spinning...

If ITV plc doesn't die, fold, or otherwise falter because of lack of regional content, or even good content, it'll do so by this endcap confusion!

I'm just glad GR/N/D/ (the franchisee) didn't go too far for its own produced programmes, branding their endcaps "Granada Granada"... I think somebody may have coined this shtick before...

At least, this madness hasn't been passed to SMG (Scottish & Grampian), Ulster Television, Channel Television, (or even my fictitious Yorkville Television, thank goodness) .

But it may be only a matter of time...