Gripes and notes about Meridian TV

Meridian Broadcasting, all-round is a great broadcaster, with good local programmes, however, and it fails and succeeds in various areas...

1. Meridian seem to have an inability to pause a still image so that it isnt slightly jumping. For instance, the last advert in a bunch of adverts - the end frame is slightly jumpy, and as a result, the small print on adverts is often unreadable.

2. They have too many black fade-in/out gaps between logos, trailers etc - when going straight into each other a la Channel 4 is a lot smoother for presentation purposes IMHO.

3. This weekend, the changed their 'Next' sequence. Previously they have the TV theme tune (of, say Coronation St) in the background with a box image of scenes from the programme, moving hearts in the background, the name of the next programme, and the announcer - they have changed this to simply a whole screen of moving hearts (havent see it before) and the announcer simply talks.

4. Also, its has begun to brand the Meridian region alot more recently, more news programmes, its politcal programme, and even announcers mention 'Meridian' a lot more - rather than ITV - and even before Stars in their Eyes this week, the announcer said 'and good luck to June Farley (or whatever) who is from the Meridian region, who is competing tonight..' etc.

5. There is an increase in TV trailers being att he end of the adverts (within a programme), although i expect this to be the case in most ITV regions.

6. It puts its logo absoutely everywhere now, and promoting of their web-site is incredibly intense, and I have seen little stuff with ITV's network web-site on. Local TV trailers, the news programme, other programmes, short 'local life' snippets, and all that stuff, contain the web site address... Simiarly, the logo in always in the bottom left hand corner throughout the news programmes, like Sky and others.

7. The announcers are more chatty, trying to be more friendly.

Any other observations about Meridian, or indeed other broadcasters? Is this intended to be a latent re-branding of the regionality of ITV?



They are quite fortunate in that the four key-notes of ITV's theme tune (the last four), are the same as its orignal theme tune, albeit in a diffeent format.

Bring back TVS.
Well, if you can find it, I don't think it exists anymore.

Ahhh, so those blank moving hearts have extended down here then have they? I've not spotted them yet.

Of course, the best way to brand their station is to have proper regional idents with a full colour big version of their logo but I'm probably now starting to sound like a broken record....

Cheers, Asa

Just for the record, the hearts Next caption thing has suddenly appeared on Anglia. It's probably the orders of Granada TV

Just for the record, the hearts Next caption thing has suddenly appeared on Anglia. It's probably the orders of Granada TV

Well in the Yorkshire region, we haven't got it, excepted the networked ones!

Here's an idea for the ITV next captions: why not superimpose the text over the hearts like Carlton and UKTV do? You wouldn't necessarilly need an announcer, maybe the overnight music. I think that would look quite nice.

That's what we mean - blank hearts next caption.

Asa

Strange that you should say that it's the orders of Granada, because we don't use them much. In fact, I've only ever seen it twice, to promote the Emmerdale website (not the website hearts, the proper full screen hearts, minus text).
That's if that was the one. It wasn't smoky hearts though, it was spinny round ones. They were metallic ones with a blue background I think. Is that the right one? They are very nice!

Interestingly, an internal memo to all employees of Carlton regarding ITV-Digital / ITV.com etc.. included this question and answer:

Will the Carlton brand disappear?
No. However we should see a more prominent and consistent presentation of the ITV brand across the network.

Let's hope that means the team behind Carlton get to work on new idents for the network. 'TV from the heart of life'?! - get rid of it!

Cheers, Asa

I agree with DAS. Why not have text telling viewers what's coming up next/later, together with the logo of the ITV Company, and their website URL address, superimposed over the hearts background.

It would look better than just seeing the rotating 'hearts' background at some junctions, which I understand most of the Granada owned ITV regions, including Anglia are using occasionally.

Here in the Granada region we NEVER get ' coming up next ' for ANY regional programmes only networked ones. Reason? same announcer nattering to Granada, Yorkshire and Tyne Tees viewers at the same time over the end credits of a networked programme.
Soon I bet the same announcers will cover all GMG stations from Leeds. Should be fun for them at junctions.