Well it's four years on October 28th since we waved goodbye to Maggie Mash,Bob Preedie and the rest of the Leeds team of announcers.
Four years on are we any better off .I remember when the Leeds team took over Border continuity and initially it was a shock to loose the personal touch of the local announcers .
However as time moved on i grew to realy like the Leeds announcers especially Mama Mash .They were quite quirky in their own way and did their best to provide continuity for the four GMG North regions.
At least Border still had a local idendity in those days so it wasn't so bad although the announcements were mostly generic.Now i feel ITV 1 is just very bland and boring.
What does everyone else feel about their region now. :roll:and do you think national continuity is a good thing.
Difficult really to say. ITV1 is bland now but then again it's more or less the same as any other station presentation-wise.
At least it isn't borderline-incompetent like the Leeds continuity was for many years. You lot in Borderland had it OK, local team for a very long time and by the time you got the Leeds rubbish, they'd mostly sorted themselves out (even if by "sorted" they really meant "removed any part of presentation that might go wrong from time to time, leaving a skeleton service").
ITV for me died on January 1st 1993. It dragged along offering a half-decent service for a few years afterwards, but by around 1999 it was flagging. Now it's a pale shadow, and no amount of spring-cleaning will fix it.
ITV for me died on January 1st 1993. It dragged along offering a half-decent service for a few years afterwards, but by around 1999 it was flagging. Now it's a pale shadow, and no amount of spring-cleaning will fix it.
They are thinkiing of changing its name to attempt to recover.
Well in Wales we kept our local announcers for 3 years longer than England. However the service after 28th October 2002 was sloppy to say the least with announcements recorded at Cardiff and being played out from the South Bank, often the announcements would cut off before the end.
Now we still get the word Wales on all idents and break bumpers and the announcer will occasionally mention the word Wales in the annoucement (although 95% of the time we get the same announcement as the network) usually when a regional programme is coming up e.g. "in half an hour on ITV1 Wales xyz will be looked at in Wales This Week, first though its Coronation Street"
I agree that ITV really changed and went downhill a bit from January 1993 - for a start on HTV Wales they axed the in vision announcements.
Even if they do change the name, they will never really get rid of itv, as still now many people, myself included, refer to itv1 as simply itv. Also in a conversation, very few people think of itvs other channels when you say, "I was watching itv and..."
Although we don't see regional idents that often, it would be nice, if when we do see them, if itv greater acknowledged the regions. They could at least make the text bigger, or use regional pictures.
As the technology exists to add the region's name to idents as they are played out, they should be added as a matter of course on all programmes.
The font size needs to be increased significantly, as it is currently far too small.
Regional News Centres should be provided with a selection of pre-voiced idents for use before the main 6pm programme. These would be played out locally to ensure that mistakes are not made. The current policy of no pre-programme idents on 6pm programmes makes for poor presentation, and is so easily remedied.
On the few remaining days where there are regional ops, the link into Emmerdale at 7pm should be locally voiced, even if it is by one of the news presenters that are on the 6.55pm heads. This should include promotion of any regional programmes on later that evening.
It would take so little to improve ITV's regional strength, one must conclude that ITV is deliberately not promoting any regional programmes because it does not want to get anyone viewing them. Not only do regional programmes often begin with a "Network" ident, frequently there is no mention of what programme is about to start, or any promotion of the programme prior to its transmission.
Indeed -- when the London system first started, regional trails were still commonplace.
That this has ended must surely be a policy decision -- from which one can only conclude that ITV want rid of all regional commitment.
Of course, that hardly comes as a surprise.
I just wish ITV would be honest and come clean -- close the whole lot down, now.
And watch the backlash.
By closing the whole lot by stealth, ITV show what a bunch of hypocrites they are when they refer to themselves as the only truly regional network etc etc.
As an aside, I've taken to calling the station Tyne Tees when speaking of it positively, and ITV otherwise.
I haven't seen a regional trail, promo or PSA in about 3 years now, outside the local news.
I think 3 years is a bit of an exaggeration but the only time you see regional trailers on Yorkshire is after Calendar News at 10.55am and after the Calendar News bulletins at weekends
Trailer voiceover man Pete Haslam stopped working for YTV about a year ago and all the trailers are now voiced by Calendar presenters
.I remember when the Leeds team took over Border continuity and initially it was a shock to loose the personal touch of the local announcers .
.They were quite quirky in their own way and did their best to provide continuity for the four GMG North regions.