AN
Sorry, but nothing beats 'This is Channel 3 North East, Tyne Tees Television.'
Or "A Tyne Tees Television Presentation for Channel 3 North East" that appeared on some endcaps, whatever that was about I don't know, why not just "A Channel 3 North East Presentation". This of course back in the day when every programme was 'presented' by the region
Andrew
Founding member
Jonny posted:
Square Eyes posted:
"Your watching Yorkshire Television on Channel 3" 
Sorry, but nothing beats 'This is Channel 3 North East, Tyne Tees Television.'
Or "A Tyne Tees Television Presentation for Channel 3 North East" that appeared on some endcaps, whatever that was about I don't know, why not just "A Channel 3 North East Presentation". This of course back in the day when every programme was 'presented' by the region
:-(
A former member
Or the nasty "T Y N E T E E S" "logo" they made for network programming -- illustrating the complete creative bankruptcy of the whole Channel 3 thing.
YTV will have taken one look at their variant and burst out laughing. Which begs the question -- why on Earth were NE viewers subjected to it?
The really daft thing about the "Tyne Tees Television production for C3NE" thing was that TTTV never even bothered with the presentation slide before the takeover. It was a pointless relic that should have been abandoned years before -- TTTV's equivalent (frontcap ident before a film etc) had been scrapped around 1986.
And in any case, if anything it was a Yorkshire presentation for C3NE -- TTTV had nowt to do with it.
YTV will have taken one look at their variant and burst out laughing. Which begs the question -- why on Earth were NE viewers subjected to it?
The really daft thing about the "Tyne Tees Television production for C3NE" thing was that TTTV never even bothered with the presentation slide before the takeover. It was a pointless relic that should have been abandoned years before -- TTTV's equivalent (frontcap ident before a film etc) had been scrapped around 1986.
And in any case, if anything it was a Yorkshire presentation for C3NE -- TTTV had nowt to do with it.
BU
Interesting stuff - so before Granada TX closed down the announcers somehow had a hand in providing pre-records for Tyne Tees, presumably from Manchester and played out from Leeds? GMG certainly knew how to complicate things in those days...
jason posted:
No -- the day YTV got rid of the 3s from its ident was the same day that Granada, YTV and TTTV started to once again use ITV-branded trailers (March 1998) with locally-branded trailers that closely matched the ITV ones being used side-by-side. At this point, TTTV were still called C3NE and local trailers had the italic "3" in a grey box. These trailers didn't have any real branding on them -- they were locally produced by YTV (and a few Granada ones V/O'd by the like of Colin Weston and Charles Foster) and programmes were referred to as being "on ITV". At this point we had a curious situation where YTV had their own, live anno, and TTTV received a recorded Granada announcer rather than the YTV one. Colin back on Tyne Tees -- bliss! Sadly that didn't last...
About two months later (May 1998) the C3NE name was finally dropped, and the aforementioned "3" was simply replaced with the TTTV.
A few months later Granada's continuity department closed. At that point we started getting some (very good) Central- or Carlton-sourced trails during the week (these had a plain white ITV logo rather than the grey one YTV preferred), alongside LWT- and YTV-sourced ones (these still had the grey ITV logo for a few weeks before changing) -- anyone know if the Carlton regions also got these?
Then finally in August these finished, and all trails came from the new London-based centre.
EDIT: post compiled before SE's -- but I think I covered that post's questions.
Thinking about it, YTV only started locally-branded trails in late 1994. This means that they only actually produced them locally for a little over three years.
About two months later (May 1998) the C3NE name was finally dropped, and the aforementioned "3" was simply replaced with the TTTV.
A few months later Granada's continuity department closed. At that point we started getting some (very good) Central- or Carlton-sourced trails during the week (these had a plain white ITV logo rather than the grey one YTV preferred), alongside LWT- and YTV-sourced ones (these still had the grey ITV logo for a few weeks before changing) -- anyone know if the Carlton regions also got these?
Then finally in August these finished, and all trails came from the new London-based centre.
EDIT: post compiled before SE's -- but I think I covered that post's questions.
Thinking about it, YTV only started locally-branded trails in late 1994. This means that they only actually produced them locally for a little over three years.
Interesting stuff - so before Granada TX closed down the announcers somehow had a hand in providing pre-records for Tyne Tees, presumably from Manchester and played out from Leeds? GMG certainly knew how to complicate things in those days...
SP
Indeed. I remember first coming to University in Leeds in the last week of September in 1994 and was surprised to see YTV still using the 1989 ITV generic ident (albeit their re-edit). I suppose you could argue having ITV branded trails did make some sense given the big ITV logo in the idents.
A week later, and it was all change, with locally branded trails and this rather lovely package of idents.
jason posted:
Thinking about it, YTV only started locally-branded trails in late 1994. This means that they only actually produced them locally for a little over three years.
Indeed. I remember first coming to University in Leeds in the last week of September in 1994 and was surprised to see YTV still using the 1989 ITV generic ident (albeit their re-edit). I suppose you could argue having ITV branded trails did make some sense given the big ITV logo in the idents.
A week later, and it was all change, with locally branded trails and this rather lovely package of idents.
:-(
A former member
> Interesting stuff - so before Granada TX closed down the announcers somehow had a hand in providing pre-records for Tyne Tees, presumably from Manchester and played out from Leeds? GMG certainly knew how to complicate things in those days...
Yup, very convoluted. Does anyone remember the dual-announcer setup they had in Leeds for a short while -- when they first closed Granada TX a couple of the Granada announcers were added to the YTV set (Roger Tilling and that Scottish woman, don't recall her name). But because they didn't want recorded announcers on Granada, they came up with a weird setup:
* All voiceovers over the end of programmes were voiced by the designated YTV announcer to all three regions.
* The YTV announcer would introduce programmes to the YTV region live, the Granada one to Granada, and TTTV would either get a recorded announcement mentioning the TTTV name from one or the other (usually the YTV one but not always), unless
* if only one station needed a regional announcement (for example promotion of a local programme), then they would get one or other live announcer, and the other two would get a live, unbranded announcement from the other anno.
This was actually touted as a feature at first, but I only recall it lasting a few weeks. Very odd to be getting as many as five different announcers over the course of two hours on Tyne Tees (Granada daytime, YTV daytime, Granada/YTV evening, plus the recorded Jonathan Morrell anno for NE Tonight).
Both of these annos were based at Leeds, in neighbouring booths as far as I know. Absolute madness -- and all because Granada had been reluctant to allow recorded anno cockups to go out in the NW -- although once again why it was OK to comprehensively mess up TTTV once again heaven alone knows.
Yup, very convoluted. Does anyone remember the dual-announcer setup they had in Leeds for a short while -- when they first closed Granada TX a couple of the Granada announcers were added to the YTV set (Roger Tilling and that Scottish woman, don't recall her name). But because they didn't want recorded announcers on Granada, they came up with a weird setup:
* All voiceovers over the end of programmes were voiced by the designated YTV announcer to all three regions.
* The YTV announcer would introduce programmes to the YTV region live, the Granada one to Granada, and TTTV would either get a recorded announcement mentioning the TTTV name from one or the other (usually the YTV one but not always), unless
* if only one station needed a regional announcement (for example promotion of a local programme), then they would get one or other live announcer, and the other two would get a live, unbranded announcement from the other anno.
This was actually touted as a feature at first, but I only recall it lasting a few weeks. Very odd to be getting as many as five different announcers over the course of two hours on Tyne Tees (Granada daytime, YTV daytime, Granada/YTV evening, plus the recorded Jonathan Morrell anno for NE Tonight).
Both of these annos were based at Leeds, in neighbouring booths as far as I know. Absolute madness -- and all because Granada had been reluctant to allow recorded anno cockups to go out in the NW -- although once again why it was OK to comprehensively mess up TTTV once again heaven alone knows.
CW
I think it was particularly odd for the '3' idea to be introduced as late as it was.
Fair enough, in 1990 the incoming ITC wanted to push 'Channel 3' as the preferred brand for the network and for the ITV name to die a death. If YTTTV had introduced the Channel 3 branding at the start of the new contracts in 1993 then fair enough - regardless of the rights and wrongs of it they would only be trying to corporatise in the way the ITC wanted. Instead, YTV actually retained the old generic look for a couple more years and TTTV had another totally unique presentation package made.
By the time they finally decided to try the '3' idea in 1996, all of the 'big 5' producers except YTV had made it quite clear that they had no intention of letting the ITV brand die, so surely even before it's introduction it should have been clear that it was never going to work because the rest of the network would never follow them.
But if they were determined to do it anyway, surely there should have been absolute parity between Yorkshire and Tyne Tees. Either *both* stations should have been dual-branded like YTV or *both* stations should have been de-branded like TTTV. As it was, YTV was made uber-regional (even the classic jingle was revived after 8 years of absence) leaving 'Channel 3' more or less TTTV's exclusive brand name...which seemed pointless when 'Channel 3' was supposed to unify things and elements of the Tyne Tees brand still hung around.
It's a shame that the whole thing was so badly handled, because much of the presentation set itself is very nice even if it's a bit dated now (I *love* the C3NE jingle, even if it is stock music - much better than the non-descript noise accompanying the grey thing). I can see some graphic designer somewhere making a lovely co-ordinated presentation set to brand YTV and Tyne Tees as one, and then watching his vision get slowly dismantled into a farce as the lack of parity between the two halves of YTTTV increasingly asserted itself onto the project before the material made it to air.
Now moving to the other extreme, Carlton seemed to care more about the ITV brand than their own. Even their very first ident set had a 'part of the ITV Network' variant featuring a gigantic 1989 ITV logo (only ever surpassed in size by the actual corporate idents). Later ident sets featured edits which only briefly displayed Carlton's brand name before moving to a full screen ITV logo - even Central's re-edits had an ident like this.
Carlton even pre-empted the 2002 corporate rebrand by several months, with frequent 'on ITV1' announcements used during the summer of 2002 even though every station using the Carlton brand still at that time had it's own dedicated continuity team (sadly also the very last Westcountry link, bringing to an end 41 years of continuity from Plymouth, was simply some duty announcer proclaiming 'now on ITV1 <insert programme name>').
And with regards to trailers, within a year of owning Westcountry they had implemented a policy change dictating that, although Westcountry could still make all it's own trailers (I think Carlton and Central shared by this point), they had to use the ITV brand name and plug www.itv.co.uk, making Westcountry probably the only station ever to produce trailers exclusively for use in their own region, still very much in their own corporate style, but were not actually allowed to brand them with their own station name or plug their own website (which they did briefly have in the late 1990's - in fact even today you still see the odd @westcountry.co.uk email address bandied about). AIUI when they bought HTV although they did leave the brand name on screen they did nevertheless mandate an end to all HTV-branded trailers in favour of only having ITV branded ones the same as their 3 other stations.
In later years, trailers for regional programmes on Carlton-owned stations were all faithfully done in current network corporate style using only ITV/ITV1 branding whilst the Granada owned stations still did their own thing.
cwathen
Founding member
Quote:
Or the nasty "T Y N E T E E S" "logo" they made for network programming -- illustrating the complete creative bankruptcy of the whole Channel 3 thing.
YTV will have taken one look at their variant and burst out laughing. Which begs the question -- why on Earth were NE viewers subjected to it?
YTV will have taken one look at their variant and burst out laughing. Which begs the question -- why on Earth were NE viewers subjected to it?
I think it was particularly odd for the '3' idea to be introduced as late as it was.
Fair enough, in 1990 the incoming ITC wanted to push 'Channel 3' as the preferred brand for the network and for the ITV name to die a death. If YTTTV had introduced the Channel 3 branding at the start of the new contracts in 1993 then fair enough - regardless of the rights and wrongs of it they would only be trying to corporatise in the way the ITC wanted. Instead, YTV actually retained the old generic look for a couple more years and TTTV had another totally unique presentation package made.
By the time they finally decided to try the '3' idea in 1996, all of the 'big 5' producers except YTV had made it quite clear that they had no intention of letting the ITV brand die, so surely even before it's introduction it should have been clear that it was never going to work because the rest of the network would never follow them.
But if they were determined to do it anyway, surely there should have been absolute parity between Yorkshire and Tyne Tees. Either *both* stations should have been dual-branded like YTV or *both* stations should have been de-branded like TTTV. As it was, YTV was made uber-regional (even the classic jingle was revived after 8 years of absence) leaving 'Channel 3' more or less TTTV's exclusive brand name...which seemed pointless when 'Channel 3' was supposed to unify things and elements of the Tyne Tees brand still hung around.
It's a shame that the whole thing was so badly handled, because much of the presentation set itself is very nice even if it's a bit dated now (I *love* the C3NE jingle, even if it is stock music - much better than the non-descript noise accompanying the grey thing). I can see some graphic designer somewhere making a lovely co-ordinated presentation set to brand YTV and Tyne Tees as one, and then watching his vision get slowly dismantled into a farce as the lack of parity between the two halves of YTTTV increasingly asserted itself onto the project before the material made it to air.
Quote:
After Carlton replaced Central I can't remember ever seeing a Carlton trailer, even local trailers were named as being on ITV or subsequently ITV1 in my mind.
Now moving to the other extreme, Carlton seemed to care more about the ITV brand than their own. Even their very first ident set had a 'part of the ITV Network' variant featuring a gigantic 1989 ITV logo (only ever surpassed in size by the actual corporate idents). Later ident sets featured edits which only briefly displayed Carlton's brand name before moving to a full screen ITV logo - even Central's re-edits had an ident like this.
Carlton even pre-empted the 2002 corporate rebrand by several months, with frequent 'on ITV1' announcements used during the summer of 2002 even though every station using the Carlton brand still at that time had it's own dedicated continuity team (sadly also the very last Westcountry link, bringing to an end 41 years of continuity from Plymouth, was simply some duty announcer proclaiming 'now on ITV1 <insert programme name>').
And with regards to trailers, within a year of owning Westcountry they had implemented a policy change dictating that, although Westcountry could still make all it's own trailers (I think Carlton and Central shared by this point), they had to use the ITV brand name and plug www.itv.co.uk, making Westcountry probably the only station ever to produce trailers exclusively for use in their own region, still very much in their own corporate style, but were not actually allowed to brand them with their own station name or plug their own website (which they did briefly have in the late 1990's - in fact even today you still see the odd @westcountry.co.uk email address bandied about). AIUI when they bought HTV although they did leave the brand name on screen they did nevertheless mandate an end to all HTV-branded trailers in favour of only having ITV branded ones the same as their 3 other stations.
In later years, trailers for regional programmes on Carlton-owned stations were all faithfully done in current network corporate style using only ITV/ITV1 branding whilst the Granada owned stations still did their own thing.
:-(
A former member
I suspect the issue with C3NE vs YTV was down to this.
YTV had got it into their head that TTTV needed to change. They ran a survey in the North East which confirmed that TTTV still had a very strong regional identity, but that it was seen as old fashioned (why that should be a problem if the company's image was very strong I'm not sure).
The whole C3 idea came out of that. Bill Steel decided to retire around the end of 1995 and with that, the decision was made to completely close the Newcastle operation.
YTV evidently vetoed their takeup of the C3 idea, but if it had been torpedoed for TTTV the whole process would have been in tatters. Hence they pressed on.
I've always thought that if they'd kept the IVC for about a year longer, there wouldn't have been nearly so much resentment in the North East towards the change. As it was, within a few months the friendly image was gone, we got a load of strange announcers, the old regional programmes all vanished and Mike Neville moved to Tyne Tees. To anyone who didn't know th politics, it would have seemed as if TTTV had closed and been replaced by this weird new station.
YTV had got it into their head that TTTV needed to change. They ran a survey in the North East which confirmed that TTTV still had a very strong regional identity, but that it was seen as old fashioned (why that should be a problem if the company's image was very strong I'm not sure).
The whole C3 idea came out of that. Bill Steel decided to retire around the end of 1995 and with that, the decision was made to completely close the Newcastle operation.
YTV evidently vetoed their takeup of the C3 idea, but if it had been torpedoed for TTTV the whole process would have been in tatters. Hence they pressed on.
I've always thought that if they'd kept the IVC for about a year longer, there wouldn't have been nearly so much resentment in the North East towards the change. As it was, within a few months the friendly image was gone, we got a load of strange announcers, the old regional programmes all vanished and Mike Neville moved to Tyne Tees. To anyone who didn't know th politics, it would have seemed as if TTTV had closed and been replaced by this weird new station.
AS
Indeed, I never was a fan of the previous version with the scenery - thought it was a bit boring although have a certain fondness for it now.
Always though there was nothing much better than just rotating the chevron. Anyway talking of trail designs, here's the wonderful inconsistency from August 1996 (the Emmerdale strap appearing throughout the trail!)
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail.jpg
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail2.jpg
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail3.jpg
A next slide:
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/ytvnext.jpg
And their final clock, ticking for only a few weeks longer I guess?
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/clock.jpg
There's a trail, ident and look at Calendar video in the YTV 40 thread.
Asa
Admin
Andrew posted:
Probably one of the best eras on Yorkshire. The chevron looks great compared to many of the flat plain yellow ones that had been used earlier or later. The Calendar opening titles that were used around the same time matched the ident fitted in well too
Indeed, I never was a fan of the previous version with the scenery - thought it was a bit boring although have a certain fondness for it now.
Always though there was nothing much better than just rotating the chevron. Anyway talking of trail designs, here's the wonderful inconsistency from August 1996 (the Emmerdale strap appearing throughout the trail!)
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail.jpg
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail2.jpg
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/trail3.jpg
A next slide:
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/ytvnext.jpg
And their final clock, ticking for only a few weeks longer I guess?
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/clock.jpg
There's a trail, ident and look at Calendar video in the YTV 40 thread.
AN
They had a clock during the spinning chevron era, you must remember, it featured 12 little chevrons
Did C3NE have one where it was always 3 minutes past 3 regardless of what the hands said!
Andrew
Founding member
Asa posted:
And their final clock, ticking for only a few weeks longer I guess?
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/clock.jpg
There's a trail, ident and look at Calendar video in the YTV 40 thread.
http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/clock.jpg
There's a trail, ident and look at Calendar video in the YTV 40 thread.
They had a clock during the spinning chevron era, you must remember, it featured 12 little chevrons
Did C3NE have one where it was always 3 minutes past 3 regardless of what the hands said!
NI
Lovely caps... thanks for sharing Asa. Love to see the "variations" in design on the trailers there! Although I loved the look YTV used at that time I do prefer the last proper ident package they had - from the Channel 3 era until the hearts in 1999 - the chevron looking at its best, IMO. The re-edited idents (following the Channel 3 scrapping), with a light sky backdrop for daytime and a navy blue backdrop for the vening, were my favourites.
CW
Although fairly innoffensive, and the dark blue background from the night version looked really classy, I would have thought they could have made a bit more of an effort; their solution for getting rid of the '3' logo was simply to cut out the animation alltogether and go straight to the 'holding stage' of the chevron spinning round. The ident therefore does nothing except spin around and around and around.
Granted, other brilliant idents have done that, but when 15 seconds of dramatic jingle accompanied it, falling to complete silence for the announcer to speak, it seemed a bit ridiculous that the visuals didn't do anything more interesting.
To me the effect was very cheap, even cheaper than the re-edited TTTV ident (the logo changing colour and the text animating on might not havve been much, but at least it was something).
Then, it probably suffered from the fact that it was almost certainly intended as a quick stop gap to use for a few months until the new ITV corporate idents appeared...except that they were delayed by more than a year and so the chevron spun itself silly for over 18 months.
cwathen
Founding member
BBCNicky posted:
Lovely caps... thanks for sharing Asa. Love to see the "variations" in design on the trailers there! Although I loved the look YTV used at that time I do prefer the last proper ident package they had - from the Channel 3 era until the hearts in 1999 - the chevron looking at its best, IMO. The re-edited idents (following the Channel 3 scrapping), with a light sky backdrop for daytime and a navy blue backdrop for the vening, were my favourites.
Although fairly innoffensive, and the dark blue background from the night version looked really classy, I would have thought they could have made a bit more of an effort; their solution for getting rid of the '3' logo was simply to cut out the animation alltogether and go straight to the 'holding stage' of the chevron spinning round. The ident therefore does nothing except spin around and around and around.
Granted, other brilliant idents have done that, but when 15 seconds of dramatic jingle accompanied it, falling to complete silence for the announcer to speak, it seemed a bit ridiculous that the visuals didn't do anything more interesting.
To me the effect was very cheap, even cheaper than the re-edited TTTV ident (the logo changing colour and the text animating on might not havve been much, but at least it was something).
Then, it probably suffered from the fact that it was almost certainly intended as a quick stop gap to use for a few months until the new ITV corporate idents appeared...except that they were delayed by more than a year and so the chevron spun itself silly for over 18 months.