ITV Discussion Thread

That is very interesting, and I find that the male c/a's in the current ITV1 announcers are the better ones. Maybe it works the other way around too, that male voices in the day keep the ladies watching :S.

As for ITV1, looking back on 2006 I would have loved for them to have stuck with what they came up with, but intergrated the logo into it more with thing moving over the top of the logo, and lighting effects hitting it.

The sunnier look and the differing music made them feel a lot stronger in my personal opinion.

The Emotions idents were terribly executed but I agree that they did have some great audio, particularly the Pride soundtrack.

On this occasion I have to disagree with you buster. I just can't see how the current ITV1 idents can be described as classy. Yes, the visuals are vaguely interesting but the soundtrack is dire. Not to mention the bizarre change in logo size between idents and the new trail style which bears no resemblance to the other presentation. ITV1 has, in my opinion, a real dog's dinner of a presentation package that needs to be completely overhauled asap.

IMO the only decent package ITV1 has had since 2002 was the 2004-2006 era. Yes, the idents were hardly inspiring but everything linked together nicely and the channel didn't fell half as dull and tired as it does now.

None of this is surprising of course.

"ITV1" has no identity. The companies that came before had extremely strong identities, being as they were genuine pillars of the local community. What exactly does ITV1 have going for it?

A company in terminal decline, with a grotty reputation for questionable business practices and a dwindling number of legacy products holding them just about above water.

Name me one programme ITV has made in the last three years as a brand-new idea that has been a world-beater.

With that in mind, what do the creative minds have to hook into?

Such as?

The current look is very poor, it's not particularly interesting or exciting. More importantly it doesn't tell you anything about the channel - markets in india and basketball courts in America... what is that all about?

When you compare ITV1 with what channel 4 and five are doing between their programmes and adverts it's even more obvious. Five in particular have a great graphical style

The phone-in scandals for example?

2004-06 was very good, mainly because it was basic, it did a simple job (the original idea for the idents to use parts of the programmes was executed excellently in my opinion), and it could be used to mix in with all different promos, something that I quite liked about ITV how they hyped everything up with special presentation, even with that they don't seem to bother.

I did like 03-04 too as they were a much more polished version of 02-03, the blue and yellow sets worked much better than the originals, and it actually felt quite fresh, plus the moving squares backgrounds from this period was lovely.
Again this branding even though they used celebs, used them to promote their own programmes, and the channel through what sort of people have worked with ITV. It may not have been everyones cup of tea, but I think it worked quite well. Part of me would have even liked them to take it one step further and have the celebs interacting with the ITV1 logo. I suppose part of the strength to the celeb campaigns was the fact that even though they only had a few versions of the sets and music, the celebs and cuts were always different making a lot of choice for idents. And of course the 03-04 celeb idents didn't end with the blank expressions as they stared into the camera.

I think I would like to see them use the ITV1 logo on its own, and through a bit of CGI have it interacting with elements from a particular show (such as a cop car for the bill, etc.), or for different environments for different types of programmes.

I think the current brand is lacking any connection to its programming, and its audience, and because ITV1's audience is so diverse, connecting the idents and branding to the programmes would be the better thing to do, in my mind.

It's 7 days till the ITV2 rebrand yet not one bit of news has been released. I guess it's a waiting game to see what this new logo is all about.

ITV1's autumn highlights :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/13/itv.television

Variety returns to primetime?

Good news.

What ITV is another cheap and horrible rebrand, that should make the viewer (the ones that still watch ITV ofourse) turn away!

Isn't ITV2 still the most popular digital channel though?