ITV Discussion Thread

apart from the massive axes to ITV Regional News!

Well a day it seems.
They don't seem to be being used today for some reason.
Have they suddenly become ashamed of it or something

I remember when ITV2 won Digital Channel of the Year, they let people know about it for ages. Same with BBC Four. I think both those channels added a tagline to their idents as well (could be wrong though)

I think this fits in here. I've never seen this end caption before. It was used on an episode of Gladiators from 1999. Is there an interesting story behind this or did ITV just see it as a nice/cheap way to advertise onDigital?

I think and only Think it was a one off programme produced by Granada/LWT for a channel called First On Digital, in a way to lure subscribers, there was also an episode of Emmerdale where the Dingles go to Italy and that was also shown on the same channel, but it did get a VHS release at the time.

Although I think the channel became On Sport 1 as time progressed, the channel's content was produced by ITV Sport as the only thing they showed was the UEFA Champions League, for which ITV had exclusive coverage to at that time.

Nice HQ/16:9 cap there too.

Does the Chief Executive need to ?

It's the balance sheet that needs addressing along with the amount of outdated and punitive regulation imposed on the broadcaster. Arguably on screen things have been improving, and Peter Fincham seems to be sorting out that side of things.

Crozier, as former chief exec of the FA, might also be useful when it comes to negotiating on the football contracts - if ITV are in a position to re-bid.

The last series of Gladiators, which was only four episodes long, was shown first on First ONDigital before it turned up on ITV, not that anyone saw it. First ONDigital was a sort of preview channel, I know quite early on they did Best of British Fortnight where every day one channel would supply a day's programming, so UK Gold did a day of Only Fools and Horses repeats, and so on. I can't remember what else was on there, it was mostly ITV stuff, I think an episode of Hornblower might have premiered on there.

The Champions League, initially, was on two channels called Champions On 28 and Champions On 99, which only opened for the matches. Then they became ONSport 1 and ONSport 2 because they got tennis as well, although ONSport 2 was only on air on Tuesday nights and was just replaced Carlton Cinema for three hours. At Christmas 1999 it became The Christmas Channel and they showed Cirque De Soliel and a Pavarotti concert on there. Finally when it became ITV Digital they became ITV Sport and ITV Sport Plus (the overflow), but they kept ONSport going for another fortnight or so because they had some tennis left to show.

I couldn't help but notice in HMV earlier a DVD release of The Royle Family: The Golden eggcup, and it appears that ITV DVD is now ITV Studios Home Entertainment, sounds very American.

It's been that for quite a while... ITV DVD has become ITV Studios Home Entertainment...



Whilst the international arm of ITV DVD has become ITV Studios Global Entertainment.



Pictures courtesy of ITV Branding

I suppose I'm just harking back to the terrible Charles Allen era again.

I have seen some odd versions of this LWT endcap (the most oddest one being the "LWT/Granada Co-Production" one where an embossed Granada "G" is superimposed over the top of the endcap) however this is the first time I've ever seen this, thanks for the image.

Oh how I wish LWT's branding was still in use instead of the recent ITV 1 stuff

It will be interesting to see what ITV do with Popstar To Opera Star. The ratings haven't been great but they've been better than most of their efforts in that slot since the January 2008 revamp. Their only real success has been Benidorm. I don't think it has taken off exactly how they planned, but it hasn't exactly sunk either getting more or less 4m viewers each week. I guess it just comes down to costs.

On the subject of the show, I think it has actually been quite good (although I've only watched the last 3 shows since CBB ended). Bernie was my favourite but Darius was definitely the best tonight and deserved the win. Katherine was proof that shes the touch of death during a finalist duet. Its the second time she has done a duet with the favourite to win, only for them not to (Rhydian in X Factor too)

So third time lucky then for Darius.