ITV Discussion Thread

Cavorting about somewhere tropical, if the application form is anything to go by.

ITV's 'people idents' haven't been spectacular in the past, so I'm not expecting much. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

So it's basically use a few viewers for free rather than pay a few models/actors for their appearances. I guess we knew it was coming but it'll be a shame to loose the current set - one of the few purely graphics based ident sets around nowadays.

A sort of scenic version of Carlton 1993, but full of blokes?

Well, they are paying to take a few 'blokes' to somewhere tropical in order to use them for the idents. Depending on whether or not ITVplc are also picking up the bar bill for the 'average ITV4 fan', then it may not work out cheaper than using professional models.

I am also quite fond of the current set!

Don't really get the tropical aspect - ITV4 is surely more of a disused industrial estate type of channel.

Presumably it involves exterior filming and so they're doing it somewhere with guaranteed sun and longer hours of light than the UK has at the moment.

Or at sports locations eg Roland Garros for a French Open ident.

Tropical? You mean Southport or Blackpool?

Does it actually matter?

Until the TV companies realise that the current UK approach to presentation is just about as uninteresting as it gets, all that'll happen is they'll continue to produce expensive, but ultimately tedious, station idents.

Someone needs to get creative. Reinventing Channel Four c1982 every time is rubbish. It was looking tired in 1989 with the original ITV generic ident set.

In some cases, the original is the best. Coca Cola has tweaked its logo, but never changed it. Levis Jeans have done the same, tweaked it, but never changed it. More a process of evolution than revolution. The 1982 C4 logo was superb, and remains so, and should never have been replaced.

With regards to ITV, they've had a few logos in the last 15 years. Yet, the 1989 rebrand was considered quite good at the time, as stated above. That said, not all ITv franchises used it, and if they had, it would've been more successful.

I think that the problem ITV has is simple, it doesn't have a logo that it can tweak. Once it gets said logo, it'll be a good one.

The Channel 4 logo is very much still with us, although the original idents have sadly long gone. Because of its longevity, pretty much everyone in the UK can recognise what it is instantly. The only surviving TV logo of any comparision is the BBC Two '2', which, bar a slight barely noticable alteration for the current idents, has been with us since 1991. I bet if you printed a black '2' out on a piece of paper and showed it to so many people, a majority would be able to tell you what it is. Brand continuity is important, in my opinion.

There's a very good reason why some regions didn't use it. Granada's was missing the line on the arrow. Anglia's had the colours of the triangles mixed up. TVS's and TSW's were unrecognisable, and TVS's flower logo was missing completely. In short, English Pockett, who made those idents, screwed up.