ITV Discussion Thread

The ITV idents could be a lot better in my opinion.

Yes this brand is strong, but that's not saying too much really, is it. In my opinion, it's not as strong as the era that succeeded the 'celebrity' idents with the CGI stuff, and I'm inclined to even say it's not as strong as the celebrities idents.

While not to everyone's tastes, the celeb idents and whole package were all very polished. The ECPs were very nicely designed and the trailers were good too, with the four squares flying in to form the logo.

I'm really not feeling the current package, it all seems a bit all over the place and idents lack variety. As has been said before, is it really suitable for The X Factor to have an ident of a man on a rowing boat or a few fountains spurting around?

Moreover, the 'alive with colour' theme is quite nice but really it's just yellow we see, and it really begs the question: why? Why yellow, and more importantly why should we car? Most importantly though, what's the relevance of it?

I'd like to see some new idents, perhaps that are more creative with the ITV1 logo (the first set of new idents were very good at integrating the logo, the newer set just fades it in) and that ditch the 'alive with colour' scheme in favour of a variety of idents that give ITV1 a big, confident punchy feel.

For instance, one or two Saturday night idents - big, upbeat, bold idents with a glorious soundtrack that make you feel like you're part of an event; some drama idents, ranging from sombre and serious to exciting and compelling; a movie ident, which is just Hollywood-y and with a nice tweak to the ITV1 logo; and perhaps a clean, simple ident for introduction to the News - just the ITV1 logo, centred on a dark background with some interesting animation going on in the background, perhaps tailored for each bulletin slightly.

To be honest, I feel brand is extremely important to subliminally catch and hook viewers. A strong, appealing brand makes for a stronger channel, and now that ITV seems to have its programming under control with good commissions coming through, they can afford to spend a bit more money on improving the idents and stuff.

The ECP is a no brainer - unify it to one system! And most importantly, make the promotional graphics actually look good! The soap ECP graphics are horrific, especially the bright yellow 'next/then/later' slide. It hurts my eyes!

Well, BBC Four were the first to do it, and it became boring after a while. They probably sold off the software to S4/C.

Nope, it was created solely for S4/C by "Minivegas"

That's right; nothing was 'sold off' from BBC4 because the two are on very different levels - S4C's are voice-sensitive live action scenes which is a world first; BBC4 only used CG patterns.

Yes that's what I was thinking, they really need to reduce the soap output to allow more variety into the weekday schedules, however good to see they are going to put more effort into 60 minute dramas.

Not again.

I like the idents, but reading this I tend to agree they could be a lot better. The old idents had that emotion feel to it, and were easily the best idents that could fit with the genre of a programme. These current idents are just..idents. But saying that, seeing the BBC One Hippo's into Eastenders has nothing to do with Eastenders anyway, so the same goes for most channels I think. So as I was saying, I wouldn't scrap the 'Alive with Colour' idea, I'd just expand on it, because there are lots of different aspects to it, beacause basically it could be any scene, with the colour yellow somewhere in it!

The one thing I really dislike is the promo endboards and the Now/ Next /Later. With it having a black background, and then yellow lines moving along, it doesn't seem very 'Alive with Colour' and I'm sure they could come up with something better, I mean maybe a white background, with the yellow birds flying past, or the yellow flowers growing up the wall? Just anything that would fit in with the idents. BBC have that sorted, the circle animation is used, which is also used in their idents.

Overall I dont hate ITV1's current look, it could just be better with a few tweaks. I agree with Pad the celebrity idents were my favourite, and I think what made them a whole lot better was the music, I remember Ant and Dec/ Cat Deely had more energetic music - to suit with the programmes they presented, but then Mary Nightingale and Mark Austin had more slow and sombre music, to suit the news.

I suppose E4's new idents could be considered "alive with colour", but I guess they work better because the channel is so associated with it's purple colour scheme, unlike ITV1 and yellow.



BTW, BBC1's response to ITV1's Sunday revamp seems odd. Instead of bringing forward programmes to start at :50 and :20 as ITV1 are doing, they've bought them forward a further 10 minutes so they start at :40 and :10 - which means the viewers probably lose out even more.

The movement is actually a brilliant move for BBC. As Larkrise to Candleford is straight after The Antiques Roadshow, which got 7million last week, it should inherit most of the viewers, as most other channels will be half way through programmes. Also there will only be ten minutes left of DOI, so they'll have just about finished dancing and starting to tell you to vote for your favourite, so people will get bored and change channel. This is a brilliant for BBC One, if Antiques Roadshow finished at 7:50, people would think, oh Heartbeats on, and change channel.

Spot on. ITV1 just needs presentation with some balls to it. Everything is so bland and wishy-washy at the moment with that awful plodding music.

The idents currently set the mood for ITV1 as being bland and apologetic. They need to revisit the bold and brassy presentation of the likes of LWT and Central to make ITV1 feel like a channel that's proud of itself.

How is it that the old regional companies had a bigger identity compared to a national (well England and Wales) terrestrial network like ITV 1?

If you went to a strong ITV company area like Anglia or Granada and asked a selection of the public to remember the "logo" for their old ITV station you'd proabably get a good success rate.

Ask them if they can recall the current "alive with colour" symbol and I bet a good few would struggle.

Why can't we have something iconic like the Thames skyline or even, the LWT ribbons?

I guess with the old front caps and to a lesser extent the end caps each regions wanted a striking logo that people would remember - not just in their own region but also nationwide.


As others have said, since ITV became ITV1 the 4 squares is largely seen as the strongest identity - and I think alot of that is down to the fact that it was a logo, nut just the stations name in some stylised text or within a box. The 4 squares could be used on their own, without the station name - and the brand was all the strongest for it.