ITV Network

I actually feel embarassed asking this question, because it's something I feel I should know.

But in the old days, before all the mergers, did each ITV station have a copy of *every* programme and play it out themselves? Or was there an ITV Network Centre that did some of the playout?

As i understand it, the network carried a clean feed of the programme being presented to the network at the time (complete with countdown clocks and so-on) and the regional transmission centres either took it in between their ads and local junctions, transmitted their own programmes, or timeshifted the netwok feed and played it later. The programme parts started at times agreed by all the companies. The ITV companies were linked by circuits which allowed them to sell their programmes to other companies ("a Central Production for ITV")or present their bought-in programmes or films to other companies ("a Central Presentation for ITV")

This kind if operation was fairly complicated and required a good deal of skill, planning and co-oridnation by all the companies, especially when you consider that in the hey-day of differing ITV station schedules, most presentation centres were fully manual operations. It's such a shame that market pressures have led to the curren situation where even though sophisticated multi-channel automation systems exist, ITV have one down the route where often only the ads differ.

Now I gather things have changed in that the network carries a generic ITV branded stream of programmes, trails and idents/continuity rather than a clean feed of only the programmes. The only thing missing from the network now is advertising.

ITV Networking arrangements have been in place since before everybody started merging with everybody else. This would have been the common network feed and I think its been available since the early 1980s if not earlier.

Prior to the franchise renewals of 1981, many companies bought each other's programmes and played them out themselves, hence why you used to be able to see, for example, Crossroads at 4:30pm in one region but not until 6:35pm somewhere else.

After 1982, came consolidation and as I understand it, the creation of the network feed as we know it today, though I think it would have only been used for programmes that needed to go out in all areas at the same time - ie the national news, peaktime programmes and so on.

As consolidation took effect on mainland England at least, many regions gave up on timeshifting, local playout and what not and just took a clean network feed as previously said, just playing out the idents and adverts locally. Eventually in 2002 this network feed became the full ITV feed where everything bar adverts and local news comes down it. These days even the adverts don't always come locally unless you live in London or Leeds.

This is all as I understand it, so I'm sure somebody can correct on anything I have wrong.

Very interesting. I always wanted to know how it worked. I have always found it fasinating to find that in years gone by programmes went out at different times in different parts of the country. Imagine if that happened now. When did it all stop?

The network feed itself has always existed in some form; there was never a time when the stations were completely cut off from their peers and unable to take a national feed (ITN News for instance, has always been nationally networked). Indeed, stock footage of Granada's launch in 1956 features an excited presenter announcing that they can see the network feed in the gallery, and other stations had their launch date put back because of delays in the GPO providing the network link to their station. How this feed was used changed little after the early 80's until 2002 when it stopped being a straight programme feed and started carrying ITV1 generic presentation too. Non-ITV plc stations have since got a clean feed back again, after the fiasco created when they had to work from a dirty feed.


Most stations had their schedules 'integrated' in the late 90's. This created the essence of the system we have now where there is a national schedule and fixed timeslots allocated for regional programming. However, some sort of vague national schedule (particularly for weekday evenings) had been in existance since the 70's and the number of 'regional variations' (the same programmes shown at different times in different regions) had been decreasing rapidly since the late 80's, when lengthy fixed blocks were introduced at certain times (This Morning and CITV spring to mind). Some programmes had particularly interesting variations between stations, like the epic Prisoner, shown by all stations but at different times, different days, different rates of airing, and different points of the series, with some stations being hundreds of episodes behind others. Furthermore, not all regions even saw the end of it - Westcountry was the last to finish in October 1997, whilst Carlton London, UTV and Meridian all dropped it over the next couple of years.

Night Time services got gradually rationalised over the years, eventually ending up with 2 main schedules which became then became one in 2002.

The last bastion of major regional variation, Sunday afternoons, disappeared from January 2003 when the ITC agreed to drastic cuts in regional programming.

Apparently though, the music on the ITV Nightscreen continues to vary depending on which region you're in, and of course UTV continue to be defiant and always timeshift the network programming at 5:30 in order to show an hour long local news programme.

Thanks for the further info. Very interesting. I think UFO and some other Gerry Anderson shows suffered from dodgy sceduling as well when they were orignally shown. It is suhc a shame there is no regional presenation anymore. Itr wouldn't be so bad if ITV 1 had a regional corporate presentation pakage with idents specific to your region. The yellow and blue is so boring.

Yep, the ITC Gerry Anderson sci fi shows were shunted all over the place by various stations. Rather ironically, despite ITC's association with ATV and to be firmly intended for airing on ITV in the UK, it actually took the BBC to do justice to them when they repeated them many years later.

Taking the brilliant Space: 1999 as an example, that programme was made in two blocks in 1974 and 1976. However, it's journey on ITV was so drawn out that some stations were still running episodes for the first time in 1980, some episodes never got aired, some stations freely mixed series 1 and series 2 episodes together (which really doesn't work when so much is different between them), and some stations never showed it at all. It didn't get a proper national airing in the correct order and in a regular timeslot until BBC2 showed it in 1998, almost 25 years after it's original production!


Accepting that the regional stations are gone (however much I might disagree with their demise), I do think it might be a good idea to brand regional programming with a regional ident. They do appear now to be moving towards the idea of 'ITV1' being the blanket name of the network, but with each block of programming having it's own style of presentation. At present, the day starts of with GMTV (I realise that GMTV is a separate franchise, but it will be perceived by many as being a block of programming), then ITV Day and then CITV. 'ITV1' is only used in the evenings and overnight. With the next rebrand, it appears on the cards that they might introduce another separate style for primetime, so why not at the same time allow regional programming to have it's own regional presentaiton and make that distinct too?

Only recently, stations were employed different branding for network and regional programming - YTV and Tyne Tees did until 2002, and the ex-Carlton stations did eventually get separate regional idents in 2003 (even though the resultant material was clearly designed firmly within the M25 - nowhere else would you get someone thinking "Westcountry. I know - lets take some non-descript footage of beaches and fields. That's regional"). Within Westcountry News, any programme promotion uses the 'ITV Westcountry' logo and is described as being 'on Westcountry' rather than 'ITV1'.

With this rebrand however, I think they do need to finally decide what will become of regional branding. At present it's not at all clear. Just when it was getting watered down and pushed more and more in the background, on the first day of the present ident sets introduction, for the first time in 5 years I suddenly saw an ident voiced over with 'and now on Westcountry' - and it was for a *network* programme. But even though regional idents of the present set exists, the generic version was shown. Later that evening, the regional slot was then introduced by 'You're watching ITV1, now...'. It's so inconsistant for things like this to be happening, seemingly with no logic behind them.

Something I've often wondered about, was whether in the 1980s the "network feed" was generated from London or were playouts from local centres and switched depending on who made the programme?

The reason I ask is that during programmes made by Tyne Tees for the Children's ITV strand, in the North East there was a definite transition between Central's feed and Newcastle, with the locally-generated playback of the programme being slightly ahead of the network feed. There'd often be a brief fade-to-black as the programme started which would not be present on other regions' output. It was as if the programme was being played out from Newcastle, taken by Central and relayed by them to the other regions, but TTTV were switching to the local feed presumably because it either saved money or the picture quality was slightly higher.

Anyone able to explain this anomaly?

ISTR that the network operation was originally more a switching exercise at the Post Office Tower than a play-out exercise - with the programme played out from a VTR from the region that made it?

In other words if Anglia made a network show, they'd play it down to the PO tower, who would then switch it on to the network feed for all stations to pick up? Anglia would, presumably, have had a choice between a clean local playout and a dirty network playout (with all the degradation a circuit to and from London will have introduced?). I would assume that this degradation got quite bad for a Scottish network play-out received back in Glasgow?

AIUI some regions required the PA who worked on the show to be present for the network playout?

On a related note, how did they actually pay for the production of programmes - especially high profile sports rights?

Did a company pitch a programme to the network, and then charge each region? For example when we hear that ITV had won certain rights, or signed a certain star, was it just the one region(s) that had done this, or did they form a collective company for such reasons?

So what happened for shows live Home and Away which used to be shown at 5:10 in UTV land and 6pm else where.

Home and Away was one of the last major examples of the old system. At some point in the day each region would tape the programme, and play it out locally at a time convenient for them, for example both Tyne Tees and Yorkshire would play H&A at 5.10, but TTTV would show it a little later to make room for the Birthday greetings which YTV didn't bother with.