ITV Network Rebrand

The historical province/kingdom (whatever) of "Ulster" lies partly in the modern day Republic of Ireland. So, using the word "Ulster" as a similie for "Northern Ireland" is/was never geographically accurate.

I would imagine that it was this factor that eventually lead to an attitude of avoiding calling NI "Ulster" (In the early 1990s, not only did Ulster Television abbreviate to "UTV" and start to avoid mentioning the full words that the letters stand for, but also the BBC changed "Inside Ulster" to "Newsline").

So, even under SMG, I doubt that any name mentioning the full word "Ulster" would have resurfaced.

That was always my understanding of the change to UTV. The main problem if ITV plc bought it is that they couldn't call it "ITV1 UTV" for the same reason that "ITV1 HTV" was discarded as being confusing.

I suppose the only reasonable name would have to be "ITV1 NI" ??

Think that might upset BBC, as they are BBC 1&2 NI over here

Just some news on the new ITV idents. If anyone has watched Jump London or Jump Britain of C4 you may of know of a new urban sport of free-running or parkour. Anyway the UK's biggest following website (http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/) has the following



I wonder if this ident will be for ITV1 or ITV2?

I realised that before I suggested it, but I don't think BBC can claim any monopoly on the abbreviation. In fact, it would bring it into line with BBC1/2 Wales and ITV1 Wales being "similarly" named now.

Interesting. Sounds very BBC-esque, with the whole skateboarding and tumbler idents. Hope it airs on BBC One, I know a couple of people who are obsessed with this whole "parkour" craze, it's certainly compelling to watch, if anyone's seen Jump London/Britain.

Well, the BBC had that bloke jumping around London for their first "The ONE" campaign soon after the dancers were bought in.

I had a look on the website to find out what you were all going on about. I don't want to seem a kill-joy , but this sounds like a very dangerous activity and not suitable for a main channel ident. I remember the original "THE ONE" trailer some time ago, and it just used to make me feel sick (I have a terrible fear heights after a near accident when rock climbing some years ago ).

I am sure I'm not alone......fear of heights is a very common condition, however irrational it may seem when you are simply watching something on TV. I feel like I am gettting a panic attack even when watching a stunt in a film that I know is just made using CSO. I have to switch over as soon as anything like that comes on because it just ruins whatever I was watching.

Surely the point of an ident is to keep people watching the channel, not force some to turn off (however small that percentage might be).

EDIT: This is the sort of image I mean (from www.urbanflow.com)
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/4_copy1.jpg

No offence but I'm afraid you are in the minority if you have to switch off a film when a stunt starts in fear of having a panic attack.

This makes you sound a bit of a wuss. No offence. It's an ident.

Ulster would never return becuase of UTVs position of their audience over in the ROI and fears it would alienate them. If it did get re-named it would probably become NI or Northern Ireland, but then no one really knows whats happening.

As of next year there's only one other programme that's made that's not Insight / UTV live and that's RPM but no one knows if that will last another year as the Director of Television goes into his last year and is due to leave at the end of 2006, so what happens after that no one knows. I'd say if anything about a sale will happen it would be there.

UTV still do television, just not shown on UTV The Kickboxing in the Ulster Hall last night was completely produced via UTVs OB trucks for Eurosport and still do alot of GAA work for RTE so they still have a good production team and aren't planning any redundancies.

As to idents, expect the same quality stuff in January. I've also been told that the snowy scene ident was a last minute job, filmed during the heavy snow at the end of November!

Peter:
"As of next year there's only one other programme that's made that's not Insight / UTV live and that's RPM but no one knows if that will last another year as the Director of Television goes into his last year and is due to leave at the end of 2006, so what happens after that no one knows. I'd say if anything about a sale will happen it would be there."

There's a nature series presented by Brian Black starting in January next week, and apparently a new project featuring Gerry Kelly.

"UTV still do television, just not shown on UTV The Kickboxing in the Ulster Hall last night was completely produced via UTVs OB trucks for Eurosport and still do alot of GAA work for RTE so they still have a good production team and aren't planning any redundancies."

Hmm, if ITV4/Men and Motors had the rights to live kickboxing, I wonder if they would have taken UTV coverage of the event? From the highlights shown on UTV Live last night UTV's coverage looked quite impressive - I don't doubt that UTV have the facilities to provide live OBs for local or network TV, even network studio productions - it's just giving them the chance to do so.

"As to idents, expect the same quality stuff in January. I've also been told that the snowy scene ident was a last minute job, filmed during the heavy snow at the end of November!"

When I first saw the ident, I thought they might have been stock scenes filmed years ago edited together to make an ident, and that the first show zooming in to Belfast was touched up by the graphics department, nice to hear it was actually real footage.