ITV presentation refresh in the New Year

UTV as a name for the news, with ITV generic branding for the rest? Possible. I wonder if Julian Simmons and the continuity team will be eased out too? You get the feeling deep down ITV would love to simply subsume UTV into ITV generic branding as a whole, however being Northern Ireland based and all the baggage that brings makes it much harder for them.

Beyond the Backstop?

ITV News Channel TV is even more ridiculous, so keeping the UTV name for news certainly seems a possibility. Nonetheless, I think the UTV brand is here to stay for a good few years - perhaps until the next major rebrand.

I still don't see any evidence that ITV is looking to rebrand UTV.

I think we do the people of NI a disservice if we think their reaction to the loss of UTV trails and idents would be any different to the reaction of people in England and Wales all those years ago. Or indeed to the people of the north of Scotland when Grampian went.

Yes, some will dislike change. But what really matters is the range and strength of the local output.

UTV already carries some ITV branded sponsorship bumpers, apparently without controversy.

Would many really care about ITV trails and idents in connection with the network output?

Local announcers could easily stay to ease the transition.

The big change on UTV happened when the announcers went out of vision and ITV-esque branding appeared.

The good people of NI have far more serious things to worry about just now. The worst that would happen would be s couple of critical articles in the local press.

The black end credits of I'm a Celeb really jarring tonight IMO - weren't they one of the shows that previously got away with something different? So much atmosphere in the few seconds before they cut to black and quickly faded out the cheering. Because of timing it meant you also didn't see the winner reunited with their family etc.

I think we can do without another rerun of the UTV to be rebranded discussion, this has been ongoing constantly in multiple threads since ITV took over UTV, and often it’s the same people talking about it each time.

We didn't see any of the three finalists reunited with their family. 3rd place cut back to the studio and 2nd didn't get the red bridge crossing at all.

I'm going to make the assumption that the black end credit sequences will *not* go away when this refresh takes place.

Once again, I blame the dead hand of accountancy more than anything else...

The new ECP certainly sounds like it would have more flexibility for non-standard credits, and if (as reported) promos are going to involve programme branding rather than stick to a more rigid template, it kind of ties in.

This is one of the main things I’d really like to see from this refresh. Programme credits can (and should be encouraged to) use their own brand fonts and brand background (e.g. Trajan with chimneys/cobbles for Corrie) with some regulations re: font size, format, etc.

The ‘funeral credits’ style (as it was perfectly named here) with Reem on black is utterly dull and generic. Let programme makers do what they want, as they do on all the other networks.

I actually think Reem should be discouraged from being used on all shows - be that in Previously/Next Time parts, over-scene credits and the end credits - apart from ITV News and possibly GMB. Really wound me up when they took Trajan away from the on-screen writer/director credits in favour of that on Coronation Street. Weirdly, Emmerdale got to keep their brand font for those.

Interesting about the programme branding being in promos. I hope this is executed properly as, done badly, it could look inconsistent or tacky. I’m all for it though if it’s done well! I’m massively in favour of shows having strong brand identities which carry through to their promos as well as credits.

Exciting times!

Does that really matter either in 2018?

No-one in England seems particularly bothered about getting 7.5 minutes per week of local output outside the news, shared with other regions in some parts of the country.