ITV Regional Identity

At the end of the day design agencies can only ever be as good as the brief.

Many very very good branding implementations come from agencies. The problems come when a company comes along and says, "here's a big wodge of cash, make something really great with a message about my company", without really having an inkling about what that message is.

How is Red Bee or Lambie Nairn etc supposed to know what ITV stands for, if ITV don't know themselves?

BBC1 have managed a very nice setup going with RB, so they're clearly not useless. BBC2 looks like a clone of Channel 4, but that gets in the way of my argument so I will ignore it.

Well the only parts of the (geographic) Midlands Central South covered were: Herefordshire, south Worcestershire, south Warwickshire and southern Northamptonshire.

Herefs, Worcs and Warks are now entirely served by Central West (Ridge Hill switched over), so the southern tip of Northants is now the only part of the Midlands proper served by Thames Valley. The rest of it is the South-East region.

Sorry to be so pedantic

I disagree with you, everything I've seen Red Bee cough up has been pretty poor. The work they did for BBC One is the best, but that is still pretty bad (I only like 1 of the BBC One idents).

Agreed, while the idents are quite nice they are getting quite boring already.

BBC2's actually looks very nice, but that's because they called in an agency specialised in branding and advertising (AMV BBDO) and then just left the execution to Red Bee. And it resembling Channel 4 isn't necessarily a bad thing - remember that both the 4 and the big 2 were originally designed by Lambie-Nairn, and have been handed over to different agencies who have come up with similar ideas. And I have no problem if BBC2's pres was influenced by C4's.

Apologies if this has been mentioned, but although I know they've done it with the occassional special before, Central and London seem to be screening the same version of Tales from the Country - well, I assume that's why it's including tales of Heathrow and the London Olympics!

That's because it was previously Carlton London & Carlton Central

While I don't quite buy that there is any resemblance of the core C4 concept in BBC 2, pretty much all of what you've said there reflects my own view exactly.

Admittedly BBC 1's idents don't exactly jump out at me, but they're overally superior to what I've seen on any of ITV's channels - which by contrast either seem to fall victim to concepts with lack of cohesion, or are diluted by an overly busy look. I think the brief set before any agency is crucial to ensure a strong result. AFAIK; Lambie-Nairn at least, would naturally look at what a company stands for and what values or qualities can be reflected in the on-screen identity anyway.

Heart of the Country was the first, covered the Central region. It is (or was) the longest-running regional programme on ITV I believe.

Tony Francis was approached to do an equivalent programme for the ITV London region, this version was entitled: Tales from the Country . The two versions have now merged, with the latter title being adopted.

More detail can be found here:Tony Francis

Hope this helps

I don't know what makes you think that the ITV Thames Valley region is "stupid".

Geographically, there is such a thing as "the Thames Valley" (there is, for example, "Thames Valley Police"). Whereas the CNsouth concept of a "South Midlands" was a rather artificial area.

Chances are that people from the different bits of the CNsouth region have always variously regarded themselves as being things like "Thames Valley folk", "Westcountry folk" (etc etc). I doubt that anyone ever has regarded themselves as being "a South Midlander".

The problem is that the former Meridian West was a pointlessly small region (Berkshire, N parts of Hants, and precious little else! - It was virtually "Berkshire Today"!). This has probably conditioned viewers there into having a quite insular attitude towards the idea of being part of a wider region.

Remember... pre-Meridian, there were only two sub-regional versions of TVS news, so Berkshire (etc) viewers would hear news from as far away as the Isle of Wight.

The Thames Valley region is probably no bigger than the old "TVS (South sub-region)", it's just that it stretches northward instead of southward. Most ITV (and BBC) regions consist of a damn sight more than 1-and-a-bit-counties, so most of us are already used to our region not being tiny and insular.

ITV Thames Valley viewers will just have to bloomin' well get used to being in exactly the same boat as the rest of us, rather than being allergic to hearing news stories that are happening more than 3cm away!

And, if you're in Surrey , then (depending on where exactly in Surrey you are) it may well be the case that either London Tonight or one of the two remaining Meridian sub-regions is what you're really supposed to be tuning-in to?

the first london spin off of heart of the country was, of course, carlton country. no prizes for guessing why that name disappeared

Oh right, I didn't know that. I wasn't aware the London version had another name-- an unsurprisingly discontinued name!