ITV regional names in your tv listings

Yup, same up here on analogue, it's either GMTV or Granada Television, it used to effect P600 on Teletext between 6.00 and 9.25, when it was only GMTV Text, but for a number of years now you can access Granada Text during 6.00-9.25am. When I was in London, the Hotel TV, had the black bar at the bottom of the screen which had 'LWT' and that's it, but the text was still LWT Plus. (Or whatever it is)

Though does the Channel TV still have the same thing, when you press P600 on Teletext it comes up with Meridian Text and that you have go to to P200 for CTV Text, I was wondering, do they still do that? As the last time I watched Channel was 7 years ago.

On Channel TV I have seen this really poor ad for some dating company I think and it goes on about "Go to Channel text page 620 for Bla bla Bla" so Channel Must use the 600's.

Is it only non-Carlton regions will still change between GMTV and the station name? Westcountry always used to, but ever since the 1999 rebrand it's just been Carlton all the time - even when GMTV is on. Similarly, page 600 used to belong to GMTV during their airtime, but that's now changed too. What happens to Central, HTV and Carlton London?

In Scottish tv land, Teletext is descibed as ITV1 Central Scotland, and my tv listings magazine as ITV1 Scottish.

I get the impression that the "proper" TV listings magazines call the regions by whatever name is supplied to them with that week's information from ITV.

Hence why the the Yorkshire/Tyne Tees edition of TV Times had "Yorkshire/C3NE" stamped on it's cover for a while in the 1990s.

But newspaper TV listings seem to call it whatever they see fit, especially non-national papers. Some are still calling the ITV1 midlands region "Central"

Mind you, in the case of the Carlton-owned regions, you can understand the newspapers' confusion. "ITV1 Carlton for Central England", and "ITV1 West of England (Carlton)" makes it all very confusing for them to know what to call the regions. So no wonder they each settle for different bits of these cumbersome names.

At least with the GMG regions the only options are really "ITV1 Anglia" or "Anglia" ("ITV1 Border" or "Border"... etc).

What's wrong with that? It is still the Central region, and the news is called Central News.

The Manchester Evening News has refered to ITV1 Granada since the rebrand last October previously it just said Granada. Teletext refers to ITV1 North West.

Here in Granada land the text info bar changes from GMTV to Granada Television.

Gareth

Yeah, but ONLY because the word "Central" sounds like a geographical description of the region!

If the old company name had been another meaningless corporate name, such as, say, "Alpha Television" you can bet your bottom dollar that Carlton would NOT have retained the title "Alpha News". They would have either replaced it with a "Carlton" orientated title or a geographical title (e.g. "Heartland News" or whatever). All of this also applies to the south west region.

You may say the "HTV" regions disprove this. BUT they didn't fall into Carlton ownership until long after the Central and Westcountry names had been killed off. And because, by then, the single ITV1 look was fairly close, if they'd have been rebranded "Carlton" in the meantime, it would have been for too short a period before the national rebrand.

The ONLY reason that the HTV name still survives in the news is because the name change will wait to coincide will a FULL revamp of the two news programmes, and it just-so-happened that when the national ITV1 look launched, the two HTV News's weren't due a rebrand yet.

But I suspect that by, say, spring 2004, we'll have "Report Wales" and "Report West" or something.

Slightly off-topic, but on the subject of out of date information, the Gloucestershire Echo until only a couple of years ago still used to list Radio 1's frequency as 275 & 285 metres, medium wave.

Also, BBCi text on DSat at the last check still had an explanation of how to choose your regional news by pressing red at 6.30.

I know, Its still there. Its rather stupid. I would of thought the BBC would have changed that by now and just list the Channel numbers for the regions instead.

Carlton and Granada.... take note!!!
I think this thread shows clearly that most people associate with their own ITV company. Even those that just say "ITV", it's often followed by "we get Carlton", or "we get Central" or "we get HTV".

The local papers here show "Meridian", and I notice in the Radio Times, it says ITV1, but...... next to it, it says Meridian, or in the edition we get, Scottish.

Dave

does it not make sense to use the name by which most of it's readership refer to the channel? seeing as it is there for the information and use of their readership, rather than calling the channel "ITV1" "ITV1 CARLTON" "ITV CARLTON FOR CENTRAL ENGLAND" or "UHF CH 43 SUTTON COLDFIELD TX" - the name "central" seems the obvious choice to me.

remember of course midland independent newspapers (and most newspaper groups) are not linked to carlton/granada, and therefore do not have to jump whenever the marketing dept say so.