ITV takes control of GMTV

Its interesting as UTV, STV & Grampian do already show ITV2 promos but only every now and again but now it looks like STV/Grampian will now be like ITV1 and show almost an equal mix of STV/Grampian & ITV2 promos on their channel, whereas UTV will still show them just whenever.

Another thing, as STV/Grampian share promos so dont say the individual channel name's, they just have the 4 blue boxes, why don’t they have all promos with just the ITV logo on them so it will be like the network promos before Oct 2002 as STV/Grampian are a part of ITV but as we all know not ITV1 thus why they don’t have the original network promos on their station. Also maybe they could change their idents to have a merged ITV & Scottish logo and ITV & Grampian logo on them, there for if promos are branded as 'on ITV' and the channels branded as 'ITV Regional name' at least SMG will have 1 name to refer to both channels where as at the mo they don’t have 1 name when refers to both channels, they only have the single 2 names.

Does all that make sense????
Hope so.....or in other words.....
The ITVPLC regions at the mo are known as ITV1 Granada, ITV1 Anglia with trailers just ITV1 referring to all

So in my opinion SMG could name their 2 channels ITV Scottish and ITV Grampian on the idents and then the trailers as on ‘ITV' therefore be able to use the same one on both stations.

Good idea or to much arseing about for SMG to be bothered with and frankly far more easier for them to be swallowed up by ITV PLC in a few years time?

Regional ITV won't exist anyway in the very near future.
ITV plc will swallow up the remaining licenses and rename them all ITV1. The only regional programmes will be the regional news and their will be no regional branding at all.

Regional news will be renamed ITV Central News, ITV Calendar News etc.

GMTV will probably become ITV Breakfast or GMITV or something as ridiculous!!!!!!

GMITV1 ?

I hoipe this means a brand new look for GMTV! A new studio at last... if only!!!!

I said that on Page 1 of this thread.

Yes i noticed that and removed the posting.

Shouldn't be too long now then.

I don't think we'll be seeing "ITV1 Breakfast" any time soon. To the average viewer, GMTV is simply a programme, not a channel. Changing the name of the 'programme' would see silly and confusing to most.

GMTV news will probably be replaced with ITV News though.

Why would they want to do that? SMG want to be distinctive - not just another outlet for the ITV brand name.

It'll be a bit wierd, most of Scotland having "ITV1 Scotland " branding, but the south having to presumably stick with ambiguous London-based branding, due being in a trans-border region.

EDIT: Unless, of couse, Border has advertising micro-regions (does it?), in which case, the Scottish part of the region's commercial breaks could use ITV1 Scotland breakbumpers, so that "Scotland" does get some sort of on-screen mention.

Although, presumably, it would be more trouble than it's worth to do something like showing seperate "ITV1"/"ITV1 Scotland" announcements at 1759. Also this would look most odd in the Scottish part of the Border region, having an ident that specifies Scotland leading into a news programme that also talks about Cumbria & Manx!

Don't see why not. Border could in effect be a combined dual-sub-region sustained by SMG in Scotland and former GMG North in England. They currently build in sports programming pretty seamlessly.

I'd guess that flak would come from the southern counties of Scotland who'd possibly see Border TV as a statement of their independence from the economic reaches of Glasgow.

Indeed.

Think back a (fair old) while and HTV was all controlled from Cardiff, with even the West announcer there at times.

They managed to completely sever those Siamese twins when the West operation went to Southampton, so why not run "Border England" from Leeds and "Border Scotland" from wherever Scottish ends up being played out from?