ITV1 Carlton --------> ITV Central!!!

Yeah...Bob proudly announced it at the end of Central News tonight that the new name would be ITV Central!!!

After years of putting up with Carlton/Carlton Central/ITV1 for Central England, it looks as though ITV plc have finally seen sense and finally reinstated the name that makes us proud when we switch on ITV1 - CENTRAL!!!!

You may say the Central name has never left us - true - it has always existed in some form since Carlton slapped their logo on our idents back in September 1999...in the form of:-

Central News
Central Weather
Central Goals Extra
Central Weekend
The Central Match Live

So it comes as no suprise that even though there are only a few of these programs still running which still have 'Central' as part of their name, it seems as though the whole station BRAND is returning to, to our screens...with no extra unneccessary bits such as:-

'Carlton'...or
'England' etc etc

I'm quite suprised myself with Bob's announcement at the end of Central News tonight...I thought the straight forward 'CENTRAL' brand was dead and buried.

But, with his announcement tonight and the fact that the website just has the word 'CENTRAL' at the top of the page seems as though the station will return on Monday.

Albeit without the cake and probably it will be attached with an ITV1 logo all the time...but still, it's good just to see the word 'CENTRAL' back on our idents!

Even quite a few pages of Carlton text on p600 have lost the Carlton logo at the top of the page and been replaced with just an ITV1 blue and yellow logo and strip!

Will the Carlton name be dropped at the end of programmes too??? And the word Central be seen??? Or not?? I guess Carlton will still exist in some form or another!

And will Central Court in Gas Street Birmingham lose all the Carlton flags from the outside of the building and the logo from above the door and be replaced with 'CENTRAL' too, or not???

These were stupid questions to ask before, but with todays news, they are perfectly sensible things that could happen! And with the mess the BBC has got itself into this week and the launch of the New ITV Theatre of News next week together with the return of 'CENTRAL', ITV could really be on to a winner this time around!!!

Thumbs up or thumbs down?

You mention your proudness at the return of Central, but then mention 'switching on ITV1'. Have they converted you then? Since 'ITV1' is nothing more a rebranding exercise of Central anyway - however much people seem to forget it, there is no 'ITV1' in the real sense (and also, in reality, 'ITV1' has nothing at all to do with ITV2 or ITV News Channel), it's just that (what will soon be) ITV PLC have chosen to rebrand all of their stations as such. But I digress...

Dunno...dunno what that means???

Difficult to say.

I think it's great. I was in Coventry several times in the past few years and didn't like the way Carlton took over everything. I hope now too that they'll remove their name from Central programmes they had nothing do to with like early Morse etc. It drove me mad seeing Carlton at the end of an obvious Central episode. I've always wondered though why they never bid for Central in the 1991 franchise. After all, didn't Central get it for only £2000 a year and were the only bidder?

Erm, I don't know what you mean by somebody being "converted" by a national commercial TV channel. Surely you accept by now, that the ITV network has been branded "ITV1". You keep dismissing it as a name - well, treat it like that then. As i said, it's a TV channel and not a government operative.

Yeah...it would be cool if they withdraw all their Carlton endcaps and either put New 'A CENTRAL programme' or just leave the old endcaps on that were originally there.

But as has been said in another thread, the CENTRAL logo on the website is certainly very Granadified. I do hope that ITV1 Central keep using the landscape regional idents with the logo modified rather than using the celeb idents for local proagrammes.

And it would be bad if they stop playing out an ident before Central News, just like they never do on GMG stations. Central was always renowned for fantastic continuity - lets hope that this is not spoilt.

They did get it for £2000 a year, as did Scottish TV, but that was the minimum amount they had to bid and they faced no rivals. Though you could say fair enough in one way as Central have to run and maintain 3 TV Centres and they have to hire a load of Journalists.

It's a shame Carlton ruin them slightly, but with some ATV programmes and some DVD's Central is kept on, I have Auf Wiedersehen Pet Series 1 on DVD and they have kept the frontcap and endcap. It's the same when ATV and Central programmes are on Sky, they have the frontcap and endcap, the only difference is that the end they have Distributed by Carlton International.

Though I think with Morse they have had a bit more pride, as I think it was made by Zenith for Central and Carlton at that time had a high stake in Zenith and a small stake in Central, but by 1994 they owned all of Central and introduced the 'wonderful' Carlton UK Productions which lasted until 1996.

But it ISN'T a national commercial TV channel. It's a network of regional commercial TV stations. I realise that it's ultimately seeking to become that, but it's nott officially that yet. By acknowledging 'ITV1' as being a 'channel' rather than a rebranding exercise, that is also sanctioning a situation where something can be set up as one thing, hijacked by a couple of large companies intent on ******* into something else (helped in no small way by the government's regulator I have to admit), and then achieving that ******* through nothing more than having deep pockets. And in any case, there is still 1 ITV station (there used to be 4, but of course Channel, and to a lesser extent Scottish and Grampian have conceded to it to save costs) which refuses to be lost in this attempt to destroy the ITV Network's federal structure - whatever else is wrong with UTV, their determination to keep their own name alive all the time, and not allow 'ITV1' to creep in (except of course due to shoddy links from a network feed which should never have been allowed to carry ITV1 branded presentation in the first place) is commendable.

I realise of course that money talks, but it doesn't mean it's right, and I won't acknowledge 'ITV1' until a single ITV contract for the whole country exists.


AFAIK, at the time of the 1990/1 applications, each company could only bid for 1 franchise. Carlton went straight for the top, and sought to unseat Thames from the kingpin London Weekday franchise. In business terms, that made more sense than going for the third down the line Midlands franchise. And in any case, Carlton held a stake in Central since 1984, they allready had a base from which to launch a total takeover of the company. And when that opportunity arrived (during which Central were a sitting duck), they grabbed it.


Central was indeed renowned for it's excellent continuity standards (and without IVC after 1987 - as much as I am fond of the format, Central did show that you could still have excellent, connected, personal continuity without it), but how are they supposed to preserve them when they no longer have any control at all over continuity? Unfortunately, the change of logo on a website is not some big rebirth of Central, it's just Carlton pulling out their name (just as they did from the idents a couple of months ago) ahead of an imminent merger with Granada. Central as a local station is something which died in 2002, it's not coming back.


Credit must be given where it's due though - Carlton have done a lot more to preserve (and perhaps more than that - actually get released) ATV programmes than the archive's previous owner, Polygram, ever did.

The number of ATV/ITC programmes released (even if they do come under the Carlton banner) over the last few years has been astounding. The ATV archive is much safer in Carlton's hands than it ever was in Polygram's (who did destroy a lot of material).

You do have to give them some credit for that, they are very good at doing that as they have probably Digitally Remastered everything done by Gerry Anderson / ITC / ATV and put it on DVD, or sold it to other channels. And I hope they keep up with that, as the only other people who do things like that are the BBC. Though as I was saying on the AWP DVD I have you only see the Carlton name once on screen, otherwise it is Central all the way. They bother to keep the frontcaps unbelievably, unlike Granada who seem to give the idea that frontcaps for Granada and LWT don't exsist, though how a Yorkshire frontcap on an 1989 episode of The New Statesman is beyond me.

But apparently they said that Polygram or ATV deliberately threw out tons of video archive and sets when they were at Elstree, apparently episodes of programmes like The Golden Shot and Tiswas have been or destroyed.

Seeing the Central name on the Carlton/Central website is great but to me is the "Granadaliation" of Central. Living in the Anglia Television region, I can also get Central East so can compare.... at least CARLTON had good idents, and kept with local continuity, such as Ted May and the fantastic Paul Vasey. At Anglia, the continuity went to Southampton, so we had such gems like, " now on HTV all the news from the east and west of the Anglia region in Meridion Tonight,"

Yes, Granada's policy seems to be to only include an endcap (which may or may not be correct) on the final episode of the video/DVD. They also seem to like to add new copyright lineage on programmes which never originally had them (I've got episodes of rising damp with huge '(c)Yorkshire Television Limited 1974' lines on the last page of the credits which weren't originally there).

As for a YTV frontcap on a 1989 New Statesman, that would be correct. Although the IBA (or was it the ITCA?) decided to withdraw frontcaps from the start of 1988, many stations didn't want to let them go (TSW still attached them to everything they made right up until the bitter end). YTV's own policy was that master copies of everything would still have a frontcap attached until the first corporate ITV look was introduced at the end of 1989. Although it wouldn't have been shown with it's frontcap on the network, a frontcap does exist on the master and can turn up on other sources now - most recently at the end of 2002 Paramount showed the 1989 series with liquid gold frontcaps at the start.

They also went for the TVS region.. They were the lowest of the three bidders at £18million. According to research, he went for Thames for the largest licence and TVS for the vulnerable licence. Out of the two, he wanted the London licence as his roots were in London.