*nostalgia mode *
Someone's uploaded over nearly 20 minutes worth of promos and idents, ECP from ITV regions in 2001 [generic era: Hearts]
It's interesting how things have changed between now and then, especially the way promos were made, there was more effort. In Part 2, there was a short clip of Central News opener, looked quite nice and a lot more punch than today.
But the rot had definately set in. The fluff was appearing such as Survivor and Hear'Say It's Saturday, regional slots were disappearing, we were firmly on the road to what we have now. And it'll get worse.
What a nice nostalgia-fest and as usual it led me off on a trail through YouTube for ages watching similar clips until I finally had to drag myself away from the 'puter.
I actually liked the Carlton idents more than the tacky Granada based ones. Although that said, at least Granada allowed the francises to keep there names whereas Carlton renamed both Central and Westcountry to just Carlton. But the whole "pop" thing and then the star its pretty good. Also it a range of different colour ident endscreens than just the tacky blue with hearts in the background.
But yes, this was the swansong of the decent ITV years and the rot had started.
I actually find it more amusing how folks are saying the rot was setting in and things were starting to head wrong in 2001! Anyone who was around on the forum in 2001 will remember how back then we were all saying it was already totally gone then, and had been since the early 90s...
... I wonder if this means if TV Forumers in 2015 will be saying ITV had started to go wrong in 2008, but was still great in 2007.
That Scottish TV announcement into Millionaire is a bit unfortunate in retrospect...
Have to say, from the evidence of what's on display there (Crossroads, High Road, Night and Day, The People Show), I don't think anyone could look back at 2001 and claim it's some sort of golden age of television. There's a danger of looking back with rose-tinted specs and assuming it was always better in the old days. Some of the guff shown on ITV in the old days, when there was no commercial competition, was horrendous and wouldn't survive nowadays.
To be honest ITV1's presentation during the start of the celebrity era is probably the best there's been in quite a while. The station had so much to prove, and so many people to win over after getting rid of the regional identities, that it had to be. But it was slick, it was down-to-earth, and the people who made them clearly had some degree of fun. It says a lot that this is the one set of idents taken by all the independent stations (albeit with alterations to retain their own names).
The current set are incredibly dull. And the hearts were stunningly pointless. TV from the heart was a terrible slogan, and a bit of marketing that ITV assumed people would take into their subconscious, whereas they were probably sitting at home going "What are all these hearts about?" (if they even noticed them). It made as much sense as STV's current "Altogether Scotland" slogan, which no ordinary viewer understands but they continually use.
ITV1 was probably on its guard at the start of the switchover, as it knew it would be under the microscope. After no-one batted an eyelid and most viewers didn't care about the loss of the regions, that's when the cuts started to be made, and the damage was done.
What I find amazing from a pres point of view is how at the time everything was felt to be generic, but looking back now, there was still a lot of variation between different stations which used the ITV1 branding.
Idents: Carlton did their own thing with idents rather than take the official generic look. LWT had their own dedicated ident. HTV had their custom Carlton-edits of the spinning hearts. YTV and Tyne Tees still had non-generic idents for regional programming. Even within the spinning blue hearts, the ex UNM stations (Meridian/Anglia) had the station name written in a larger font than the GMG North stations.
Programme ownership: Programmes could still be copyrighted and credited to the station that produced them, unlike now where all network programmes are credited to 'ITV Productions' and regional news and non-outsourced regional programmes are 'A Production for ITV1' with no specific mention of who the production company actually is. At the time the video clips were taken, even the full screen endboards from pre-generic times were still in use - no horrible purple generics. And even when those purple boards were introduced, they were generic only to themselves, and didn't in any way fit in with any other presentation in use.
Breakbumpers: Meridian, Anglia and HTV still had station branded breakbumpers, whilst Granada, YTV, TTTV and Border had extra ones to use beyond the usual 'purple splash'.
Trailers: All the GMG stations had regional trailers branded with the station name rather than 'ITV1'. Carlton-owned stations still quoted www.carlton.com/<station name> on the end board rather than 'itv.com'.
Extra bits: Each station still had their own graphics for weather based on the local news programmes and as the Anglia community support spot shows, could still drop in their own local bits along with promoting a local website.
Of all the 'ITV1' stations, only Carlton London, Westcountry and Central genuinely had identical presentation, every other station had something to differentiate themselves from each other.
Outside of the Carlton/Granada duopoly, the independent stations still had complete presentation sets of their own with no attempt to fit in with the hearts (except Channel) and great pains taken to avoid taking any 'ITV1' trailers packages 'raw'.
Considering all this was only a year away from the ditching of station names, and would soon see UTV and STV/Grampian start to tow the generic line (and Channel more or less becoming fully converted) it's amazing how quickly things changed.
It's also rather ironic that ever since ITV's inception, it's been a dream of pres enthusiasts to be able to watch any station on demand, and when it finally happened, there was almost no difference in programming and soon to be no different in presentation either.
I've always been interested in TV presentation but perhaps the hearts era of ITV is what fascinates me the most, mainly due to the different ways each station implemented the generic identity. There's tons of ambiguity in my mind though, so if anyone could help me with any information on the following, I'd be most grateful. By the way, this is pretty long ( I apologise), so if tons of questions on ITV presentation October 1998 - October 2002 isn't your thing, please don' t bore yourself.
I would like to go through all the stations and when they adopted the ITV branded trailers, breakbumpers and idents.
October 1998 - this was when the new logo came in, and I assume the ITV branded trailers and break bumpers.
GMG North (Granada, Yorkshire, Tyne Tees) - implemented both trailers and break bumpers fully.
Border - No idea, I assume they complied,
UNM (Anglia, Meridian, HTV) - implemented the trailers but insisted on putting their own logos on them as well. With Anglia, and I guess Meridian, this involved also putting the their own logo on the end, where on the early ITV trailers, the ITV logo ended on the centre left of the screen,.so the regional logos appeared in the top left. HTV seemed to have it's logo on the top left all through the trailer, hiding the ITV logo for most of the trail. All three ignored the break bumper, continuing with their own ones.
Central - Was this the day the quasi-Carltonised idents came in? Also, could someone tell me the history behind these idents? I assume they were created back when Carlton's ones were but the decision was made at the last minute to keep the cake, but then with this change in ITV, they took the opportunity to push it though. Did Central use the ITV trailers and break bumper at all during this period, or was it saved until actual Carltonisation in September 1999?
Westcountry - Hardly ever seen any Westcountry presentation. What happened here during this period?
Carlton - Again, from October 1998 to September 1999, what was the situation here?
LWT - Not sure. I assume they took both trailers and break bumpers, like their counterparts in GMG North.
Channel - No idea. Anyone?
SMG (Scottish, Grampian) - Ignored the new branding entirely.
UTV - Also ignored the branding entirely.
The idents
These didn't finally appear until November 1999. It always looked weird seeing a station ident looking nothing like most of the trailers and breakbumpers in style. Why was there such a delay? Was it though that the trailers and break bumpers could test the water first to avoid controversy, or were there design/implementation problems?
Carlton (London, Central, Westcounrty) - changed to their own 'Carlton ITV' idents in the September previous. Though different (and better) they were strikingly similar to the official ones. Had Carlton saw how the ITV idents were developing and decided that they'd drop out and go it alone? I often saw Central during this era and it appears local trailers were also branded just as ITV. Did local branded trailers disappear at this point, or had they gone since October 1998? Another thing, the official hearts versions for these regions must have existed. Infact, I'm sure there was a wall outside ITV Network Centre which had all the stations in the network in the official style. I'm sure I say Central's with the Cake, but it was all yellow, despite the cake already been dropped, and a Westcounty ident with a white 'W'. I could be mistaken on that though, but I'm guessing they did exist, If so, has anyone ever seen them or are they just in some vault somewhere never to be looked at again?
GMG North (Granada, Yorkshire, Tyne Tees) - Implemented the package fully. However, Tyne Tees retained it's own ident for local junctions, eventually replaced by a new one. Yorkshire got brand new idents from the start for local junctions but Granada had only the generic logos or all junctions. Why did the three stations end up with a different policy on this? More weirdisms, why did Granada have a variety of idents pre-November 1999 but Yorkshire and Tyne Tees just had a standard one each, albeit, in day and night varieties? Finally, these regions didn't implement the first Christmas idents of the era, instead, going back to regionally branded, idents for one final time, the millennium ident being Granada's last without ITV branding. This makes me think that GMG North were not expecting generic idents because the Christmas idents looked very similar to Yorkshire's new regiional ident, two windows, the station logo in the left, a picture in the right, Also, there were tons of variants of Yorkshire's regional idents, a bit weird for only a handful of regional junctions a day, which gives me the impressiion that they were intended for full time use and that Granada and Tyne Tees would get similar ones. Anyone know anything about this? Yet another thing, the piano variant of the generic idents was initially only seen in these regions. Was it a GMG edit or was it an official issue that only these stations decided to bother with?
LWT - Implemented the idents fully, initially at least. Did they use the piano version or the video sequences? They re-edited the idents in (I think) March 2000, to the video wall, but the break bumper remained uncompromised, as did the trailers. Did LWT still have regional LWT branded trailers and did they use next captions.
Border - All I know is that they implemented the standard ident. Were the video sequences and piano music used pre-GMG takeover. I know after take over, the situation was exactly the same as GMG. Another thing I needed to know, how come Border's logo went? I assume they told the network to produce it's new idents without the chopsticks, for some reason.
Anglia & Meridian - Implemented fully, including the video sequences, as can be seen on the debut ident for Anglia which is all over the internet, including youtube. Seemed they didn't last though, at least when I saw Anglia in 2001 and they were only using the form up ident. A edited version of the ITV break bumper to include dual branding was implemented, these stations and HTV originally shunning the break bumper when it first came out. The convention of sticking Anglia flags and sun/moon thingies on ITV trailers continued up until GMG bought the stations from UNM and banned the practice. It seems the Southampton transmission centre began showing almost exclusively regional trailers from this point, as my observations viewing Meridian in August 2002 was how there were tons of local trailers in comparision to those on Granada. I also heard these stations used the piano music for a while after GMG bought them. One last thing on these two, some mentioned the large size station names these two stations used. Was this UNM inspired? Did the local stations have input into what they wanted from their versions of the idents? Personally, I didn't like the look of either of them. They made Granada's look neat in comparision.
HTV - Viewing rather awful fringe reception in Liverpool, HTV seemed to only use the form up ident, or at least did for the vast majority of the time. Like Agnlia and Meridian, a regionally edited version of the break bumper was made too. Covering up the ITV logo on trailers continued up until Carlton purchased the station, at which point this was stopped, along with local trailers being branded ITV, like on Carlton. HTV's idents were modified with Carlton's music, but the HTV brand stayed, for some reason. The dual branded break bumper also survived. Were there any differences between West and Wales, presentation-wise?
Channel - Used the idents but edited the music. Also, their own 'heart of the islands' ident which they introduced earlier in 1999 remained in use to a lesser extent. How come their ident was animated? Was this how it was issued to them or did they modify the idents, as they did with the music? I'm still clueless about the trailers and break bumpers.
SMG (Scottish, Grampian) - ignored it entirely.
UTV - also ignored it entirely.
That;s about it, I think. Any answers, confirmations or corrections are most welcome. Cheers.
Central - Was this the day the quasi-Carltonised idents came in?
no, as there was a pre-news which was white-on-orange CENTRAL which formed into the 1989 IT* logo. when the new itv logo was introduced in 1998, this changed to a yellow-on-blue CENTRAL logo forming into the new logo.
Quote:
Did Central use the ITV trailers and break bumper at all during this period, or was it saved until actual Carltonisation in September 1999?
i remember the trailer end-boards were an orange background with white text for a while. whether this changed when the network promotions unit came into exist i'm not sure. there has never been any distinction between regional and network programmes on central.
Cheers for that. What month did the cake go then? Also, the ITV ident of that era, I've seen a Carlton one with the old logo in white on a red background and the newer one for Central, which was yellow on blue. However, the four note stab was slightly different for the second version, which the first note being held longer. Was this an old ITV logo versus new ITV logo variation, or a Carlton versus central variation, would you know by any chance?
