ITV's 50th Birthday Celebrations

Yeah I agree with that. It's a shame that we'll never get that again.
I wouldn't even mind if they tried and put programmes dropped off ITV1 onto ITV2 and 3. Or increased amounts of new comedy, dramas and documentaries, even if they are cheap onto ITV 2 & 3.

Emmerdale has been voted for by This Morning viewers. See what happens when you let the public vote. How could they not vote for Coronation Street?

They had a top 5 actors vote around Christmas time on This Morning and they drafted Barry Norman in and you could tell he didn't want to be there because the choices made were not of the top actor quality as they seemed to be voted by the housewives who chose looks over acting.

To be honest I have now accepted the fact that ITV 1 has to be a national station, ever since infact the death of LWT.

To be honest I would love it to go back to the days of Thames & Central but have accepted that it won't

However I don't agree with ITV's policy of dropping programmes mid way through a run. If they don't think it will be that successful, show it on ITV 2 first, then if it does well show it on ITV 1 at a later date.

But in this day & age (in the UK at least) regional programming no longer has precidence

How do you know we won't get regions back? We PROBABLY won't but we might if Ofcom get fierce or Mr.Allen leaves!

Even if the regions would not return, the departure of Charles Allen would be a cause for huge celebration.

As I have explained in this Thread previously, that there are many reasons why Regional presentation won't be coming back at all. You have to remember ITV is a commercial channel that is competing in an overcrowded market place with 200 channels or so, so it needs high ratings in order to get revenue for programming.

It makes logic business sense for ITV to have a team of five or six announcers based in London and have 2 main Transmission centres in operation, rather than have a hell of alot of announcers at a few centres, who are only making the same announcements as their other regional counterparts. They created the London team as it would be likely that it would save the business alot of money and time, if they kept regional announcements going for even more years it would be likely that it would lead ITV into a loss, not a profit.

So I see the having a few people annoucing in London a good idea, though I agree they can do better as they get on my nerves alot of the time. Wouldn't it also be pointless that one company that owns most of the Network, has the same schedule each night in each region, but has at least 11 different centres doing continuity, that's just stupid. ITV is near to one company, where as it used to be one network based up of 15 regions.

ITV is a business, one that is ran by Charles Allen, granted he is very unpopular on here, but it is his job, to run a huge merged media giant which has to make savings, due to the demands of the shareholders of ITV Plc, he is only doing what they are telling him to do, as it is their money that is invested into ITV, not Allen's!

I also wouldn't put any money for Ofcom to do anything, they couldn't give a sh*t, they were the ones who OK-d the merger, they're the ones who are happy to cut the amount of regional programming and what have you. ITV are only obliging to Ofcom's rules, and for programmes and services to Public service that have low ratings or little interest, then ITV will produce the bare minimum, as it loses ITV money.

There was a time when the only other choice was BBC1 or BBC2, and people would watch programmes for the sake of it, even if they didn't like it, but now as viewers have that choice, then they would probably rather watch something of their choice, though this can apply to the expansions of DVD's, Computers/Internet or simply going out (and getting a life!)

Frankly most people couldn't give a toss about ITV presentation, as long as people's favourites such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale are there in the schedules, then people aren't going to care how ITV is ran and what have you.

I'm actually quite looking forward to the celebrations! The idents at the moment are a bit too bland for me but knowing they've just gone under an overhaul I'll shut my mouth. CITV presentation meanwhile could do with a bit of a revamp. I'm currently having an ideas explosion on how to revamp CITV's output (and without putting any mocks up yet) so far I've come up with a dozen ideas to outdo its rivals CBBC, including mocks so far based around animal paws and paint mess... There actually could work quite well as a family set of idents ala BBC2, featuring the CITV logo in different situations. Watch this space 2morrow for some uploads (when I can find some webspace!) but for now, I reckon I'll work on my idents

There was a rumour floating about notso long ago on the subject of CITV that CDUK was facing the chop, so we'll see no more of gorgeous Cat Deeley now she's got other commitments like Stars In their Eyes and other stuff on the BBC, so can someone please enlighten me. Could we be seeing the return of the Chart Show(yeh, and pigs might fly) or is the new Orange Playlists gonna be our new Saturday morning music show?? BTW I unfortunately don't read the papers all the time, so anyone here would have a better idea of whats happening than me! I do go on DigitalSpy mind you from time to time! Only I save my self the effort & come here instead. I get more juicy entertainment in these forums then I do out of any of the flipping tabloids!

Despite all your negative comments about how ITV will celebrate their 50th anniversary, I am also looking forward to it. Take a look at an ITV press release from May last year, which gives an idea of what will be shown during the anniversary period:



To add to this, I sent an e-mail to the ITV Duty Officer in around late 2003/early 2004 regarding the 50th anniversary. This is what I recieved:

Instead of dropping CD:uk,i'd rather they tried new presenters.And gave it new titles or at least refreshed them!

sorry if it has been mentioned before, but is it true only London started 50 years ago? So surely other regions should have to wait?

No as far as I am aware originally ITV wasn't regional (could be very wrong). We still have a big old TV ariel that points in the direction of the main London transmitter from the times before our relatively local Sandy Heath transmitter was installed.