Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I remember that position being used regularly for trails for the news, possibly the News at 1. On the noticeboard behind there was always a poster of John Mccarthy. When he was captured ITN wanted to put a picture of him at the end of bulletins in order to keep up pressure for his release, but weren't allowed to. I suspect the poster was a subtle way of getting round this

If you're really that interested give it a try.

Although I wouldn't bombard them with too many requests, especially on something like that. Looking at the website that came from: whatdotheyknow.com there are a lot of frivolous, pointless and odd requests wasting time and money especially to the 4 or 5 broadcasting organisations on there. An FOI request asking 'what has happened to Only Fools and Horses' for example

I have to answer no, I don't think they did. What did happen, though, was that when Carlton began they had an hour of regional news at six but didn't start the proper news until 6.30 so commuters could see it. Nobody liked that, though, so fairly early on they moved London Tonight to 6.30 and put all the feature fluff that used to fill the first half hour into its own show called After 5 at 5.10, with Home and Away moving back to six o'clock.

The change in September 1993 was that before that the kids shows used to be on at 12.10, with the regional news after the news, but then the kids shows moved to 3.30 so they could then show the regional news before it at 12.20 (much like how the Beeb used to show the regional news at 12.55 for many years). The best ever revamp they did of daytime ITV was in March 2000, the same days Doctors began on BBC1, when they moved everything around with Jerry Springer at 9.25, Loose Women at ten and Trisha at two, and the news at the ridiculous time of 12.25 but brilliantly a month later they moved everything back to where it was. Then in 2001 they incorporated the regional news within the national news for the first time.

When I was a horrible student I always used to watch the 12.30 News, it fitted right in with my "routine". I don't watch any ITV news bulletin now at any time.

Including the stings for the short news bulletins!

I did a wee bit of digging and come up with the following On 3 May 1994 London Tonight, become a 30mins programmes and moved to 18.30, With a new programme AFTER 5 starting the same day, dealing with most of the non hard hitting news which used to be London tonight, with Fern Britton Presenting. After 5 was axed 22 November 1996, when London Today started broadcast a full 30min bulletin at lunchtime the following Monday, 25 November 1996. I believe that was kept until 2002???


Yes.

ITN put in a bid for National breakfast in 1991, I think they went under the Daybreak name too IIRC. This being the time ITN were p*ssing money away as if there was no tomorrow, as they had recently moved into Grays Inn Road at great expense. Other than that I believe it was TV-am, GMTV/Sunrise and ITN three way.

I believe TV-am was also one of the companies that bid for the Teletext franchise in 1992. If CPV had won the London licence than it would have sub-contracted its news out to TV-am apparently.

I don't get why Border didn't use their 'B' logo when the hearts idents started being used in 1999. All the other Granada regions used their logos in those idents but Border stuck with only that boring font.

Would have loved ITN to take over breakfast!

They were involved in bids for anything going after they lost in 1991. The only thing they won was the INR2 radio license which was launched as Virgin 1215 and is now Absolute Radio.


Presumably because of David Frost's involvement. That would have made some sense operationally as TVam would presumably have had spare resources during the day to run such a thing, I wonder if they'd have shared other things too, like sales and playout? LWT's application included the plan to merge their news and playout with the weekday licensee so maybe they'd have joined in too?

At the time they were heavily involved in Channel 4's breakfast programme of course

Except it wasn't a Granada region at that point - that came a couple of years later, and in fact under Granada ownership the chopsticks-in-a-bowl logo returned on the purple endcap.

I agree it's still a mystery why they didn't put it on the ident under local ownership - after all, the things were designed to have a local symbol on them as well as the ITV logo.

My guess is that the identify came with lettering in place and an area the broadcasters could put their logo if they desired. Border didn't feel the need and/or didn't/wouldn't pay to have theirs added.