Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Yeah, Corrie was definitely played out from Granada at Quay Street in Manchester. The video was played out to the other regions independently on Granada's local pres operation, they got a clean feed so they saw the VT clock etc rather than the Granada announcer

Which regions did their own branded trails & which ones relied on the generic ITV branded ones?

I know Central did their own(presumbly so did ATV), as I never saw an ITV branded trailer in Central land until the late 90's. (Was there 2 sorts of 1990's ITV branded trailers depending on whether the station was Granada owned or Carlton owned?)

I remember holidaying in the South West (TSW era) & remember seeing a TSW branded trail for the Lennie Bennett peaktime quizshow 'Lingo', but I don't remember any other TSW trails for networked shows, probably only ITV ones.

Did TVS (where I also holidayed in the past ) ever take ITV trails or do their own?

What did the London companies do? Their own or ITV's? (I have a vague memory of a trail in the Midlands for a transmission of 'Star Wars' ending with 'On Thames' ! Someone push the wrong button?)

Scottish TV, seems to be a mix bag of promos sometime there used the ITV One but many times there created there own or even took the ITV one but put there own VO OVER IT and branding

In the early 90s, Tyne Tees (and generally Yorkshire too) took all the ITV branded trails for network shows, and from looking round Youtube it seems quite a few other regions did too. From about 1994 through until the introduction of the NPU these were all redone by the Leeds team and fully branded up as either Yorkshire or Tyne Tees (latterly C3NE) as appropriate. It's funny that as Yorkshire were busy ripping apart Tyne Tees, in terms of branding it was more branded onscreen as a regional station (even if it was sometimes a regional station name no one liked) than it had ever been...

TTTV's Trailers - 90s (Yes the obligatory plug)

I think like Christmas the responsibilty of making Network promos was usually down to the big 5, although I think Central didn't do many. From what I've seen on the net it was quite normal to see 'on ITV' promos made by the company who made the programmes, as for ' X Night on ITV' promos then I'm not sure. Christmas was always an interesting one as it seemed to alternate a lot between Thames, LWT, Granada and Yorkshire. A Lot of people seem to remember Granada's 1987 effort as it looked nice and it appeared on most regions, including the small ones.

TTTV seemed to go through phases. For the most part they'd take the ITV trails but very often they'd mix the trails live on-air, with captions and voice-over being done as part of a "package" of programme menus, slides and IVC. Often they'd have these even when YTV was transmitting an ITV-branded trail for the same programme, so it was a conscious decision to do it this way. Sometimes it worked well, sometimes it didn't.

UTV used ITV-branded trailers provided by the ITV company who produced the programme (e.g. Granada-produced programmes with the Quay Street announcers on voiceover and the text using whichever font Granada used in its general presentation package at the time) up until the June 1993 Year Zero relaunch; one or two ITV-branded trails still slipped through the net, or trails rebranded with the UTV logo sometimes still had the voiceover of the networked trail with references to ITV either kept it or muted out, but by early 1994 at the least, Havelock House were wholly producing their own versions of networked trailers..

Many of the ITV regions appear to have begun producing locally-branded versions of network trails in early 1993; the network trailers of the time featured an ITV logo in a black lozenge; I remember UTV replacing it with the blue/yellow oscilloscope logo (for the last few months of its life), and I recalling seeing off-air screen captures on pres sites with Border and Tyne Tees local adaptations of this trail style template.

Regarding interesting YouTube videos, from 00.20 to 00.30 on this report about ITV Telethon '88 (channel: terminus69), monitors in a gallery at The London Studios (most likely Studio 1) are shown with a set-up of nine different feeds taking content from various parts of the ITV network:





To clarify what is being shown on each feed:

The first is the Granada feed, carrying the output from Border and Scottish (with Ulster's content travelling via Border's link and Grampian's content via STV's link).

The second is the ITN feed, carrying the output from TSW, HTV West and Anglia (with HTV Wales' content travelling via HTV West's link)

The third is the Central feed from Birmingham, carrying the output from Yorkshire, and Central in Nottingham (with Tyne Tees' content travelling via YTV's link)

The fourth is the TVS feed from Southampton, which is carrying the output from TVS in Maidstone.

The fifth is the Thames feed

The sixth is labelled (L?) Studios and Channel TV (surprised to see them having their own feed rather than travelling via TVS!)

The seventh is labelled Riverside Camera, a feed to an exterior shot of the South Bank where an "egg-crate" roller box gave updates on the Telethon total

The eighth, I can't make out what the label reads

The ninth is labelled LWT OB (say no more)

I remember TSW chucking their name/logo onto everything, in fact I'm sure I sure programmes like Coronation Street bookended with TSW logos blanking out the Granada ones

Sorry, I was referring to this incident from December 1992.

Steve, I believe it went through Quay Street who inserted ITN News etc into the feed for all regions.

ITN was always fed to the originating company performing the network playout of every programme or package to allow for newsflashes to be broadcast, without the need for BT to reconfigure the network in such an event.
It was called 'News Standby'.

There was also another need for that to be the case. Oracle's computer was in London, and the data was carried 24/7 on ITN's outward video circuits. So, if for instance Granada were feeding the network, they would data bridge the teletext data from ITN's incoming feed, into the network outgoing feed, and the other 14 regions would have teletext data during the programme. At each ITV company there would be a further data bridge that would take the data from the network feed, and bridge that onto the outgoing local transmitter feeds, so that data was present during local programmes and commercials. All explained in IBA Tech Review 20, pages 27-36.

In Wales/West we had an HTV Presentation endcap, as well as at the end of movies and other imports.

That was only in the early days of Oracle though wasn't it?

I think I'm right in thinking that Oracle wasn't available during TVam at first for the same reason