Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Westcountry viewers got just 2 bongs of Big Ben before doing their own thing, would network have covered this for a bit longer or perhaps taken an ad break before the film at (seemingly at 0:02)?

Thanks to everyone for the info.

The ITN stuff is interesting. Particularly the hypothesis that the short bulletins are optional. Considering that there wasn't usually an ITN bulletin at 11:55pm, I'm guessing that this was perhaps an extra 'take it or leave it' offer from ITN.

Like dvboy, I'd also be very interested to know how the big ben coverage was done in regions just following the network.

Watching that video of the first moments of Westcountry, it's funny to note that transmission left Plymouth to Cardiff, as HTV looked after Westcountry's output. One could argue that this was the end of 'true' regional TV in Devon-Cornwall.

It's even weirder to think that up until transmission was taken from Meridian at Northam, it not only controlled Meridian but also HTV West. Why HTV West? Why not additionally take HTV Wales along with Westcountry? If HTV Wales' transmission was staying in Cardiff, along with Westcountry, surely HTV West may as well have been controlled from Cardiff too.

Both Central and Thames had regular news bulletins sourced from their own studios in the early days of their own night time services, from 1987 to February 1988.

I don't think TVS, Yorkshire or Anglia ran their own overnight news services before the launch of ITN's overnight service.

Regarding New Year's Eve 1992 into New Year's Day 1993, I can't remember for certain what UTV did on the night; whether they took "The End of the Year" show, ran "Kelly" until 11.55, ran "Kelly" until 12.05 and then take "Best Defence", or run "Kelly" and also take Hogmanay programmes from STV/Grampian/Border, which they often did, in place of "Best Defence".

It was a few years after the 1993 changes of course.

I think Wales stayed where it was because it was significantly different in terms of output to HTV West/Meridian/Anglia which is the same reason that ITV1 Wales stayed different from the rest of ITV1 for a while too. Also there was probably the factor of how much Southampton had room for, the technical links to Wales and what Westcountry were paying for.

I would have thought there was a political/regulatory angle too with having Welsh TV from England

Yes, there was quite a bit of picture interference at midnight, both on ITV and C4. It was a fairly regular occurrence back then as there were switching breaks between on both channels on the changeovers between TVam/Thames/LWT 15 times a week. I do recall there were a few more flickers on the night itself one possibly the Oracle/Teletext changeover which happened a few minutes later. Of course Channel 4 at that point also had a change from being distributed via ITV to being it's own network.

I'm not sure how bad 'squally' is but it's worth remembering that such changeovers do look worse on video recordings than they looked live, VHS machines coped with sync-breaks worse than TV sets.


Yes Meridian just took over everything from TVS so there was nothing to switch. The transmission controllers would have just played the last TVS programme and then the first Meridian one from the same equipment

Thanks for that.

When was Anglia's continuity moved to Northam? Was this not long after MAI bought them in 1994? Something I will say is that I saw some Anglia in the late 90s & early 00's (not long before presentation was centralized) and you wouldn't guess that it wasn't standalone. Meridian was the same when I was in the region in summer 2002. Announcers almost always name-checked the station ("Now on Meridian...etc") and dedicated 'next captions'. Also, lots of local promos, even more than network ones on some days. I take it, they pre-recorded one station (or two once HTV West arrived) and did one live?

It was a world away from Granada, my home region, with bland cross-region continuity referring to 'this channel', often pre-recorded, few local promos and no next captions. Indeed, looking at much of the rest of the ITV Network presentation at the time (even Carlton's regions despite the dumping of the Central & Westcountry brands), it was pretty dire up here.

I've watched Channel 4's countdown-to-midnight 1993 programme - it was a Big Breakfast special, with plenty of reference to C4's new independence (I'm pretty sure they referred to their "first" advert break).

There was no obvious switch. Perhaps the actual switch didn't happen until after closedown that night - the only difference between midnight and closedown was the ITV regions didn't 'opt out' at the breaks? Maybe they included a couple of seconds of black at the end of the last break and that was the point the switch was made (I'm guess switching black to black would not be quite so visible)?

Central's overnight service "More Central" included regional news, had some very slick graphics too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KnryxqGK20

The news reader also served as the CA (there was no CA in to the news, as in the example above).

The service was simulcast across both sides the region, the headlines all seemed to be from the West though (I think the service came from Broad Street).

Yes, although their first ad break wasn't a real ad break, it was a spoof by The Big Breakfast


I was watching C4 that night (in London) and there was some very obvious picture disturbance on and soon after midnight - I remember people I was with at the time commenting on the disruption. The various changes would have all taken place at midnight, as I say there was a jump a few minutes after midnight that seemed to co-incide with Teletext coming on air

Ah that rings a bell. The copy I've seen was a "VHS rip" which wasn't exactly of brilliant quality so it's quite possible I just missed it. I was definitely looking out for it at midnight though...

Ah yepp - just rewatched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-WTvXydJUw&feature=related from 9m20s onwards, and there is some disturbance top and bottom. Not anything like the sort of flicker you might expect at such a switch though.