Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

AS someone else said on the video: ITS Ident- ad -clock- ad -show.

As Government at the time was so repulsed at Adverts and etc in the usa and thus put very tight rules making it very clear to highlight where the advert ends and were the programme begins. you would think this sort of thing would not be allowed.

But look at the placing of the adverts - they're either side of the top of the hour. Presumably it's a way round the rules on commercial airtime per hour.

Remember the rules were different back then as were the conventions of broadcasting (although back in those days there were few conventions!). For example in the early days of ITV 'advertorials' - long advertising features were allowed, something that isn't even today.

The Big Show was certainly shown on Tyne Tee's first night. George and Alfred Black were two of the founders

It's real, and is exactly as scheduled (I have the log for that night). These short 5 second commercials were known as "time spots" and were the equivalent of the pirate radio habit of giving a clock check followed by a spoken ad for Bulova watches.

The break was perfectly legal because it was between programmes and programmes themselves always began with a company ident or logo of some sort - although back in the late 50s it was not at all uncommon for that to be a customised "xx presents" caption in the font/style of the programme itself rather than the formal company logo. (TWW, STV, TTT and Ulster all adopted this at the beginning since it was customary to show a station ident from presentation and it would have looked a bit silly to follow that with an identical logo at the start of the local programme)

The Opening Night of Tyne Tees is one of the few to have been recorded to VT in its entirety. Most stations kept a telerecording of their first show but usually taken from a clean feed - STV's "This is Scotland" was telerecorded down the line by ITN, for example.

Sadly the TTT tape is badly flawed and many parts of it suffer from dropouts and sync disturbances as a result of trying to record whilst genlocking.

Does anyone know the reasons why ITV wasn't on Sky Digital when it first launched in 1998? How long before it was available on Sky?

Was it not to try and make ONdigital a more attractive proposition?

Also in 1998 ITV was a lot more regionalised, and setting up all 15 regions with postcode mapping wasn't an easy or cheap thing to do.

Exactly right. Carlton and Granada owned ONdigital and wanted to give it a competitive advantage over Sky. But studies later showed that ITV viewing dropped in Sky households (despite Sky effectively giving ITV a free advert by including it in its EPG anyway with a message "For ITV press TV then 3".

I wonder what the non-Carlton and Granada regions made of it.

ITV finally launched on Sky's platform in November 2001. Just over three years after Sky Digital itself launched.

Some of you may be interested in this. VT clock for over 30 seconds before titles of ATV's Clayhanger (1976).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaIGnpDqyQM

Probably the essential thread to ask this question, but when did TTTV Channel 8 and Granada Channel 9 etc all become Channel 3? Was there a reason why different ITV stations were on different channels?

Channel 3 is just the preset on your TV set, or these days the EPG position

Channel 9, Channel 7 etc. were the VHF frequencies their transmitters broadcast on. TV sets then didn't have presets, they had tuning dials like a radio. These days we use UHF channels 21-69 but they're not referred to on air, with national networks and now digital multiplexes it would take too long and there's not much point

US TV stations are still generally one transmitter per station and so still do refer to themselves with VHF and UHF channel numbers, hence [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCBS- TVC]CBS2[/url] or ABC25


As to why it became '3' on everyone's sets, well the other two stations had '1' and '2' in their names! (cue lots of posts about how everyone's TV presets were configued...)