Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Wow, thanks for that. Around when did the companies start referring to the preset 3 and drop the VHF frequency?

The money would be on just after BBC2 come along: I remember Channel ten was used for STV, when it first started,

I don't think they ever did, except for the short-lived "channel 3 north east". Don't remember it on STV.

Our TV's presets were "BBC1" "BBC2" "ITV1""ITV2" - later models dispensed with the written descriptions and had 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on - but we went from a big British wooden cabinet telly to a JVC from Japan, because my dad has always been a "they're the experts, its worth the money" sort of chap. At the same time, my aunty still had a telly in her kitchen with a big rotary tuning knob.

Rambling now.



You remember that you've read that - even I don't remember that.

I think the only ITV companies to ever refer to themselves on air as Channel 3 were Yorkshire and Tyne Tees. They rebranded as "Channel 3" in 1996 (with TTTV having the North East suffix and Yorkshire only verbally identifying themselves as Channel 3 - the Chevron and Yorskshire names were visually kept). The name was dropped in 1998 when both stations were aquired by Granada and they reinstated the Yorkshire and TTTV names. However within another year the ITV branding started to be used along side the regional names and we all know what happened after that.

According to Wikipedia, the Broadcasting Act of 1990 made the official name of ITV "Channel 3". I assume that remains the case - so that franchisees are Channel 3 Licence Holders.

TVs with presets weren't generally available until the 70s I think and given that the BBC had nabbed the names 1 and 2 for it's channels, it was natural that people put ITV on button 3.

Preset buttons were often labelled BBC1, BBC2, IBA and IBA2 (or ITA and ITA2) as late as the 80s. The idea was that people in dual-reception areas like North Staffs (where I grew up) could tune in Central and Granada and take delight in getting programmes at different times, or different programmes altogether. You may sense some personal experience here... This was before Channel 4 came into being of course. After that, most TVs had buttons labelled BBC1, BBC2, ITV & 4 (any further buttons were just left as 5, 6 etc) or they simply labelled them 1, 2, 3, etc.

Its thanks to this..............http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lngIWYHnQg

I think it was only really the ITV stations with a single major VHF transmitter and frequency allocation that used the Ch6,7,8 etc. Tyne Tees, Scottish, Channel, and the London companies were the obvious candidates. Though I've seen Westward clips that mentioned its two VHF channel numbers on pres captions.

It certainly died out when ITV launched on UHF late 1969, (with eventually dozens, (for HTV hundreds) of transmitters in each region)

The test cards in the 60s also carried the transmitter frequencies

http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/Test-Cards/TCD-EM10-S6.jpg

This one was the Yorkshire half of the then Granada region. The test card was radiated from Emley Moor on VHF Ch 10, and Scarborough was a relay of Emley, so that had to be mentioned too.

http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/Test-Cards/TCD-B7.jpg

Belmont was then an Anglia transmitter, moved to Yorkshire TV in 1974, (adopted by Peter Levy in 2001 )

Around the same time there was a promo along the lines of 'ITV 3 - Britain's favourite button' it was a lurid bright green on black logo

"ITV" as a term never appeared in legislation until the Broadcasting Act 1981 when it was needed in order to distingish it from Channel 4. The Broadcasting Act 1990 only refers to ITV in its transitional provisions (basically, the ITC to act in place of the IBA between its vesting day and 31st December 1992) and otherwise refers to "Channel 3",

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Many media studies publications from that era refer to "ITV will be replaced by Channel 3" or "ITV will be renamed Channel 3".

Clearly the brand ITV was too valuable to be dropped overnight, particularly with ITVs national brand identity having been launched in 1989. That together with popular opinion lead to the ITV name sticking, even though ITV's national brand identity wasn't particularly strong in the mid-1990s (say from 1993 up until when the NPU was formed).

The "Britain's Favourite Button" campaign used a very simiplified version of the 1989 ITV logo in garish green. As I recall UTV ran a version with their own logo and changed "Britain's" to "Your".

Yes, in the late 70s/early 80s I remember the buttons on our TV set were as you describe, Gavin, however I actually saw sets with buttons labelled ATV1 and ATV2! My grandparents had a rotary dial on theirs, and so did my B&W portable I was using well into the 90s (although that was labelled 21-70, or similar).

Nowadays of course, we rarely see buttons on a TV set, but I can't say the same for knobs!

A couple of ITV networking-related questions.

As most of us will already know, schools programmes were networked via ATV and Central, who provided a 'presented feed' to the other regions with interval slides, music, annos, etc. Regions normally joined Central around 09:28 after local start-ups - at 09:28 prompt Central switched from their own start-up sequence to a schools 'standby' caption and music.

The question - what did the regions see on their Central feed before 09:28? I'm inclined to think they saw either Central's local pres, and not a clean feed of the slide scanner with the caption ready, because occasionally on TTT were heard the very end of Central's start-up music or a quick glimpse of their local caption when joining schools. Also, YTV had to use their own copy of the schools slide (albeit identical to the networked slide) when announcing into schools just before 09:28. But the definitive answer would be nice! I assume Central switched to a clean feed during the final schools programme, or at the end of a final publication anno, so regions could opt away cleanly.

Also, when UTV and BOR/GPN/STV regions opted out of the ITV SCHOOLS ON CHANNEL FOUR schools feed between 1987-1993, was this done in a similar way to how local ads were inserted? The speculations I have read are that it wasn't - especially as the opts for Scotland went out on two, and later three, regions at once.

From my own experience of watching ITV Schools on 4, here in Central Scotland, when there was a Scottish opt out, on the schools page on 4-tel, it said "Scotland", and didn't say central Scotland. So presumably these were broadcast across the whole of Scotland.

The opt outs were inserted like this. Just after the end of the preceeding programme, the rotomotion device came up. There was then an on screen glitch, lasting up to five seconds. Shrtly after that, another rotomotion device came up with the opt out programme title. on it. This opt out interval could last as much as eight minuites.

The reason for the long interval before the programme was to allow as short a space as possible between the end of the opt out and the return of national continuity. When the latter returned, there was another on screen glitch.

Worth mentioning as well that due to the way Channel 4 was set up for broadcasting, it was necessary for these glitches to take place for ITV Schools on four. When the service became channel 4 schools, regional programming was broadcast nationwide, with the exceptio being those on S4C.

Would these opt outs not have been handled in the same was as ad breaks until 1993? There should have been no requirement for a glitch to play the local programme in.