Well, if the 9:25am junction is anything to go by, looks like UTV have been left out of this mini revamp. The now traditional (and boring) break bumper ident with "Good Morning and Welcome to UTV" at 9:25am, followed by two trailers in what is now the "old" ITV1 style, followed by the break bumper ident again (!), then a trailer for Loose Women into Trisha.
Then again, on the day of the ITV1 relaunch last year UTV used its old trailer style and ident before Trisha and only aired its first new ident at 1pm or so. Only trailers created after the relaunch appeared in the new style, it took several days to filter all the old look trailers out. (In fact, the fairground ident appeared at 9:25am for months).
If UTV do not adopt this new style, then they may be on the way back to doing their own thing branding-wise. I certainly haven't seen a celeberty in ages on UTV (they make occasional one-off appearences, but mostly its that damm blue ident). Nothing in their Autumn schedule release about it though.
Oh, BTW here's something from ITV PR that you might like to read...
ITV1 REFRESHES ON-AIR LOOK
ITV1 is to refresh the channel’s on-air branding package to coincide with the new Autumn programming season. ITV1 introduced its new on-air look with a unified ITV1 brand just under a year ago and the new work develops the original design and concept.
Bruce Dunlop & Associates (BD&A) have worked extensively on the packaging of the complete on-air environment, whilst ITV’s in-house Network Promotions Unit has produced new celebrity idents.
The new idents have been filmed on three specially created sets made in ITV’s signature blue and yellow colours. Over 60 new versions of the idents have been shot featuring some of ITV1’s biggest names including Chris Tarrant, Martin Kemp, Katie Derham, Cat Deeley, Brenda Blethyn, Ant and Dec and Simon Cowell.
The update of the rest of ITV1’s on-air package, which includes end credit promotions, break bumpers, break flashes, promotion packaging and menu layouts, uses the four-block device more extensively to tie the complete design together.
Jim Hytner, Marketing and Commercial Director, ITV, said:
“We’re delighted with how the new on-air look has been received – all the feedback we’ve had shows that viewers feel the channel has a more modern, fresh feel. This new work builds on the strengths of the original package and keeps our portfolio of idents up to date with ITV1’s current favourite faces.”
Matt Piper, senior designer at Bruce Dunlop & Associates created the new look for the complete on-air package. The idents were shot over three weeks in London Westway Studios and Manchester Granada Studios on Super 16 film. The director was Chaka Sobhani, producer Paul Braithwaite, director of photography Tim Green, set designer Richard Hornsey. They were telecined on Spirit at One Post Production by George Kyriacou.
Seems that UTV are't even spending money on branding now which was the one thing they have done since they left the name Ulster Television behind. Why they stopped using the celeb idents (plus the local ones which had more personality than the network ones) is baffling.
(On a mostly unrelated subject Nicholas Owen was missing a substantial part of the top of his head again today due to the ITV News being zoomed to 14P16).
They've repeated the promo, then played an ident with full music like this set http://thetvroom.com/images-itv-net/images-2002/prelaunch-ident-5.jpg
Picture from THE TV ROOM
but the music is remixed like played with violins. GMTV have had a relaunch and the GMTV Today music is remixed like played with violins like ITV1.
Everything I've seen so far looks so much better than first time around. The celeb idents are so much better on a real set rather than those half finished, behind the set things.
That break bumper is rather nice.
Oh, and I can't wait to see that ITV News ident, John Suchet, Katie Derham, Nick Owen all sat around on those yellow block things from the promo, and Mark Austin flashing his jacket in a rare glimpse of a personality.
