A plea to ITV1 Network Directors

Please sort out your ECPs! It flicked between full screen and half screen over Emmerdale the other day, cutting off part of the start of the sponsorship bumper and then during tonight's Pop Idol, didn't appear at all leaving Sasha talking over audio of crowd noise while mentioning the Turkey match. Surely it isn't that hard to get it to work every time?

It was an ECA, NOT an ECP off the back of Pop Idol tonight, in common with what happens off the back of all live programmes.

I think the "crowd noise" was an added effect to make the announcement sound all "excited" and "LWT", actually, Asa.

I agree with you, yet again, it just DIDN'T work.

See my previous comments in the other Saturday continuity thread.

Yeah, that was pretty funny with Emmerdale.
Scottish TV may keep its presentation seperate from ITV1 the rest of the time - but thankfully they always leave the ECP's to the REAL amateurs

Also tonight out of You've Been Framed, the text was poorly aligned and was going out of the safe areas.

Another thing is that some programme names don't fit on the "NEXT" graphic and overlap it. I've seen this twice today.

The standards with ECP's do seem to be getting worse. Does no one check the spellings on them either?

When Scottish get their clean feed, I wonder if they'll create their own ECPs, have none at all or just use the ITV1 feed and swap as needed?

Scottish (and presumably UTV and Grampian) are crashing in and out of LNN's "Network" feed? That really is an appalling state of affairs.

Face it - I might as well prepare myself for ITV1 Scotland

You've effectively got ITV1 Scotland now anyway.

It makes sense logistically and financially. The population of Scotland is so sparse, two ITV1 regions are not needed.

I'm not talking about that - I also think that one channel could cover all of Scotland, but that channel does not need to have ITV1 in its name!
We need to latch onto any last string of identity possible, and hopefully SMG won't fall for Granalton's evil mind tricks.

A separate clean feed? This is news to me. I was of the understanding that the LNN Network feed was the only line that UTV/Scottish/Grampian were ever going to be getting. Given the lack of investment at the station generally, I would doubt very much that UTV management would be willing to pay for a clean feed. Likewise for the equally miserable SMG.

Realistically, ITV 1 N. Ireland and ITV 1 Scotland *will* happen in the not too distant future. Certainly no need for any clean feed then!!

I can't really speak for Scotland but where UTV is concerned, ITV 1 N. Ireland can only be a good thing.

Yes but they are both very diverse in cultures especially in the North and i'm afraid that it's not going to be as easy as everyone thinks to get rid of the Scottish and Grampian TV brands at the moment.

SMG would have done that ages ago and called the whole operation Scottish TV. SMG Chief Executive Andrew Flanagan knows there is no way he would get away with it,he has supported the merger of Granada and Carlton subject to certain safeguards being put in place and a series of conditions designed to prevent the new conglomerate squeesing the advertsing revenue of Scottish ,Grampian ,Channel and UTV .

Trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt will be questioned in the commons next week on how she plans to protect Grampian and STV from the merged Granada and Carlton operation serious concerns have already been raised because it could reduce Scottish content and threaten Grampian and STV jobs .Remember Scotland is a nation and not just another English ITV region .