There was a very brief clip of a man talking in front of "Granada TV Leeds" which was pretty surreal as I always forget Granada served Yorkshire for some time.
That man being Michael Parkinson of course.
Interesting to see the early David Frost stuff, he mentions it in his autobiography. His stint on ANglia was either during or not long after university and it wasn't that long before he was working for Redifusion, then the BBC
I might be quite wrong here, but I think I might be able to shed some light on the improbable Tyne Tees red ident.
Back in the 70s, the IBA produced a large UK map showing all the transmitters and relay stations. Dotted around the map were the logos of the contractors serving the various areas. It was obvious that these logos had been taken from black and white artwork, and the map desinger had simply used a primary colour for each one, thus creating a good number of bizarrely-coloured logos. I think the TTT one was red.
Fast forward to the 20 year old researcher trying to find a Tyne Tees logo.........
:-(
A former member
Does a copy of this map still exist? and can it be viewed on line?
JJ
jjne
TTTV *did* use the red ident for a number of sports productions in the 1970s. I remember it, and the green one (used for rural programmes) distinctly.
I don't know if the BBC programme used an off-air capture (I've not seen the programme yet) but TT have shown the start of "Double Top" in the recent past on a clips show, and it had the red ident (curiously it also had a cue-dot; I'm not sure how that got there at the start of a programme but there you go).
There were also two black endcaps -- one with a white TTTV logo (used on b/w repeats, strangely) and one with a yellow logo (used at the end of the news for a while).
I'm not 100% sure but I do recall a yellow one used on a few kids' programmes as well, with a black logo. TTTV seemed to play around with their front/endboards quite a lot.
Andrew Bowden's site has scans of several of these.
JJ
jjne
Finally got to see this.
Good programme, although probably rather too biased towards the BBC where regionalism was always an afterthought, and hasn't basically changed in the last 25 years.
Even in a show dedicated to regional broadcasting, the point was singularly missed that local news wasn't the benchmark. An ITV station was a
broadcaster in its own right
, not a local offshoot. Regional programming (at least in my area) wasn't pushed as simply being a parochial add-on to the network output; programmes were often specifically intended to hold their own against anything the national competition could throw at it. Budgets weren't always there but very many Tyne Tees shows in particular were seen by the company as embryonic network products in their own right, and were often almost indistinguishable from the mainstream network output. This idea that the like of Top Gear was an accident did not typify the attitudes of the programme makers at the regional ITV stations (especially some of the smaller ones).
That is the loss that we outside the London elite have suffered, and it is to the eternal detriment of politicians that they allowed it to happen.
As I understand it, the fact that ITV developed on a regional basis wasn't originally what was envisaged when the Television Act was being enacted. The ITA's mandate was to introduce commercial television *and* ensure that there was competition for supply of programming within the system. The need to square the circle of there being only one network, yet that there be competition, is what drove the ITA to first try the split weekday/weekend format for franchises (which the original four, ABC, ATV, A-R, and Granada all had) and then to go down the regional route. Remember that both ATV and ABC originally broadcast in
two
different regions.
Regional programming was originally a happy afterthought but later became the justification for the system. But competition was the original motive. Other than Granada I'm not sure any of the original four had any great desire for regional programming. And Granada had largely been based based in the south of England prior to going into television. The fact that none of the original four picked names routed in their regions reflects that.
:-(
A former member
I wonder why there never kept the weekday and weekend spilt? I dare say it could have solve many an issue with having 14 compaines. I remember reading that the reason london was kept spilt was to make sure that there was NOT one big itv company that had control over the rest.