Scottish and Grampian tv

After looking through several different sites I have noticed how different Scottish and Gampian are different from the rest of the ITV regions.

Both franchises are owned by SMG who haven't adopted the ITV hearts look. At night both regions join together and have there own programmes. They do have ITV Nightscreen but thats all they take from the ITV night feeds.

The only time you ever hear the word ITV is in the mornings when ITV show programme promos during GMTV. I'm not sure if this is the same in the other regions. They don't even have the ITV logo in there idents, (Carlton even have a tiny ITV logo in theres). Are they ashamed to be connected with the rest of the network.

Dose anyone know why Scottish and Grampian are different?

Do you think Scottish and Grampian have had generic 'Hearts' idents made for them but haven't used them. If they have been made I think they would have the Scottish tv thistle and the Grampian tv St. Andrews Cross.

Well. Grampian TV hasn't always been owned by SMG. It's only just changed their look a while ago. And it's really popular. I think there sort of seperate because if they joined together and did more sort of the bog standard ITV stuff they would change the whole network.

I remember reading and AD in the paper when they were changing their look and it said they don't want to change anything and they only want to improve it. And it has slightly.

And we see enough of those ruddy hearts. At the end of every programme we get those smoke hearts which skews the picture up and makes it look awful.

It's fine the way it is.

I get Scottish and from what I have seen their presentation is better, also I like the way both Grampian and Scottish have a generic smg logo.

http://www.scottishtv.co.uk/graphics/scottishlogo.gif http://www.grampiantv.co.uk/graphics/grampianlogo.gif

Also Scottish ran S2 instead of ITV2 until now.

We are very independant up here!

I adore the SMG idents - I think they are fantastic. They are original, modern and funky (!), and show a bit of Scotland too.

I think the network should take notice of SMG's presentation. The current hearts idents are getting rather boring - they need to take a fresher approach with more action and originality.

I've just noticed - isn't it lucky Grampian and Scottish have the same amount of letters!

Anyway, does anyone know the design agency who came up with the SMG idents?

I like it the way it is too. Scottish Focus on their side and grampian focus on their part of scotland. Grampian I think also allows a lot of viewer input. Local people that you might have seen or know just appear on the TV. I don't know about scottish but I bet the other regions aren't like that.

And in my opinion the BBC Channels are very serious and sensible channels. And Grampian is more of a local channel with everything you need to know. Even the news is local. Things like tiny car crashes are mentioned that happen. It's truley amazing!

Oh. And nothing compare to C4 when BB is on.

I think that SMG should have bought up Border and converted it into an all-English and all-Scottish service on the two frequencies. There could then have been a completely Scottish ITV channel. When I was on holiday in the Scottish transmission area I noticed reports about events happening in Dumfries and Galloway (south-west, outside the Scottish region). If they are going to do this anyway, why not just extend the same news programme across Scotland?

Because this would be like taking on Reporting Scotland which I think they respect the coverage reporting scotland gives. It's fine the way it is.

True... I suppose competing directly with Reporting Scotland is possibly not the best idea for any of the parties involved. However, it does seem slightly odd that Scottish covers news outside its own area. This would suggest to me that it was trying to show that it could match RepScot and should be given the chance. Although I might be completely wrong :

Their current idents are very nice, with a splash of hearts and something different. They just like being independant like UTV, they are a nation-ish boradcaster and like the fact.

UTV is almost the same as Scottish and Grampian - no ITV logo on their idents, trailers, breakbumper. No hearts either. Overnight they do take the Night-time service and the generic idents and hearts trailers though, unlike SMG.

I have a theory that the hearts may appear on SMG in the Autumn, what with the new deal with Granada made this week and the appearence of ITV2...

So what's the deal with Granada then? I believe Granada tried to take over SMG a while back but because they had just purchased Virgin Radio they couldn't.

Granada owns about 15% of SMG and was rumoured to be edging towards a takeover bid until SMG bought Virgin Radio. But at this point, even if SMG sold Virgin or if it sold off the TV assets separately, Granada can't bid because it is already just about at the current 15% audience limit.