the stv thread

It's to cover the itv.com address at the bottom of the credits with stv.tv

I know that, but that could still happen if they were to push the credits up, instead of squashing them.

STV are getting more and more like UTV every day. First they want to create a 5.30pm regional show, and now they've created a cack-handed way of trying to cover up any ITV branding.

The merger between the two may not have happened, but it seems SMG (and the current regime there) has taken a few lessons, most of which are good if you want STV to remain independent and strong.

Incidentally, anyone spot the rather odd general programme promo just before Millionaire and after the regional slot? They showed clips of seemingly random programmes, a steel 'S' with sparks coming out of it, and used the tagline 'altogether rivetting'. Oh dear.

Incidentally, the flaw in having programmes to cover the whole of Scotland (ignoring Border of course) rather than properly regional programming was exposed at the 7.30pm slot - a look at the regeneration of the Clyde, which appeared to be little more than vox-pops of people passing their studios. Probably not even interesting to people in Edinburgh, never mind in the Highlands. I think with the 5.30pm show you're going to get a reverse of Reporting Scotland's desperate box-ticking efforts - a heavy central Scotland bias - when neither are a good idea.

However I realise the argument that we're in a more competitive market, that SMG is trying to create more regional programming when it isn't necessarily required, etc etc, so I'm not going to be to critical.

A few problems with stv this morning.The idents into both the ITV News Summary, and returning to This Morning where fine when the first started, but about 3 or 4 seconds later it flicked to the ITV1 ident, then back to stv. There was no announcement either.

Is stv continuity recorded during the daytime?

Yes, it is. Recorded announcements air from around 11.30pm until about 4 or 5pm. The rest is live.
BTW, problems seem to be fixed with the idents.

Postcode Challenge starts on Monday 12th November.

Is this a new setup with recorded continuity? In the early dates of the Scottish TV rebranding (adopting the celebrity idents), continuity was certainly live. This was proven when the continuity announcer (the one who also works as a DJ on Clyde 2) got the day wrong and corrected himself.

Strikes me it would make more sense to have recorded continuity between 12am and 12pm (ITV Play, then GMTV, then the start of mid-morning programming), as STV's involvement for most of this would be minimal.

Hell, STV could hand over to ITV1 network continuity overnight and no-one would notice. However, SMG seem even more likely than UTV to try and cover this up. (More to the point, do UTV still carry clean feeds of ITV1 idents overnight?)

I remember stv tried everything to cover it up,

there had scotland today and north tonight repeat.

some times there hated ITV clean feed that there showed Night screen instead

The only logical reason I can think that they cut live continuity during the day was to save the pennies. The CA would do live continuity between 6pm and 12 midnight to actually get paid for doing a proper shift, as it would probably only take about an hour to record all continuity for the day.

What I don't understand is why the CA doesn't do everything from announcing programmes to playing them on the screen, thus it would be live 24/7 and save them more money I would imagine as they wouldn't be paying 2 people to do 2 different jobs?

Once again STV Glasgow ruin the end of a programme by blacking out Emmerdale and giving us a still promo caption of Scotsport. Is everyone at Pacific Quay totally inept. This is happening far too frequently.

with the new 5.30pm show starting soon does anyone know what is happening with golden balls up here in STV land?

or will we be losing Dickinson's Real Deal/