Tyne Tees at 50

http://www.itvlocal.com/tynetees/?void=278363 - Part 4 now up

And its a nice chance to hear North East Tonight's old theme again, as well as a certain piece of music the BBC made infamous. I think tomorrrow will be the most interesting though. They really seemed to be struggling to list things for the 90s, so the 2000s... I will commend them for it.

Get Mike and Bob in and run the closing credits while they have a giggle - those were the days of North East Tonight!

Part 4 Tyne Tees has been called many things but I don't think I've ever seen or heard 'Channel 3 North East and Tyne'. !

As I expected, they glossed over the 1990s but who can blame them really? It was a dire decade for TTTV and the station never recovered from the mistakes made. Goodness knows how they'll sugar coat 'Tyne Tees in the 21st Century' tomorrow.

They've set themselves a challenge doing a decade a programme, but I bet they will just focus on news stories from the last decade

Here's the top Question, What is Tyne tess Top 10 show over the last 50 years?

He was off for two weeks in early December (during which it was announced he would be axed) he then returned and only appeared for one week after this and left on Dec 18th. Kenny Toal seems to have replaced him.

http://www.itvlocal.com/tynetees/news/?void=278760 - Part 5 now up

And not surprisingly the shortest of the lot, which felt more like an obituary now with no real care behind it (who'd want to draw attention to the decade really). After rushing through a load of hastily dug out news with little comment, and covering the inevitable Tyne Tees news of the move to Gateshead (which they didn't even try and sell on the 'most modern television complex in Europe' any more), I think they summed up the current situation of ITV in one final line:-

"Here's a whizz through some of the more recent productions as we wait to see what the future will bring after 50 years of Tyne Tees TV."

(before rushing through a bunch of regional shows no one can remember). Congratulations on scraping through to 50 years to all the remaining staff at Tyne Tees, even if it may not be the best birthday yet...

It certainly was scrape the bottom of the barrel time and they just barely managed it. Always a pleasure to see Mike and Bob again though. Surely they could have got Bob at least back in the studio for one final time?

Congrats are in order though to a station that really should have died quite some time ago. Sadly it looks increasingly likely that its death will arrive sooner rather than later...

YouTube link.

I don't suppose anyone knows why they stopped in the background animations with the Channel 3 North East ident. They missed the last two versions out; the gold TTTV and the white and blue one surrounded by the dots.

I don't know if its noted anywhere else, but I see the Tyne Tees name has already gone from the weather sponsor, 'ITV North East Weather.'

Perhaps they were just trying to hide anything of the station since Granada took over... Maybe some of the footage of the spotlight era is just harder to come by for them; given all pres was played out from Leeds and this is pres rather than news/programming, maybe this is something they don't have readily in the archives. The rest were all taken from the 40th Birthday montages by the look of it. Does anyone know which idents popped up on the ITV50 programme for the North East (I never did get to see that)?

I do find it quite amusing where she mentions 'that material is probably a quarter of what we have in our archive'. I know a lot of stuff had been binned over the years by various owners, but not that much!

As for the lack of appearance by Bob Johnson, I'd not say that was all that surprising. Given the amount of cuts in staff (particularly well known ones) I doubt TTTV would have been allowed to keep their own dedicated weather presenter going forward, so I imagine his departure was very much of the 'retire or be sacked' variety, and probably wasn't something he was hugely keen on.

Indeed I can't imagine this whole series was very easy for them to put together. On the one hand they wanted to mark the birthday as it's the last chance they'll get (there's not going to be any 60th, and they weren't even pretending there would ), but on the other hand when so many of your staff are being axed at the same time, I doubt anyone is really in the mood for a celebration.

According to last nights Evening Chronicle Philippa is becoming the Tyne Tees and Border weather presenter. She will also fill in for Pam when she's on holiday. Surprising news really, I thought the future of the Tyne Tees weather was the from Leeds route.

What false advertising! On Thursday's North East Tonight, newscaster Ian Payne said "Tomorrow, old faces wil return" and [no offence intended] it was some early-1960s person who I have never heard of. Where are the 'oldies' - Bill Steel, Kathy Secker, Paul Frost, Wincey Willis etc. ?