UTV - From City Quays 2 onwards

Well in terms of UTV these idents are still only 2-3 years old.

I imagine they will use them for another year, at least until ITV Creates ends. Then at that point we will get a new look ITV and UTV will get the same look but with a different logo slapped on it (depending if the look allows for that) or they will just drop the UTV name and it will be ITV completely with the UTV name only being seen/heard on the news.

The idents on UTV may not be that old but it feels like they've been on for 20 years in the same old loop.

So its 1 week today that UTV will be celebrating its 60th anniversary. Looking through the EPG I see no evidence that the channel will have any special programmes to celebrate this momentous event.

I do hope it will get a brief mention at the very least on UTV Live, and I would have thought that next week's UTV Life at 7:30pm with Auntie Pammy would have been the perfect opportunity to look back at 60 years of television history in the province.

It will be very sad if ITV don't let UTV mark this event anyway onscreen next Thursday.

Surely Julian will get to dust off the dinner jacket one more time?

The “Irishman’s/Irishwoman’s Diary” column appears on the leader page of the Irish Times every day, and is a bit of an essay piece from the writer. Today is probably the first time though I’ve ever seen a station ident on it! It’s a piece about the launch of UTV sixty years ago, and may be a bit of interest (“leaky” paywall).

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/northern-vision-an-irishwoman-s-diary-on-the-birth-of-ulster-television-1.4064977%3fmode=amp

Let us be brutal here - Since October 2016 UTV has changed forever! - The days of the independent franchise UTV are long gone. Havelock House is gone from UTV. The UTV management are not in charge, it is ITV plc who are in charge.

This is reality, and anyone expecting a big birthday celebration need to think again. Hope was there earlier in the year, but these have now been dashed, as UTV will mention their birthday on the news, maybe a few clips uploaded on to their UTV news section on the ITV News website and that will be it.

In effect they did their last decent look back at UTV when they aired their Havelock House specials.

The rot set in with the launch of UTV Ireland, and that utter failure has caused the end of UTV as we know it in 2019.

A bit of a research fail at the end of that article. The company's official name is ITV plc, the letters don't stand for anything in the context of the corporate entity.

I don't see how any of that is a bad thing.

I have never seen UTV looking so good on air. The programmes seem to be of improved quality (both in content and appearance), and they're out of the big old building they've been rattling around for years in exchange for nice, modern comforts.

Didn't they have a series earlier in the year?

That was a new series of Rewind, which wasn't related to the 60th anniversary.

There was a two-part series called Unlocking Havelock last October, shown in prime time, narrated by Eamonn Holmes. You might be thinking of that?