UTV - as good as it gets

Well - hmm yes



That's another issue, phone numbers and stuff often fall outside safe areas, and if your watching in 4:3 on Sky Digital you phone 0870 526 and well that's it.

Thank god they got u.tv - that way it won't fall off the screen!



The titles and opening graphics themselves, I like, it's any captions and stuff that is often "too difficult"

In terms of changing them, they have - I've done a big bunch for a few shows, even animating ones too that I send in on a CD which they run through on an Avid. However, getting an aston machine to take a caption background is apparently.... hard to use their words.

I came across something the other week which was quite funny - the All Mixed Up music package. It appears the tracks themselves have applause already in them, and they just run the CD when they need a sting and the applause is already there for them, not as if there was a big audience in the first place.

There were also a few incredibly horrendous stings that have never even made it to air, one having a bizarre police and fire engine siren going off and a fog horn. Feck knows where they planned to use that one!

Here it is :

The Abismal Sting

THEY HAVE ASTON REDS?!?! What a waste - we're certainly not seeing the output of those to their full effect on UTV! Hmmmm - wonder would they swap one for a Motif? A Motif will do all they want to do...

Bloody hell, let's pray for them to be closed down *for any reason at all* - I'll nip round and see if I can get one cheap... though I'll settle for one of the new Pixelpower jobbies...

I know - it's shocking that they have them. Believe it or not the OB van apparently got one too!!!! They did have a few motif's so goodness knows where they went. From what I saw they never really used the powers of the motifs, they had megamoves and stuff installed, but rarely was used, infact, only 4 fonts or "founts" rather seem to be used all the time!

And also they've expressed severe interest in a new piece of Quantel kit - I think it's a gQ. Apparently you'll see the results of all this new graphics gear in the election graphics they've got ready to go, and now we've got it coming at the end of November we get to see how they use all this fab new stuff.

Unless they're going to blow us away with all this stuff. The sad thing is, that whilst they're pi**ing away money on graphics kit, companies are making a fortune of making title sequences and other high quality stuff using a bog standard G5 mac with a fancy SDI card in it. and getting award nominations for it!

A.J.A.:
"They do something half decent and then become lazy and sloppy. "House-style" goes out the window having lasted a few days."

That's what gives UTV such a bad name. Kudos for them for wanting to be different to the rest of the ITV network, but not at the expense of limiting their range of idents to just one (or three versions of the one ident), putting little imagination into making their trailers different, and not exploiting their own niche - IVC - to a fuller potential.

Incidentally, when was the last time UTV showed one of the network idents? Or their own versions? Waste of time and money that was if they were only shown for less than two months.

"That first incarnation of the "UTV" look had many idents which could've been used - yet we nearly always got the standard form-up one."

The 1993-1996 "live action" idents seem to fade out by the end of 1993 - a shame, as they were well made (you couldn't see the join, no video freeze at the end) and did the "people in idents" thing ten years before it became fashionable.

"I think my favourite UTV look was the last one from the oscilliscope era, when that computerised flying telly came into play. But again, they introduced a house style (probably their first ever with regards to slides and menus), only to drop it within a few months."

Are you thinking of the promotion sequence with the logo and shots of programmes in what looked like an art gallery, Aaron? This is the only UTV house style from that era (c. Summer 1989) I remember that was used extensively.

"That said, even their seasonal slides showed a bit of effort."

Some of them were impressive - I remember the Autumn seasonal graphics were visually appealing and used a nice contrast of colour (in 1991, a gold oscilloscope; in 1992, falling oscilloscopes on an Autumn backdrop). And the fact they were seasonal meant it kept UTV's graphic department on their toes to come up with something different every three months.

"I don't think it would actually take much to turn around the presentation at UTV..."

A pay rise?

Perhaps a new, young, fresh approach to on-screen presentation might help, rather than mulling in complacency. Someone who has a vision and willing to take risks. Someone who feels passionately about television presentation and invests that passion into what goes on screen. There are plenty of young people with such visions and talents out there in Northern Ireland.

And yes, that includes me but I'm sick of putting myself at broadcaster's disposals

"...unless this is a management decision to always use that cold blue ident."

The thing that gets me is, for years, UTV always settle for showing one ident over others in their collection - do I hear the sound of a tin whistle in the distance? After going to the effort of rebranding ITV network idents, and filming their own, idents with a bit of life and colour, now they've returned to using just one, uninspiring and boring ident, it's another step back.

"Audra's Pick of the Day isn't a bad idea (although to me it just reads "here's a different way to string together 5 trailers") - my my, we're almost getting back to The Day Ahead which was billed at 9.25 every morning. Quite what it was apart from Frank Mitchell or whoever running through the TV Times listings, I'm not quite sure!"

Audra's "Pick of the Day" is a good idea, don't get me wrong, it shows more of an effort on UTV's part to do something different that show the same old trailers back to back as a means of station promotion. But why they leave it until 5:25 each evening until we get some kind of continuity announcement on Northern Ireland's most popular television station is a disgrace.

If ITV1 didn't start straight into Trisha , there'd be scope for UTV to do this at 9:25 each morning, have an announcer (on duty and live) welcoming viewers and giving a run down on the daytime programmes that have that blue ident and "Good morning and welcome to UTV!" voiceover.

I would hope that once UTV become part of ITV plc (it will happen, probably in the long term), rather than shut down the CTA facilities at Belfast, ITV plc will invest in providing ITV NI/UTV/whatever it will be called by that stage with a fully functional continuity suite, staffed from 9:25am to ITV Nighttime, still allowing for IVC hopefully, taking a clean feed from ITV NC and all announcements sourced from Havelock House, and hopefully provide a more coherent and consistent style of local presentation than what UTV currently provides.

Or is that too much to ask?

Peter:
"The titles and opening graphics themselves, I like, it's any captions and stuff that is often "too difficult""

I'll concede that UTV's title sequences are impressive and at least show that given the chance, they can come up with a graphics package that looks like a bit of effort and imagination went into.

"I came across something the other week which was quite funny - the All Mixed Up music package. It appears the tracks themselves have applause already in them, and they just run the CD when they need a sting and the applause is already there for them, not as if there was a big audience in the first place."

What?!? That wasn't the real audience? I am shocked

My Nan was in the audience for AMU a few years ago, yes, UTV do the "Countdown" approach and get local elderly people to make up the audience, and I think she said the studio was pretty empty. When you get a back shot of the audience, there only seems to be about 20-30 people actually in the audience.

Funny enough, it looks like there's only about 20 people in the studio audience for BBC NI's Brainteaser

"There were also a few incredibly horrendous stings that have never even made it to air, one having a bizarre police and fire engine siren going off and a fog horn. Feck knows where they planned to use that one!"

When somebody won the big holiday. Perhaps it was thought given it's only shown in Northern Ireland, the audience will be well used to the sound of sirens