UTV rebrand

It is quite odd for someone who isn't a weather presenter to do the weather in vision stood in front of the map, I can't recall this combination occurring anywhere else.

Do UTV employ either a forecaster or a presenter?

Regarding Julian's announcements, does he still refer to films as "Our movie presentation tonight at 11:00..."

I notice we had a female Northern Irish announcer on network ITV last night, how that particularly recruitment process worked I'm not sure. Can they advertise for 2 announcers who must have Northern Irish accents?

Kerrie Gosney, who appeared as a weather presenter for several weekends while still a continuity announcer at YTV.

Not as such. The vast majority of forecasts are presented OoV by someone from the newsroom. Sadly though, we're still stuck with that goon Frank Mitchell, who appears in-vision to do the forecast at 6.25pm each evening. He pre-records a forecast for the late 10.30pm bulletin also. AND, he's now started to appear on the GMB updates - I'm guessing those forecasts are pre-recorded around 12 hours prior to transmission - hardly an up-to-date forecast! Frank is a presenter on U105 radio and presenting weather forecasts is his only role with UTV these days. And for that, we are thankful. Although, if ITV were to get rid and replace with say, Becky Mantin, we'd be most grateful.

Next time he's doing a forecast - if you've got the willpower to manage a whole 2 minutes of him - keep a count of the number of times he says "indeed". Another common feature of his weather broadcasts (well, in my experience anyway) is that his commentary often contradicts the visuals behind him.

No more 'Weather Watchers' - and thank Christ too. Sadly his cringeworthy sign-off remains intact - "From me Frank Mitchell, take care, be good, bye-bye."



Yep. Julian has introduced programmes, using the same stock phrases for over 30 years.

"In just over an hour from now, Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in our late-night movie presentation: Spectre."

"Hello everyone, what about ye and welcome to our Saturday night prime-time line-up here on UTV."

"Hello everyone, what about ye and welcome to our Friday night prime-time line-up here on UTV."

"And now we cross to the studios of ITN in London for the latest national and international news. You're watching UTV - it's seven minutes past eleven." (Although he regularly used to get his timings wrong on these announcements and got cut off whilst doing the time check).

And in a pre-recorded announcement this evening, he has managed to pronounce a word completely incorrectly. He was referencing someone progressing to the next round and pronounced "progress" as it would be if it were a noun.

And since going out-of-vision, he's really yanked up that false English accent.



As a number of people have suggested on here, the recruitment of Northern Irish announcers in London can be no coincidence. I would be surprised if these pre-records from Gillian and Julian last very much longer.

ITV is making absolutely no effort during daytime in particular - there are no announcements there at all. There are no ECP graphics at any point during the day - which is bizarre in this age - particularly for a major channel. I'm not sure of the mechanics of the technical set-up in Chiswick but a dedicated ECP graphic for UTV might require a dedicated piece of equipment. And that might just be an unnecessary expense. And then there's the very small selection of UTV-branded idents. Are all of these things an indication that the current set-up will be short-lived (and network continuity is on its way) or is it simply down to the fact that NI has a relatively small population (and therefore, small revenues) and ITV doesn't believe it merits any more attention than it's being given (and network branding, although inevitable, is slightly further off)?

I do think you're being a bit unfair here MMcG, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with Frank, Julian or Gillian''a delivery. Whilst it might not be to everyone's taste and it might be a bit cringey to imagine someone from England watching Julian's IVC Corrie announcements, UTV is local station who were to a greater or lesser extent in touch with their audience. That is something once shared by most other regions. Now it is pretty much gone.

Now I'm not saying the new idents and news branding aren't a vast improvement on what we had before, because they are. I do think, however, that this rebrand has got rid of some of the good things about UTV as well as much of the bad. There's a reason why UTV Live has the best audience share of any ITV regional news programme and it's not just their journalism.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that.



I don't believe that a business that produces a bit of local news can justifiably label itself a "TV company". It relays ITV programmes - and any audience it has, is attracted by that product. My personal view on this is that ITV has an audience in Northern Ireland, UTV, for the most part, does not. As I have said on here many times, UTV is merely a relay station for ITV in NI. I therefore believe it is inaccurate to refer to "UTV's audience" in any context other than the viewers who tune in to its local news output or the couple of cheaply made, lacklustre local programmes it produces. For the most part, the Channel 3 audience in NI, is ITV's audience. If UTV did anything in the past that even remotely enhanced the viewer's experience, I might be inclined to give them some credit. However, the best that I can say is that viewers still watched the ITV programmes on Channel 3 in NI in spite of the outdated and amateurish graphics and presenters featured in the junctions in between the programmes.



I will agree with you on one point here. I do believe the last week has seen the removal of any sense of "personality" the channel had. There wasn't much to lose during daytime hours - though ITV has removed what little there was. But in peak-time, the IVC did bring some sense of channel personality to the audience (albeit, with a cringe factor). I disagree with those who think IVC is an outdated format. If done in a modern way - and with a good presenter - it can be a lot more engaging than an ident and voiceover. The ITV-produced trail graphics and idents definitely look more sophisticated than what went before. But I agree, we've lost something in the last week. Not helped by the fact that Julian's and Gillian's pre-recorded announcements are super bland and coming across as rather soulless too.



What is the magic ingredient then?

Notable lack of UTV branding on these sort of things now:

Join us tomorrow from 8pm on @ITV for The #XFactor results show. With a special guest performance from @johnlegend! pic.twitter.com/bHSB7T1n3Q

— The X Factor (@TheXFactor) October 22, 2016

UTV haven't done themselves many favours by cutting spending on non-news programmes, and therefore jobs, at the slightest opportunity.

How they can argue there are no slots for locally-made programmes when there's wall-to-wall repeats on Saturday and Sunday daytime, or near-on 30-year old episodes of "Murder She Wrote" as midnight approaches?

Also, any time they took a risk with changing their traditional and conservative presentation style, it seemed to just quietly fizz out and the status quo was restored.

Thinking back to 2003, they tried moving away from the "Hall of Mirrors" backdrop and incorporate video clips into the in-vision continuity links, but that didn't last long.

Likewise, around the same time, "Pick of the Day" went from being a two-minute spot about the following day's schedule to a Julian-fronted bunch of trailers (often the ones already being heavily rotated on screen) for random days of the week ahead.

Given ITV's targeting of a younger audience, having some new announcing talent on UTV - and sourced from outside Havelock House - could have kept things feeling a bit fresher.

They made a similar mistake on UTV Ireland: just how long did the winners of that public competition last on (or even off) screen? They weren't exactly young, or perhaps experienced enough for the job in hand?!

And with the array, in many senses of the word, of opinions some of us - myself included - share about UTV Live, perhaps that's best left for the Newsroom?

Careful Colm. You might trigger Sharon O'Neill to pop out from behind a wall, accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack...and after a five-second dramatic pause and lifeless stare at camera, she'll deliver an incredibly convincing (and not at all insincere) defence of UTV News.

I won't have nightmares. I will sleep well.

The thing is I have seen UTV opting out on Monday and Friday at 8pm. STV are using weekend slots for local output and broadcasting opt out shows, I dont see why UTV cant do the same?

Julian sounds dire now, his age has NOTHING to do with it, Maggie on STV ( Remember she been with STV for over 30 years) and of course Tony ( been around even longer than most current people) both sound enthusiastic and oomph about their CA.

STV does this eveny monday morning during GMB

If I'd been relegated from a fairly prime slot in front of the camera to a recorded announcement sent down to London, with the only prospect being inevitable redundancy once ITV fully rebrands UTV some way down the line, I'd probably not sound too excited either.

TBH the only reason I can come up with for Julian/Gillian staying put so far is the prospect of a redundancy cheque (or other projects in the pipeline) forthcoming once this transition period is over. If they're freelance then they're mad to stay put -- they should get out while they can; plenty of work out there for familiar presenters of their experience, but the longer they sit around, coming in to the office for half an hour per week reading some insipid script sent up the line from London the less chance they have of moving on.