UTV rebrand

It used to be commonplace in regional ITV for the channel to offer to produce the ad for an extra fee or even include it in the cost if the advertiser committed to a certain volume.

It's still pretty much the norm for other local advertising such as press and radio, and many of the city stations offer the same:

So when did the daytime announcements stop again?

The last recordings I have from daytime are January 9th - and there were announcements over end credits and idents. There were references to the day (Monday). And one other quote: "UTV's favourite farming show returns for a new series tomorrow night" - suggesting that the announcements weren't generic but specific to that date. No idea what's been happening on weekdays since then but there have been no announcements during daytime this weekend. And interestingly, freelancer Aidan Browne was in reading the news last night as well as covering the continuity announcements during the evening.

So, UTV branded trails, idents etc continued throughout the night and have remained in place during daytime today. However, I still believe that yesterday's ITV branding - cock-up or otherwise - is a sign of things to come. Daytime has reverted back to its previous state of neglect, where local voiceovers are concerned. Could daytime be a prime target for the introduction of full ITV branding and continuity, with prime-time following at a later date? Time will tell.

I'd honestly be surprised if there is a switch to ITV branding any time soon. If it were to happen, I'd expect dual branding first, with small ITV logos appearing at the bottom of the idents and "ITV News" appearing on the UTV Live titles.

UTV viewers are already exposed to a considerable amount of ITV branding - be it ITV Studios stings, trails for ITV 2/3/4/Be/Encore, ITV Box Office promos or new season programme trails for ITV which are popping up in between ads. And of course, the full portfolio of ITV-branded channels is available to NI viewers anyway - and they quite often run ITV-branded trails for the main ITV channel (conflicting with the UTV-branded versions of the same trails on UTV).

I can't see this being the long drawn out affair that we experienced with the phasing out of the ITV English/Welsh regional brands. ITV has completely refreshed UTV's on air look - pretty soon after taking control of the company. I believe the relatively quick pace of change will continue. I do believe they were right not to dump the UTV brand last October. They will have wanted to tread carefully, for various reasons. One of these being to preserve the high ratings share UTV has here. It's a relatively small population, yes. But money is money. But even with a completely new look, ratings are as strong as ever.

Complete speculation but I can't see them going for a big bang switch to ITV branding. I do think it'll be phased in and I do see daytime as a prime candidate for a first strike - potentially switching to full ITV branding (trails and idents), with prime-time retaining UTV idents for a while longer. Not sure I see a situation though where UTV and ITV logos will appear together on trails or idents.

Other than people like us, I doubt that many people will actually notice or give a toss when that UTV logo becomes an ITV logo - it'll be such an insignificant change to most people.

I wonder if ITV might make another attempt to brand daytime, introducing that branding to UTV at the same time.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying but I do think that the UTV name will live on for a good while yet. I think they wouldn't have changed the DOG during Good Morning Britain to say "UTV" rather than ITV if they were looking to dump "UTV" in the near future. I think a particular problem is UTV Live. That is the most popular brand IMHO within UTV and if they changed UTV they'd have to change the name of the news programme. My own personal feeling is that they have no plans to change UTV to ITV at any point.

Of course, plans can change.

Well, we could end up with the silliness they have in England, where the only remaining signs of some of the old ITV company names are the regional news programme titles - 'ITV News: Granada Reports' and 'ITV News: Meridian'.

Could they not rename the show "Ulster Live" as opposed to UTV live?

I take it robertclark125 you do not have a full understanding of Northern Irish politics.

Ulster Television has not been used since 1993 and there was a reason. UTV felt more suitable for the Roman Catholic nationalist population to call Ulster Television, as Ulster in the unionist sense is the six counties of Northern Ireland and not the remaining three. Names have a lot more meaning and sensitivity in Northern Ireland e.g. Derry/Londonderry.

UTV has a wonderful balance, blandness, means everything to all communities, so UTV will remain the name and they will never revert to Ulster again.

JK, I have to confess, I don't have a full understanding of Northern Irish politics. I had thought that renaming the show from UTV live, to Ulster Live, if ITV management ever wished to do so, would be a sort of compromise.

That said, ITV hasn't made any mention of doing away with the UTV brand, so you could well be right JKDerry.

While I also remember to ask JKDerry, has Ulsterbus launched it's new livery for the vehicles operating in the Derry/Foyle area?