UTV rebrand

Yep. He's probably using the same scripts he was using 30 years ago.

It seems like you just don’t like him. It seems like he’s doing what’s been asked of him.

"Now Julian, what I'd like you to do today is to avoid looking at the storylines of Emmerdale and Coronation Street... and please, don't ask Pamela who her guests are on tonight's UTV Life! After all, we don't want to give the viewers any information that might make them interested in the programmes. Just re-record the exact same words you used last week. That'll be great. Thanks."

He comes from an era where hard-sell of individual programmes that were about to start really didn't exist. The in-vision stuff was all about a gentle promotion of the channel itself really, a more general setup where they'd talk about new series, and stuff not really related to programming at all.

Out of vision links under this system were always bland. 5 second pointers where very little was said over and above the one or two sentences in the TV Times.

You only have to look at the GMG North stuff in the 90s to see that, even without IVC: Announcers would typically use the same script before and after the break, with the word "next" swapped out for "now". Most of the announcers across ITV, even going back to the 1970s usually sounded bored when delivering an OOV link. Central and LWT broke the mould, but most of ITV continued in the old ways for a very long time. Companies switched off IVC but didn't bother with the part that made Central/LWT better than the rest -- hard sell of the OOV links. The old character went, and wasn't replaced with anything.

This is the era that Simmons comes from (after staying with 1970s-style presentation for 20-30 years longer than the rest), and he's too old to change to the hard-sell, tightly-scripted modern continuity TV employs in 2018 -- and the resulting dullness of what was filler, and is now the whole thing is all the more obvious in the 21st century. The time for the carriage clock and the retirement cheque is probably overdue.

Julian has been living off his "quirky", camp delivery of those 'Coronation Street' links for a very long time. He used to do the same type of thing for the late-night 'Prisoner: Cell Block H' in the 90s. Every other link was delivered in a stale, 1970s style. As Denton has suggested, no useful information about programmes, other than their title and what time they are on at. Nothing to try and lure the viewer. Very dull.

Mind you, to be fair, there are plenty of announcers on networked channels today who are guilty of the same crime - including the bigger channels. BBC One, I'm looking at you. And don't get me started on announcers on British TV using American pronunciation of words: "Scheduled" is right up there at the top of that list, closely followed by "Process".

Wow. That announcement might as well have been recorded once years ago, and repeatedly played out ever since. There is literally no point bothering to do new announcements (live or recorded) each day/week if they're that generic.

Surely mentioning something a bit more time-specific (such as current characters/plots, if it's the first/last episode in a series of something, name-check guests in the case of a chat show, etc etc) is what gives continuity a bit of life?

You do begin to wonder if an overnight switch to ITV presentation from London would have done Julian's legacy more favours in the long term. No doubt some people would have been campaigning for his return, whereas right now he jars with the rest of the much slicker presentation on the channel and he's never been suited to out-of-vision.

It's why it makes sense for ITV to slowly move UTV towards its look rather than just throw everything out overnight. People will come to their own conclusion over the merits, or otherwise, of doing things the old way.

Julian has a very precise schtick and he's good at it, but it's going to be increasingly painful watching him trying to adapt to out-of-vision announcements recorded hours earlier, being a weather presenter or whatever other filler role they give him on the UTV News.

And curiously, ever since Julian started presenting weekend weather bulletins in-vision - which was early March I think - I've not heard Gillian Porter doing continuity links. I haven't been religiously watching UTV - so it' s possible she may have popped up. But I strongly suspect we've had Julian covering continuity all day, every day, for the last few weeks.

A problem with UTV's presentation is the lack of evolution since the late 1990s...

No announcers recruited externally - any replacements being secondment or "demotion" from the News department or the off-screen publicity team.

Continued cuts in budget and staff, not helped by the consolidation of ITV and its impact on UTV/STV.

A lack of imagination - sticking with the if it ain't broke philosophy and abandoning any attempts at trying something different.

BBC NI's ongoing investment in local presentation making the inertia at Havelock House the more obvious.

Hearing the NI-accented ITV announcers doing their job with more passion and relevance to the brand.

...I could go on.

btw, Is Julian still referring to "ITN"?

He hasn't changed at all nearly ten years on.



There does seem to be a lot of dislike for Julian, in essence I can understand the criticism.

It's nice that ITV feel that the old familiar voices can still be part of the continuity team. But I feel now ITV need to look at revamping the continuity team though and getting some fresh talent in to bring UTV more in line with the ethic of ITV.

It would be nice if they did keep it local though rather than just drafting in the Network announcers. That's a touch that ITV Wales has since lost and it's a shame that no welsh voices do even the local continuity there.

Might getting him to do report packages and/or live OBs about ultra-lightweight community event/human interest/cutsie pie/slow news day (etc) fluff - like Bob Crampton does for ITV West Country - be a good avenue for him?