UTV rebrand

More like were written (once ever, years ago, possibly by somebody who is now long-since dead) in Belfast, and have been trotted out by UTV announcers ever since!

Not sure I follow that logic. The script is the source of the blandness. Responsibility for the blandness rests with the author.

My money is on each of those junctions being completely separate recordings. As has been said countless times, Julian has been churning out the same dull lines for years.

Interestingly, I've been told that Julian did standard links into both episodes of 'Coronation Street' last night, rather than his usual "Now on the UTV..." nonsense. Not sure if the episodes had a serious theme/tone though.

Shouldn't UTV have access to programme information data, such as a BDS feed, or sent a printed copy of schedules/PR from the ITV Press Office to use as source material for continuity announcements?

Or at least, a departmental copy of the TV Times, which was still being used in the studio as late as 2005?

Watching through some post-2016 off-air recordings, I notice Julian and Aidan's links are predominantly generic and formulaic, lacking detail of, and inferred interest in, the forthcoming programmes; while Gillian at least makes an effort to make links sound specific and distinctive.

Is it not long now until the move to the new building? I hope they get a news set similar to Granada Reports with lovely windows.

Gillian definitely puts in more effort. It's just unfortunate that her reading style is like that of a teacher reading a story to a class of primary 1s.

I can't imagine that it'll be too much longer. I'm curious about the studio arrangements for 'UTV Life' post-building move. Alternatively, they could do everyone a favour and put that programme out of its misery.

A Granada-style set-up is highly possible given the location - the standard ITV News set for news and View from Stormont; with the cityscape side of the studio being the UTV Life side.

Something which sprung to my mind earlier - are UTV taking any shows/series from independent producers? Most recent local programmes seem to be in-house productions.

Was watching utv live the other day and Marc mallet made a reference to utv news not utv live ie he said utv news can reveal in a report and not utv live can reveal in a report so is that an indication of the transition to the new set is it going to be called utv news and not utv live

The two most likely options are either just keeping the UTV Live name as it is now, or calling it ITV News from UTV much like how Channel's news is called ITV News Channel TV and verbally phrased as 'ITV News from Channel Television'.

That would be a good way of incorporating everything together

Channel’s is a bit of a mouthful. I can understand why they don’t call it “ITV News Channel” but if Granada can keep “Granada Reports” then surely “Channel Report” could have stayed. I know Granada Reports is nominally “ITV News Granada Reports” but the “ITV News” part was only referred to by the presenter for about a week after the rebrand.

In terms of UTV if they’re going to go down the ITV News line then “ITV News Northern Ireland” seems better.

Was going to say I remember them saying "this is the ITV News from Granada Reports" like you said it didn't last long!