UTV rebrand

The black glossy bars around the screens really bug me. I have always thought they look like they are huge screens playing at the wrong aspect ratio.

Yea it's such a design flaw. Why on earth would they roll out Granada's set and then not use the full windows. They could redeem it with blue panels as has been mentioned here already.

I couldn't see this confirmation in the last few pages...

First UTV Live at Six programme will be Monday July 2nd 2018...

— Paul Clark (STAY SAFE & KEEP WELL) (@PaulClark_UTV) April 19, 2018

Going by Paul's tweet, the name is staying put.

Suspect they may move on Sunday 1st July if he says the first main programme is the Monday. Granada also moved on a Sunday, presumably to iron out any problems on a day when not much would be going on.

Gillian presented the weather in-vision today. So, looks as though the duty continuity announcer covers the weekend forecasts now.

I'm remaining cautious as to whether we can take Paul Clark's use of "UTV Live at Six" as literally the programme title or just a figure of speech. In either case, it doesn't address how bulletins away from the main 6pm programme might be branded of course.

It certainly would help if something (whether "...at Six" or whatever else) appeared in that huge white space where a regional suffix might otherwise be, in the bottom-right of the current programme logo.

The fact that they didn't adjust UTV Live's version of the generic regional title sequence to have a totally centred logo (just like the national ITV News) always bemused me. It's so unbalanced. This is part of the reason why I assumed that some sort of longer-form name (whether ITV News Northern Ireland, or whatever else) would be coming fairly soon afterwards - having got viewers used to the current layout of logo, before finally putting *something* in that gaping space.

“UTV Live at Six” was literally the programme title for the first six years of UTV Live from when it launched in 1993 up until 1999, and presenters continued to verbally refer to it as that for many years afterwards.

If you've got a spare £3.5m...

UTV headquarters put on the market for £3.5m

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-43895771

For some reason, I thought it had already been sold. There's a new apartment complex going up right alongside Havelock House. Wouldn't be surprised if Havelock House is demolished and replaced by apartments. I've always found HH a bit of an eyesore, so I'd welcome a complete redevelopment of the site.

I'd heard a rumour UTV were looking at making use of that site before it was sold off for apartments - I think they actually owned the car park that used to be there?

Then ITV took over...

Yeah, as far as I can recall, UTV owned that site and there was indeed talk about an alternative use (don't know if I ever knew what that was - but I certainly can't recall now). I had in my head that the selloff of that land included the HH site too. But obviously not.

HH is a terrible mishmash of buildings and I'd say is of very little architectural value. I'd be shocked if the buyer didn't flatten it.

It's got its own website as well, which includes some interesting drone footage:

http://havelockhouse.info/