UTV teletext (600s)

Andrew:
"Talking about UTV, Did you notice that letter on Chatterbox, asking why ITV have no ads overnight and just a 'back soon' caption. And the letter was from someone from Northern Ireland!

That'll be UTV forgetting to run trailers or PIFs overnight then?"

UTV don't always forget to show ads. Most of the time, there are no ads because apart from the various chatlines, no one wants to bother having their ads shown in the wee small hours. Maybe a direct result of the problems UTV has with its overnight playout system.

But credit to UTV for keeping the neon dancers alive and using early 1990s library music

Mike:
"Well, well. At least someone saw some of the test pages "

And it would have had to be me, wouldn't it?

"The page you saw was designed by me. I spent a couple of days at UTV back in 1996 and keyed a few sample designs directly on to their system. I put some pages on air and they were left there for a month or two. The other main design was based around a stylised 'U' - surprisingly."

I only ever spotted the page with the "Plus" logo, I think it was on 690 IIRC. I had a gut feeling that the design used wasn't created "in-house".

"When displayed in it's entirety, that particular logo looked ok...when the '+' was used on its own...well, as you pointed out, there were certain connotations."

You could have taken your designs to RTÉ, Mike...

Perhaps if the colour scheme had been red/blue your design might have been more implemented

"Although they went with the page layouts using the stylised 'U' and were initially happy with my plans for the service, they later dropped the project...before it went on air. It just was not to be."

It's sad that UTV let the chance to have an informative and well-run teletext service go to waste, hardly worth acquiring the software if it was never used to full potential. Of course, now UTV has pumped lots of money into UTV Internet, it's hardly likely that UTV Plus will be more than a collection of badly designed ads and scant information. Although I did notice today that the "Crimecall" pages have gone, and a signpost to the Crimestoppers page on the main Teletext service.

"If I'm really bored some day, I may try and reproduce the designs on a PC-based teletext application and let you see what the service might have looked like!!"

Will be interesting to see - would any mocks go on here or on a page on the TV Room?

As I live in UTV-land (OK, don't feel too sorry for me!!!!) I've always wondered why BBCI is able to have regional sports results on air straight after the matches, whereas on UTV they sometimes NEVER appear, and when they do it's sometimes NEXT DAY!!!! Do other ITV regions have this, and if so, why?