YTTV / Channel 3

Na I agree with cwathen, the YTV logo just spinning round and round really did p1ss me off big time, I actually enjoyed what they did with the 3's at the time previously to that, and the trailers produced at the time were excellently executed IMHO, then Granada took over them, and the Leeds produced ads were poor, while the London Weekend TV produced ITV ads were excellent.

In the Channel 3 era, they ruined Tyne Tees in the process although it's ident wasn't so bad, I actually quite liked it, although it was a mouthful nearly with the announcer saying this is Tyne Tees Television broadcasting on Channel 3 North East.

I've never seen the YTV/Channel 3 ident - does anyone know where it's available to view/download?

errr, that was the one where they renamed it back to tyne tees.

the channel 3 one involved a preposterous 3 with a laser type thing zooming out the middle whomping across the screen and the letters of North East straightening up.

Then Tyne Tees Television faded up at the bottom.

The TTTV ident that finished just kept the absurd music from the C3NE one and drove you NUTS.

I did like it when they ahd that ruby ident though. It was only a week but it felt like Tyne Tees was a proper channel again with every trace of "ITV" and "Channel 3" gone and *EVERY* junction involving the words "Tyne Tees".

The fact it was coming from Leeds was of no consequence. It felt right. They could keep continuity in London for all I care, it's just I want the station names back.

I find it hard to believe they could generate such a complex computer graphic animation in an afternoon, especially in 1996. Ok, so it was basically just a big '3' zooming out, but it was still quite good CGI!

I beg to differ. Leeds was responsbile for screwing up all continuity across the North of England, and in particular the dreaded term "our region". Not only content with wrecking Tyne Tees, they then also reduced Border and Granada to shadows of their former selves.

I was talking specifically about the ruby anniversary week.

The rest of the time Leeds were in charge they ruined everything.

But Yorkshire gave the rest of the region Maggie Mash. Where's your problem ?

That was the problem - YTV forced their style on the northern regions whether they wanted it or not.

Have to say I was never really a fan of YTV presentation; Redvers and Co stuck behind slides was so starchy and formal compared to the smiling faces on Tyne Tees and Granada. But I digress...

TBH I was quite happy with YTV Presentation and announcing, I didn't know the difference, the only major thing was that we (Granada people) no longer had announcers such as Colin Weston and John McKenzie, instead we had Maggie Mash and Bob Preedy, and that there was more references to ITV by this time too, but we still had the same idents, so I wasn't bothered. I knew Granada at that time owned Granada, Yorkshire, Tyne Tees and LWT (I saw this being showed off on some massive video screen at the now defunct Granada Studios Tour in 1998)

It was only by the time I joined this Forum (November 2001) that I found out that Granada was being played out from Leeds.

But the Leeds team were as professional as their Manchester counterparts, they were good at the jobs, but the technology was very shaky at first, and there was also that odd point between 1998 and 1999 when the announcer had to the same announcement on 3 regions with different ident length, which must have been a pain for them.

One thing though, despite coming from Leeds, none of Maggie, Bob, Neil, Helen or Kerrie would have said that it was now time for The Dales Dairy!

By the way I notice that Helen Aitken is now presenting on BBC7 www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/presenters
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/presenters/images/helenaitken2.jpg

I have a clip somewhere which I'll try and dig out, but it features the YTV chevron flying across the screen, before revolving around and morphing into the '3' logo (the same one on the C3NE ident) which in turn revolves around and morphs back into the YTV chevron, which then settles on the centre of the screen and starts spinning around (the same bit of animation used in the 98/99 ident) whilst the 'YORKSHIRE TELEVISION' text appears at the bottom. The background is different too, instead of the plain textured number used later it instead feature subtle swirling '3's (again, the same one from the C3NE ident).

The re-edit simply dispensed with all of the formation sequence and just cut to the spinning around resolution, with the different background.


I think the jibe is levelled at the re-edited versions from after the channel 3 branding was ditched, as opposed to the originals. In the case of the YTV variant, I find it hard to believe that it even took a lunchtime, let alone a whole afternoon.


Yep. Sky News used it as their titles music from mid-1995 to late 1997, so they were there first (C3NE didn't happen until autumn 1996). The reason of course is that the music was just a library track (I *think* it was originally created by/for Dolby in the early 90's to demonstrate the original Dolby Surround system). It's turned up on quite a number of things.


I grant you that the ruby week from 1999 was good, but in general I must disagree that it's all about station names; the name doesn't make the station, the station itself does. With the exception of the HTV oddity, there were two distinct paths that the ITV plc stations were going pre Oct 2002. Stations which were then owned by Carlton were branded as Carlton (as I said above, apart from HTV). The brand names of Westcountry and Central may have been disposed (which was still sad) but the stations themselves lived on; Westcountry and Central were still autonomous Plymouth and Birmingham based operations; the sorry state of the present reality, being little more than tinpot regional news centres was not there even when Carlton was the on-screen name that was used.

In contrast, the GMG route was to keep the original names up on screen, but behind the scenes they were destroying everything that underpinned them, leading to the creation of things like the GMG North operation, essentially a single station with different regional news which happened to use a different brand name depending on which part of it's area you were in.

Pre October 2002, Westcountry was a lot more alive despite it's Carlton branding than TTTV was despite retaining it's original name.