The YTV / Tyne Tees 'Channel 3' Rebranding Flop

When Bruce Gryngell took over as MD at Yorkshire / Tyne Tees, he had the big idea of merging the 2 channels into Channel 3 Yorkshire & Channel 3 North East. New idents were created, Yorkshires chevron would rotate to reveal a huge golden 3 before revealing the chevron again. It was all very naff. However, it was decided that Yorkshire TV would not be renamed Channel 3 Yorkshire. However, Tyne Tees fared much worst, they lost their logo and identy completely and renamed Channel 3 North East, the big golden 3 forming their ident completely. The channel suffered a complete identity crisis, sometimes referred as 'Tyne Tees Television', 'Channel 3 North East' or even 'Tyne Tees Television broadcasting on Channel 3 North East !!!'. Needless to say this was all dumped in 1998 and the Tyne Tees name restored. Add to this, the fact that Brucey babey then decided to embark upon his 'filth crusade' to rid his channels of programmes with low morales. So YTV / TTTV were censored from seeing programmes like Gods Gift, The Good Sex Guide and some of those 'Hollywood Men / Women' programmes whilst the rest of the ITV network got to broadcast them. The good people of Yorkshire / North East then became very pure and innocent, until Channel 5 came along !! So, is there a worst case of channel rebranding ever ? And just what was Bruce's game ?

I remember when Scottish TV did a similar thing.  This came about because of the allocation of the spare frequency to Channel 5.  It was in the remit that whoever won the right to broadcast on that channel, they would have to incorporate the channel identity in the name.  As BBC use the 1 and 2, and Channel 4 also use their numerical designation, a decision was made (I think by the ITC) that ITV would be obliged to incorporate a 3 into their title.

Scottish used a series of promos showing a finger pressing a '3' on a remote, with the slogan 'Scotland's Favourite Button'.  

It didn't last, and wasn't true anyway.  Does anyone know what happened to this idea, and did it follow through the network?

By the way, I would love it if Scottish would also ban the soft-porn pap ITV are now famous for producing. I still can't beleive the franchise for the spare channel went to Channel 5. Worst television ever.

gav

(Edited by Gavin Scott at 12:29 pm on June 6, 2001)

In England (I don't know about Wales or NI) it was 'Britain's favourite button'.


(Edited by Andrew Wood at 6:33 pm on June 6, 2001)

Yeah, I remember those - The cards, swimmers, pigs, flowers, babies, birthday cake, ice cream, cricket stumps, snooker, juggler, pen...

(Okay, I couldn't remember all of those - TV-Ark has a TTTV/C3 promo) but I remember the actual trailers incorporating them, boasting of 'Britain's favourite channel'.

Cheers, Asa

I think the promo went 'Channel 3, Britains most popular button'.