Which ITV company from 1955 to 2002, had the best logo?

No, "words fail me" is a perfectly reasonable expression in the circumstances. It's hard to find the words to describe just how crass and stupid the highlighted section of your previous post was.

Humour, dark or otherwise, has a very specific requirement that it be funny. Your remark was merely ridiculous.

BBC2 was referred to as Channel 2 on air on its very first night
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10784421/The-first-ever-BBC-2-broadcast.html

I suppose the fact they saw Central News and Central Weather several times a day and Central Weekend (Live) on a Friday night is not a valid reason to be pardoned?

My understanding was that it was because in 1999 the goal for a single ITV company (which we still don't quite have even now) was still potentially a 3 horse race between Carlton, Granada and UNM (albeit with UNM more of a rank outsider). Carlton's strategy at that time was to make their brand as big as possible by having as many things as possible trading under the Carlton name, hence rebranding of Central and Westcountry.

Only a year later however things had changed dramatically, with both Border and UNM's stations consolidating into Granada, leaving them by far the largest ITV company. At that point Carlton knew they had lost the battle to rule ITV and it would only be a matter of time before they too were absorbed into Granada (or as would eventually happen, a 'merger' skewed heavily in Granada's favour).

The sale of HTV by Granada to Carlton was a somewhat pointless 'deckchairs on the Titanic' transaction needed to comply with the rules of the time rather than being any real attempt at Carlton building their empire as was still their aim only a year before and as such Carlton had no interest in rebranding HTV when they knew that they were just counting down days by that point.

Of course, why that meant they bothered doing the hybrid idents for HTV (surely they could have just left the generic hearts idents up if they wanted to?) or why they wouldn't let Central and Westcountry have their own names back even after the October 2002 rebrand (it took until the final merger with Granada in 2004 before that happened) is another matter.


Must have made you different to most other TV presentation anoraks around at that time then. From what I remember in most circles (including this very forum) 15 years ago, it was par for the course to incessantly refer to 'Westcountry' and 'Central' rather than acknowledge what Carlton had done.

It sells Carlton a bit short to imply that it didn't employ creative people that wanted their regions to look good?

They changed the idents because they could and because the Lambie-Nairn action sequences were way better than the EMP network ones. They were fantastic and Carlton no doubt paid good money for them. All they needed was someone to create a transition from those sequences to the existing hearts end board that the two HTV stations were using. Not a massive job for someone with the right tools and know how.

cwathan's right about why Carlton didn't Carltonise HTV. They knew their own brand was on borrowed time and would unlikely survive any Granada takeover. Like much of the rest of the country, HTV viewers were already being weaned onto ITV as a brand and so throwing Carlton into the mix wouldn't have helped matters. Some people think it's because it'd be politically controversial in Wales but if that was the only factor, Carlton wouldn't have though twice about Carltonising the operationally separate HTV West (remember, it was being played out at Southampton at this point) and leaving HTV Wales unchanged. Returning the Central and Westcountry brands would've equally been a waste of time, as these brands would only disappear once again little over two years later. Also, it would've meant making new idents for them.

I would agree that there was no point introducing Central/Westcountry hearts idents, but I don't get why they were determined not to go quietly at the October 2002 rebrand. Instead whilst all the other stations got regional idents mentioning only the region name in text, Central and Westcountry got Carlton-branded regional idents (the actual logo, not just the name), along with extremely awkward sounding voiceovers (remember 'This is ITV1 Carlton for Central England'?). Even Carlton's heartland, the London Weekday franchise, didn't get this.

They even retained this through the 2003 refresh and into 2004 - ultimately only after the merger did the Carlton logo finally leave Central and Westcountry regional idents.

It wasn't just Central and Westcountry - HTV West became "ITV1 for the West of England" whereas ITV1 West would suffice.

Of course, they can perhaps be forgiven as they left us with these rather pretty final local idents:

Because they were still an independent company and didn't want the Carlton name to just go meekly into the night; although it didn't turn out much differently in the end. Remember, for most of the GMG-owned ITV regions; the names were to live on in their regional news programmes, as well as on the regional idents (although reduced to mere text). There was to be no 'Carlton region' for London as it wouldn't fly with GMG to have their weekend franchise named as such and there was no 'Carlton News' in any of the other regions it owned. They were fighting against fate though and indeed may as well have allowed Central & Westcountry to become the (much reduced) names for their constituent regions again.

That was possibly one of the most bizarre things that happened - removing 'HTV' as the station name but still leaving 'HTV News' in place until 2004 (I think 'HTV Weather' last till then too didn't it?). Then there were the odd conflicts - HTV Wales news became a Carlton Production, whilst HTV West news became 'An HTV News Production'.

There were also various other remnants of the past, like still having @htv-west.co.uk email addresses and updating the endcap to promote itv1west.com/news, whilst still keeping 'itv.com/htvwestnews' on the title sequence. Presumably similar things happened at Wales?

Would it really have been that hard to rebrand the programmes prior to the generic look - as has been mentioned in another thread other stations got new looks between October 2002 and February 2004 and it's not like they even spent that much money in 2004, where the eventual rebrands they got were just redresses of the same sets.

It really was a mess in those days wasn't it. I remember a Western Mail article which stated that HTV News would remain in order to ensure the 'iconic HTV brand' would not die completely, or some such guff.

There was actually quite a bit of lobbying done to protect HTV's identity when Carlton took over, and assembly members received assurances from Carlton that it would not go the same way as Central/Westcountry.

Of course, they were happy with the change to ITV1 Wales, as it was spun that the word Wales was to be used in the channel name for the first time in 10 years. (It was rumoured at the time that during the development process for the new ITV1, there were plans to call the Wales region HTV Wales, with a version of the ITV1 logo created)