UTV sell TV business to ITV

Well, considering Julian is embarassing and Gillian sits there like a robot staring at you with her dead eyes and no smile (at least she does on the news) I can't say I'm surprised at this. IVC is a relic of the past and it just shows how behind with the times UTV were at keeping it for so long.

I hardly think you can call Gillian a robot (20s in)...

Why are there going to be pre recorded? Surely peaktime will be live?

So they can get a weekend's continuity recorded in less than an hour?

Then just record a stack of 'emergency' announcements if they need it.

I wonder if they will force Julian to say ITV News rather than ITN. I hope not!

I don't want to berate UTV for keeping something "old-fashioned" like IVC because I can't blame a channel for trying to keep away from how impersonal continuity is nowadays, but what's the reason they kept doing it for so long?

To quote old Adrian Logan - ''the punters love it!''

That clip is from 2011. (Note how less lifeless and boring she gets at the end when throwing it back to Coronation Street). In the last few years she has wound down drastically. Watch any time she presents the news updates or does IVC before a programme. She just stares directly at the camera with mouth agape after she finishes talking and looks soulless, like she has lost all desire to do the job and is going through the motions.

I noted yesterday they finally got her to re-record her long standing pre-recorded CA during the end credits of whatever programme is fiishing just before 6pm and she now refers to it as ITV News instead of the news from ITN. Julian still hasn't got the memo, or doesn't care.

Inevitable if it goes. And understandable about morale being low at Havelock House - and probably not for the first time. Nice while it lasted, eh?

For me, continuity at UTV went downhill in the late 1990s - scrapping daytime shifts; restricting Julian to the majority of in-vision links; not recruiting new announcers beyond the confines of Havelock House; and missing, or not capitalising on, opportunities to keep IVC more relevant - I'm thinking of the experiments with new backdrops and "Pick of the Day" back in 2003.

Presentation always seemed to be just an afterthought at UTV in recent times: if it wasn't for Pamela Ballantine being shifted over to Studio 3 after UTV Life was axed in 2009, I doubt we'd even get Gillian Porter et al doing IVC these days. Furthermore, it was seen as the demotion for news anchors when they fell out of favour - Tina Campbell going from regularly anchoring Live at Six (and more capably than many gave her credit for IMO) to the odd shift in Studio 3. She's had better treatment up the road at Broadcasting House since leaving UTV, really.

Jules and Gilly aside, Rita Fitzgerald will probably be kept on in the News department, and Aidan Browne could continue to freelance as a weekend bulletin presenter - maybe staying off our screens when called in for continuity duty has been his key to staying at UTV for so long?

I'll be honest, I saw IVC as out of date in the 90s never mind now. Julian is good value because he is just so gossipy and random, but you can't imagine most viewers in Belfast being devastated at his disappearance as long as Coronation Street still goes out. It'll just be people like us who miss it. I am genuinely gutted Santawatch is going though.

It sounds like UTV is going down the initial ITV1 Wales route - record the announcements, have them played out elsewhere, and then eventually phase that out.

Doesnt France and some channel around scandinavia still have IVC? surly it can be more classy

Totally by-the-by, but I was a little surprised to hear the continuity announcer say 'Now the ITV News in the Calendar region' when I captured the Calendar titles a couple of days ago. Yorkshire has gone then I take it?