UTV sell TV business to ITV

Please stop suggesting names.

Ahh so it makes sense now with the axing of UTV Live Tonight with the plans for this new late night 'entertainment' programme - personally I would rather keep Paul Clark saying goodnight to us.

Yeah, it's all starting to click together........

Not long now... Autumn is coming...

Anyone know the name of the guy who voices the majority of the UTV promos?

I'm not sure of his name but I don't like his voice. When the new look comes in I hope we get more network CA voices and not just the same 1/2 that UTV use for everything.

Cool FM DJ John Kearns.

Many thanks. I hope he stays I really enjoy his upbeat voiceovers on the promos.

Looking at the Radio Times website, UTV Live Tonight appears on 29th for the last time. On 3rd October it reverts to the shorter "UTV Live". No name change for the news (not that we were probably expecting one). Interesting to see that the same evening at 8pm they are opting out of the network for "EY Entrepreneur of the Year". UTV Ireland are also taking this programme. It's running for several weeks, starting the previous week. I wonder will there be and branding issues when the two UTVs have different logos.

http://www.eoy.ie/

Do we know that the UTV branding and continuity changes happen from the 3rd then?

Either way, I can't see it being a problem (if indeed it is one) for too long, the Virgin Media deal will likely close during October once all remaining consents are obtained.

It may be worth making a comparison between UTV's schedule of regional programme slots versus that of ITV Wales from next weekend. From a centralised playout perspective, it makes more sense to keep two national regions in sync in that respect (less complexity and therefore, presumably, less cost to ITV). Conjecture on my part but I suspect we will see the schedules of these two ITV "regions" become more closely aligned in the coming months.

ITV Wales has a regional slot at 8pm on Mondays. There's another regional offering from ITV Wales on Monday evenings at 10.45pm - which I suspect is where UTV will put it's weekly political analysis programme (or will it just be an extended edition of UTV Live)?

I'm not sure how in sync ITV can keep their opt outs though. Unlike Wales and soon NI, Border Scotland do late night current affairs Tue-Thu for 30 minutes. Channel doesn't show gambling overnight. Wales has Newsweek on a Sunday lunchtime. The differences between the Wales/NI/Channel/Border Scotland licenses will probably limit the amount of opt-out synchronisation