What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

*round of applause* ^

For a time I thought I was in a minority about Granada.
I'm not going to for one second argue that their programming slate to the region or the network was brilliant with pretty much everything from hard hitting documentaries, contemporary and period dramas, Corrie, and the pre-Action Time game and quizshows.

But, the low octane nature of their pre 1992 on screen regional identity - almost treating the G logo with contempt was baffling.

Yes, letting the actual programmes speak for themselves is a good idea, but when other ITV regions were selling themselves and the area they were broadcasting to, given the creative rescources and ideas coming out of Quay Street, our friends in the north(west) were happy to have Colin Weston in an unfortunate tie and jacket combo do all the leg work.

For all it's basic nature, they may have well got the continuity annoucers to introduce the next programme over the ticking down Granada VT clock.

Tyne Tees only introduced break bumpers during 1990 - they didn’t use the one supplied with the 1989 package, but a grainy filmic one that looked like it dated from the 60s:



When the presentation package was refreshed in 1991, so were the break bumpers.

For a long time Granada didn't even have in-vis announcers.

In fact for much of the 1970s all four Northern stations epitomised the motion that it was grim oop North in their presentation - Border had in-vision but made scant use of it, and the other three were content to lead into a programme with the same slide they'd used before the break to tell viewers what was coming next. Without even any station branding for the most part, nor any in-vision. Tyne Tees broke out of this rut a few years into the 70s (returning to their 1960s hyper-friendly approach), and Granada a few years later but God was it boring on these stations while it persisted.

And YTV continued in this vein until the late 80s of course. Yawn.

I think this is a tad unfair. That jingle was just stock music and hardly any Granada viewers would have ever seen the IBA ident. Someone at Granada may have seen the IBA ident and thought they could use the music but it's hardly stealing.

Well now I really must protest! Nobody should dare take the name of Colin Weston in vein. Or indeed Jim Pope or Charles Foster.

The IBA jingle was almost certainly library music, it's just that Granada also selected it, perhaps because they had heard the IBA use it, perhaps not. In any case viewers in the region who might have stumbled across the IBA prog (lucky people eh) would have just thought it was synergy

Anyway, I liked Granada's minimalist pres style when up north, it was just like the Beeb's, in particular BBC2

Granada's presentation was rather boring at the time (I was comparing to Central) and even when they expanded with a few idents in the late 90s they weren't that brilliantly done really. However I do think most of their early 90s stuff has aged really well - simple, but very effective.

I was lucky to receive both Tyne Tees and Yorkshire couldn’t believe how different the presentation styles were we even decided to upgrade the tv aerial just to receive Tyne Tees over Yorkshire lol.

Granada was what I grew up with. Presentation was dull, particularly in the 70s and 80s but most of their programmes were excellent, unlike some of the programmes that we have on TV today.

Yeah Granada were fantastic back in the day didn’t they pay peanuts in the 1991 franchise round as they passed the quality threshold effortlessly?

If you call £9 million "peanuts", then yes.

The fact that they passed the quality threshold isn't relevant. It was pretty much a given that incumbent ITV companies would pass the programme and technical quality requirements; none of them had a record anywhere near bad enough to be in any danger from that perspective, the only ones that caused the ITC issues were those with very high bids relative to revenue (TVS, TSW, HTV, YTV and Tyne Tees), which either failed, or were close to failing on business plan grounds.

They got through the franchise auction because Phil Redmond made some rookie mistakes in his bid, promising to put out many hours per week of regional programming, made on a shoestring budget with sub-Pro equipment.

If he'd just been a bit more boring and focused on getting the basics right, he would have passed the quality threshold (which wasn't all that high, see Carlton) and Granada would have followed Thames into the bin. After all there were two established ITV companies providing backing and expertise to the bid. I dare say if he'd just photocopied the text of the Yorkshire bid and written "North West" at the top in crayon he'd probably have won.

In reality Granada's bid was somewhat unintelligent. If they had correctly surmised that Redmond had blown his chance, they should have bid £2000. On the other hand, if they saw Redmond as a threat, the £9m bid made no sense at all.

The rules were quite simple... If you passed the quality thresholds in terms of programme, business and technical standards, and you bid more than the other guy you won. Thames proved that the "special circumstances" idea was a red herring. Granada were no more "special" than any of the other four big companies (the only region where I've heard any kind of convincing argument for using special circumstances was Northern Ireland because of political sensitivity and the need for a smooth continuation of service, and even here I doubt it would have been enacted) . This idea that you won or lost 1991 because you were able to flutter your eyelashes at George Russell, and get through because you were "better" than the competition is complete nonsense; that wasn't the way the Act was set up. In 1980, certainly.

Just leading on from that, and pertinent to this thread; has there ever been an ITV company which has been ousted from its area because it was deemed to be crap? I know there were threats and innuendo surrounding several ITV companies but I don't think it ever got that far.

I suppose the closest we got was Southern, although they were by no means a bad contractor and it was more to do with complacency in the franchise bid than anything else.