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What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

A question asking which ITV station you grew up watching. (April 2020)

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MA
Markymark
Which ITV regions had birthday slots in the 1980s and early 1990s? I know Grampian did, as did Tyne Tees, TSW, and Anglia. Who else did?

I think Channel Television too - Puffin's Pla(i)ce I think was the programme.


Yep, Oscar is a regular on Twitter, more sensical tweets than Piers Morgan's



IS
Inspector Sands

What species of cuddly toy was Flotsam?
I do recall a large bee suspended on a hanging spring next to the continuity announcer. Usually Gordon Radley for some reason. You could see his career aspirations simply draining away in his eyes.

Yes you're right it was a bee, possibly not called flotsam! And yes the clip I saw of it did have a very unenthusiastic announcer trying he best to seem interested



EDIT: and a quick search of Kaleidoscope's Facebook account and it was Ivor Honeypot:

*
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 13 May 2020 8:26am - 3 times in total
WM
WMD
Flotsam and Jetsum were the successors to Augustus Jeremiah Honeybun, when Westcountry took over from TSW.
MA
Markymark

What species of cuddly toy was Flotsam?
I do recall a large bee suspended on a hanging spring next to the continuity announcer. Usually Gordon Radley for some reason. You could see his career aspirations simply draining away in his eyes.

Yes you're right it was a bee, possibly not called flotsam! And yes the clip I saw of it did have a very unenthusiastic announcer trying he best to seem interested



EDIT: and a quick search of Kaleidoscope's Facebook account and it was Ivor Honeypot:

*


That's him, with Gordon 👍😂
IS
Inspector Sands
WMD posted:
Flotsam and Jetsum were the successors to Augustus Jeremiah Honeybun, when Westcountry took over from TSW.

Aha I think they came along a few years later, the original 'Birthday People' was puppet less

Great names for that part of the world, so much better than 'Ivor Honeypot' Rolling Eyes
RO
robertclark125
Border certainly did as well. I think it was a small station thing generally - for done reason the big companies thought it was beneath them. Although STV seems to have been an exception - they were smaller than Anglia yet that kind of parochial stuff never seemed to reach the weegies.

I remember Tyne Tees used to sometimes read out adult birthday greetings, wedding anniversaries and even births, in prime time. That would have been complete anathema to YTV down the road lol, although I seem to recall that Colin Weston wasn't averse to doing this at Granada from time to time!

Of course TSW took things to the extreme, actually taking their mascot to the ITC when delivering their doomed licence application.


The tyne tees thing was look around, which gave news upcoming local events, cancellations, and and birthdays and wedding anniversaries.
IS
Inspector Sands


That's him, with Gordon 👍😂

The look that says 'I spent 5 years at Rada for this'


Looking at his LinkedIn it doesn't look like he did, but glad to say that he appears to have done OK for himself since then
MA
Markymark


That's him, with Gordon 👍😂

The look that says 'I spent 5 years at Rada for this'


Looking at his LinkedIn it doesn't look like he did, but glad to say that he appears to have done OK for himself since then


Yes, he went from TVS to BBC South, and did the breakfast bulletins. One morning the camera conked out just as he started, back then all self op, there was a clunk and he carried on with the BBC 1 South COW on screen, for that and the subsequent bullitens. Lent a degree of gravitas to the proceedings I thought
CO
Coronavision
Border certainly did as well. I think it was a small station thing generally - for done reason the big companies thought it was beneath them. Although STV seems to have been an exception - they were smaller than Anglia yet that kind of parochial stuff never seemed to reach the weegies.

I remember Tyne Tees used to sometimes read out adult birthday greetings, wedding anniversaries and even births, in prime time. That would have been complete anathema to YTV down the road lol, although I seem to recall that Colin Weston wasn't averse to doing this at Granada from time to time!

Of course TSW took things to the extreme, actually taking their mascot to the ITC when delivering their doomed licence application.


The tyne tees thing was look around, which gave news upcoming local events, cancellations, and and birthdays and wedding anniversaries.


No that was in addition to the callouts I mentioned.
NW
nwtv2003
Colm posted:
Another curiosity of Grampian was that they had “ Police News “ on a Thursday after North Tonight, at about 6.25.

[...]

And how’s this for a curious piece of public service commercial television... 😆

https://youtu.be/w2-G2VIPSMc


I've seen clips of YTV, Granada and TSW broadcasting police messages.

Not to mention UTV, who in the most extreme cases, not wait until the next junction and flash an on-screen caption and mute the audio for the duty announcer to relay the copy over the live transmission.

Many regions had police appeal slots - Shaw Taylor's "Police 5", with different versions down the years for ATV/Central, LWT and TVS, probably being the best-known - and not to be outdone, "Police 6" on UTV, which later became "Crimecall".


I'm going to present this clip from Granada back in 1994, without context:

CO
Coronavision

That's him, with Gordon 👍😂

The look that says 'I spent 5 years at Rada for this'


Looking at his LinkedIn it doesn't look like he did, but glad to say that he appears to have done OK for himself since then


Yes, he went from TVS to BBC South, and did the breakfast bulletins. One morning the camera conked out just as he started, back then all self op, there was a clunk and he carried on with the BBC 1 South COW on screen, for that and the subsequent bullitens. Lent a degree of gravitas to the proceedings I thought


I saw something very similar at Border where the announcer/newsreader's camera was flickering badly for the first minute, they cut to a slide of some local MP during one headline then when that was finished, instead of going back to the presenter they just cut back to the "Border News" slide they'd used to introduce the programme and finished the bulletin out of vision. Under the circumstances quite a slick way of covering up the fault.

There were at least two occasions I saw where Tyne Tees put out a complete news bulletin over a slide as well. Camera faults in box studios not uncommon then.
CO
Colm
Colm posted:
Another curiosity of Grampian was that they had “ Police News “ on a Thursday after North Tonight, at about 6.25.

[...]

And how’s this for a curious piece of public service commercial television... 😆

https://youtu.be/w2-G2VIPSMc


I've seen clips of YTV, Granada and TSW broadcasting police messages.



[...]

I'm going to present this clip from Granada back in 1994, without context:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otJqwmqm7oM


That's the clip I was thinking of.

The YTV example I alluded to with Graham Roberts (1:50 in)



...the one from TSW with Ruth Langsford (5:00 in)...



...and the nearest thing on YT to a UTV old-school police message, a 2000 "news flash" with Julian Simmons

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