What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

I live in Stevenage, which means I get ITV London when I should be getting ITV Anglia! It even says on the most recent ITV Region Maps Stevenage is included in the Anglia zone, so why I am getting London honestly baffles me!

Does anyone know a way I could change this come to think of it? I sent an email to ITV about it last year and never heard back

I’m sure that was planned? It certainly affected the Southern regions and I believe the bulletin was branded as ITV News. From memory it was only the GMTV and mid morning bulletin that it hit.

I put in a post code close to Stevenage station into the frrevuew tool
https://www.freeview.co.uk/help
And it came back with Sandy Heath Trasmitter which is Anglia...
And I scrolled down to find the "detailed view" button and it showed me that most muxes from Crystal Palace were ok

So you may need anew aerial pointing east not south ..is your aerial pointing in a different direction from your neighbours ?
But you may be somewhere where Sandy does not reach

Huh weird, I put in my own personal postcode and I get Crystal Palace transmitter and most of the London ones are before Sandy Heath. I also have Sky TV not Freeview, now I can do Manual Tuning and pick up ITV Anglia that way but it's a huge faf as its all the way in settings and you have to enter your Pin No. to access it.

If you have Sky they decide which region each postcode receives. They obviously work with ITV to determine the correct regions, but Sky reserve the final say, so they will use different regions to ITV's maps if it's clear most viewers in a postcode are receiving a different region to the 'official' one.


For you, if the Freeview website is showing that Crystal Palace is the best transmitter for your area, it's likely that most people in your area have their aerials pointing towards London. Therefore Sky will have assigned ITV London to your postcode to match what most viewers in your area expect to receive.

The only way to get it changed would be to complain to Sky rather than ITV, as they use the complaints to determine the most appropriate regions in overlap areas. However given that most people in your area probably expect London instead of Anglia, it's unlikely they will change it. There's a good chance your area started out receiving Anglia on Sky, but they changed it to London based on complaints/feedback.

OK that joke was funny!

And made the rest of us realise our age.

Of course you can add the other regions as "Other Channels" if you really needed them, but good luck telling them all apart. And also you can't record from Other Channels on a Sky box.

According to a legacy Whatdothey know post from 2008 and based on Freesat, suggested at that time "The resolution to which regional variations are allocated is done at the postcode Sector level, which is everything except the last two letters. An example is BD23 3xx delivers regional BBC and ITV services from Leeds; BD23, 4xx delivers regional BBC and ITV services from Manchester; and BD23 5xx delivers regional BBC and ITV services from Leeds." (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/freesat_and_full_post_codes)

Of course this may have changed but I dare say the basic principle for Sky and Freesat is still the same.

Yep. At one time they used to say which region (and sub-region) was which, but since the 2013 revamp they just all say "ITV" so you don't know which is which without looking at the adverts and regional news.

Of course Freesat boxes rely on you entering your postcode, so you can choose to have whatever you like on 103.

When itv stopped front caps in 1988, who felt disappointed you couldn't get to see the animated idents of other itv companies?

I bet the bosses at Border were glad about that (was anyone else still using still logos instead of CG animations by then?). They were still using their early 70s ident (it would be replaced by the 1989 generic look), so seeing the idents of Central and Yorkshire before programmes must've embarrassed them.