UTV relaunches as ITV Northern Ireland.
STV Central finally goes HD for news bulletins.
Kay Burley moves back to her afternoon show, replacing Sarah-Jane Mee.
Sophy Ridge gets breakfast in addition to her Sunday show.
Covid schedule on BBC News/World remains for most of 2021.
Morning Live commissioned for 50 out of 52 weeks per year, Crimewatch Roadshow becomes a strand of Morning Live.
Steph's Packed Lunch axed in the summer, McGovern becomes new Countdown presenter.
iPlayer moves to 1080p as default.
UTV branding is scrapped, replaced by ITV (Northern Ireland).
BBC Four is taken off air.
The two new UK News channels merge into one within 6 months.
Sky News is taken off Freeview. Sky One goes to Freeview as an advertisement for premium Sky channels with some News bulletins like BBC/ITV throughout the day.
Last edited by Rijowhi on 13 December 2020 11:16pm - 2 times in total
That last one doesn't make sense. Sky One isn't on Freeview.
LW
LWTfan1968
-BBC One and Two both change their idents, One on 1/1/21 (with some sort of Circle-like idents?) and Two on 16/1/21 (with the 2s celebrating their 30th birthday, Two creates a spin on the curves where a 2 makes up one side of the Curve (aka Paint will have the 2 being hit by offscreen paint, with the drips of paint falling "sideways" on the other side of the curve, or Car having the 2 stopping make up the curve briefly, etc.), and people like it so much that it stays.
-ITV finally gets sick of asking people to make idents that half the time look like crap and (perhaps as a placeholder?) reverts to the 2013 set, which stays through the year. Regional idents are used before the regional news, having the itv logo replaced with the respective stations pre-2002 logo (or in Border's case, pre-hearts).
-Eastenders temporarily goes 5-days-a-week to make up for the time cut during the pandemic, but it becomes permanent the week of 5/5/2021 because people like it.
-BBC Two repeats as Channel of the Year, actually make a GOOD edit to their idents to show it instead of just slapping "Channel of the Year" on the top of the screen.
-C4 does nothing notable all year.
-C5 gets sold again, this time with ITV making a sucessful bid; 5 becomes a mix of it's old self and repeats of whatever ITV wants repeats of; this makes ITV3 redundant, so they try to sell it to the BBC. They take it and make it a repeat channel of their own (BBC Classic)
The BBC becomes brave and abandons it's 'Gill Sans' blocks in order to replace them with an icon to represent the BBC's changing attitudes to streaming.
Alright, here are my predictions for the new year:
- The BBC (via BBC Studios) sells UKTV
- The other ITV channels and brands (ITV2-ITVBe and sub-brands like ITV News) are refreshed to fit in line with the 2019 branding; ITV refreshes corporate logo
- The BBC undergoes a major branding refresh (or even more, a rebrand), affecting all of its channels, radio stations and services
- BBC Four shuts down, BBC Three to return as a linear channel
- BBC iPlayer introduces “iPlayer Channels”, an a le carte sub-service containing low-key streamers like STARZPLAY and BFI Player at launch
- Chris Ramsey takes over as host of Countdown
- Laura Whitmore to present new show on Saturday mornings from 10am-11pm on BBC Two
- My5 is absorbed into Paramount+, UK version will have a free and premium tier
- Discovery acquires the remaining 50% of All3Media from Liberty Global, acquiring full ownership
- Warner Bros. (WarnerMedia) will put its international TV production business for sale, ITV Studios, Fremantle, All3Media and Sony Pictures Television make offers
