End of the road for UTV?

or voiceover weather by Matt Sterling

I'm sure they will benefit from a very generous voluntary redundancy package based on their length of service.

Julian has been speaking to the Belfast Telegraph about his and Gillian's departure from UTV, and I thought a few things he said were very interesting, and gave a little insight as to what ITV really thought of UTV.

QUOTES from the Belfast Telegraph:
Julian has nothing but praise for his former bosses at ITV , whom he says treated their Belfast continuity team like royalty when UTV joined the ITV family in 2016.

"From the day and hour ITV took over, both Gillian and I were treated impeccably, " says Julian

"Because UTV wanted as few people as possible in the building, we were furloughed on full pay for 10 months ."

Looks like ITV did somewhat like our Julian & Gillian and I've no doubt now that had 2020 been a "normal" year, then these 2 would still be in the Belfast booth recording as per normal.
I think that ITV could have incorporated the UTV continuity team into the main ITV National team...some days we would have Andrew or Andrea live announcing from London, other days Gillian or Julian live on the ITV Network from the Belfast Booth. Then whoever was on the night shift before would pre-record the daytime announcements, ready for either London or Belfast to take over live continuity from 4pm the next day.

I think these 4 would have made a really good and strong continuity line up for the main ITV Channel.

And what has Britain done to Northern Ireland to deserve that? (Actually, perhaps best we don't go there).

Julian is a dated continuity announcer who was lucky that UTV stuck with that style as long as he did. He wouldn't last 5 minutes on the ITV network of today.

I'm genuinely pleased to hear that.

I could see Julian's style working on ITV3 with the programmes from a bygone era too, but not the main ITV.

In fairness, I don't believe a fair chunk of continuity today is that great in comparison. The voices sound too young and with at times thick accents and sentences said with such haste it can be hard to understand what was just said.

To be fair, there is only one announcer who that applies to.

I wonder if Aidan Browne is going to remain with UTV, although it is some time since he did continuity.

re. PFML84 above, I am always depressed by the fervour of prejudice against MLE/MYE speakers (who I suspect are his main target) among Celts (c.f. the long-standing tendency for black pop across the spectrum to be less popular in Scotland). Having suffered at the hands of the English establishment as the Celts undoubtedly have, and being of Irish descent myself, it upsets me that so many of them seem to join in the victimisation of people who have *also* suffered at the hands of the English establishment, in some cases treating them as if they *were* part of that establishment just because they live disproportionately in London. Certainly the forces in England that I fear would be unleashed by Scottish independence would make it much harder for England's BAME population to find full acceptance in the only land they know. For English Leftists such as myself, our historic identification with the Celts' struggles make it much more depressing when they bash the same people bashed in the Mail & Telegraph than when those people are bashed by the shire Tories we might live among, because we historically expected better and get more disappointed when (as all too often) we don't get it.

apropos chinamug's post on page 11, why did it use so many unnecessary capitals? Even the Court Circular doesn't go that far.

I haven’t seen Aidan on utv for a while

Aidan is/was freelance, so it is/was down to UTV when he is/was...

on your screens.

Are you not showing prejudice against Celts by grouping them all together and then saying that there is a fervour of prejudice by Celts when it comes to MLE/MYE speakers? Celts tend to get on with each other but there are big differences between Scots, Irish, Northern Irish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish and that's only on these Islands.

Then you go on to complain about the way I used too many capitals in a previous post, after trying to defend how people speak!!!

I probably did use too many capitals but I've dyslexia and when I'm tired I probably don't pay enough attention to what I type.