End of the road for UTV?

I'm sure that it's already not unheard of for television channels to sometimes have ident announcements that only mention the next programme, but not the one that's actually about to start (e.g. "In half an hour at 8:30pm it's tonight's 2nd visit to Coronation Street, here on ITV" or similar).

Maybe slots in which Wales/N.I./Border Scotland opt-out programmes sit could routinely be preceded by announcements in that style (possibly across all ITV plc regions, so not even the England programme is name-checked?), thus avoiding the need to pre-record split announcements?

🤔

EDIT: It's interesting (well, at least to me it is!) to think that considerably more time, effort and expense would be needed to fully eliminate all remaining off-screen uses of the "UTV" name (e.g. building signage, vehicle liveries, etc) than the remaining on-screen ones! UTV Live and UTV Life are both just a minor title sequence re-edit away from potential full renaming.

Most people aren't as picky as This is Granada and haven't got a vendetta against an unknown continuity announcer.

Meridian don't have in-house bulletins at weekends. It's done from two sites for all of the English ITV regions on Sat/Sun, one at Millbank, the other at Granada in Salford. James Wright is the normal forecaster for the southern regions, while Emma Jesson does those in the north of England (and Border Scotland).

Exeter have been known to cover ITV West Country, Meridian and Channel TV at weekends.

Re: the in- vision weather presenters, stv just recently got an in-vision weekend weather presenter for the first time according to the presenter. The newsreader that was on would usually read the weather.

☀️☔️☁️So not only will you have @SeanBattySTV bringing you the forecasts Mon-Fri, you now have me Saturdays and Sundays with STV’s first onscreen weekend weather forecasts! See you soon! ☀️☁️☔️ pic.twitter.com/lBGWonSaXF

— Philip Petrie (@philippetrieTV) September 26, 2020

True although Granada had the old (original?) lettering on their Quay Street premises for decades. I think it still said (says?) “Ulster Television” in stone above the main door of Havelock House, too.

The biggest issue, however is what these programmes are called. Think it’s been done to death here though.

I may be misremembering but I'm sure that's a legacy which stems from the old Carlton regions (inc HTV) when Central would produce all the weekend weather bulletins?

I hold UTV to high standards. Why should us viewers accept subpar standards from ITV National announcers before our regional programmes when we've had Julian & Gillian delivering excellent pre-recorded continuity for 3 & a half years! All just because ITV want to save a quick buck!

There are no "unknown announcers" at ITV as you full well know Brekkie. The list was even published here last week or so.

I've previously stated on these forums I think Brekkie will be revealed/outed as a certain continuity announcer I dont need to name. By your above comments, I'm even more certain this will all come out in the wash!!

I don't have a vendetta against anyone, on the other hand I could consider Brekkie has one against Me (and any viewer who sticks up for Julian/Gillian and local continuity!).
There is a lot of love for our Jules and Gilly from N.I. viewers which some folk on here (Including ITV Management and Brekkie) completely and utterly refuse to accept.

I stand by me previous thoughts that ITV have made a serious "error of judgement" removing Belfast based announcements and this decision will one day come back to bite them. In fact it already has started to with these recent cock ups. Views from Storm Front is only just the tip of the iceberg mark my words!!

Because, and I say this with the best will in the world, only us *really* care about that.

(I think)

From ITV's point of view, the question is "why are we paying these two announcers in Belfast, plus doubling the work required at Chiswick to provide a differently branded service for a relatively small number of viewers"?

From everyone else's point of view: "Why should NI have Julian if Yorkshire -with twice as many potential viewers - can't have Maggie Mash"?

I'm not advocating a race to the bottom (or defending mistakes made by the national team), but there was only so long that NI could continue as an anomaly.

Well, I would agree with that. It's like when in Granadaland we went from the Granada-branded Northern regions continuity to the national ITV continuity in 2002. On the face of it, it was a backwards step because you lost the original regional names and got the same continuity as everyone else so it was less local - but it was a much better service because the final years of the Northern continuity announcements were dreadful, and we now had a much more professional, much livelier offering.

It shouldn't matter if the announcers on UTV are doing it in Belfast, London or wherever. What does matter is that whoever and wherever they're doing it, they're doing it well and with a bit of care and attention. You don't need to physically be in Northern Ireland to know it's called Stormont and do a bit of research into what the programme's actually about.

The great example is when BBC Wales completely fell off the air a year or so ago and BBC NI filled in for the evening. Other than the fact the announcer had a Northern Irish accent, the audience won't have noticed any difference because they took care with it and they were introducing the programmes - including the local ones - in an informed and interesting way. They even said Nos Da at closedown!

If you can do it in London and it's good quality, then you can invest more money in the bits that you can only do in Northern Ireland, like the news.

In your opinion, which I disagree with. The main complaint from those days was that the announcers didn't name check the region in every announcement and the variant of ident they chose to use. I don't recall anyone complaining about the content or style of the announcement itself.

Yeah, they only swapped it for ITV branding in 2010.
https://www.tvark.org/?page=1570