End of the road for UTV?

How about "Ulster News at Bedtime"

that's not bad actually. wonder where Keith is now

He's been reading the news on BBC Radio Ulster for many, many years now.

'Bedtime' used to be an epilogue-style programme in its own right in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Following a news bulletin read by the duty announcer; Charlie Witherspoon would, from a cosy studio set, read out viewers' letters and poems, as well as pose competitions, and show photos and illustrations of the Province - to counterbalance, essentially, what could be a heavy news agenda.

Given the sensitive environment in NI at the time, 'Bedtime' was never focused on any religion*, so it was unlike the closedown programmes in other regions.

* - then, ironically, undermined slightly by playing GStQ immediately afterwards

Probably best to remember the context of the era. Considering the heavy nature of the headlines each night, people were probably grateful for as much "cosy" as they could get.

They come from the era when regional news was a lot twee-er, they were really magazine programmes with some news. Programmes like Day by Day or Westward Diary even had a seperate news section within them.

They're two other examples of twee sounding names along with Calender and Northern Life

Day by Day in any case had to have the 'hard' news separated out, because it carried separate South and South East bulletins

I didn't think it did. Day by Day was on Southern. Which didn't have a South East opt out because it was covered by Thames.

IIRC It was only when TVS took over that a South East variant was introduced because the region grew dramatically in size.

I have an NI colleague who moved to Devon 40 years ago. Some of her stories and near-miss from certain death - for example turning left out of chip shop rather than right saved her life one night from a car bomb and another night she and her brother left a pub only for gunshoot 15 mins later, make hard listening. This wasn't Belfast either- rural Ulster some 20 miles from Londonderry/Derry


She described Ulster TV in that they needed the "fluff " to remember it was normal. Add in the two religions so "bedtime" would make perfect sense.

Well, yes, and the material which gave ITV a bad name among much of the southern English middle class was often more popular in Northern Ireland than anywhere else, even that produced in London and, later, by TVS. Crossroads was especially popular in NI, like Coronation Street & Emmerdale today (although unlike those two modern-day juggernauts it was also more popular in south-east England than in northern England).

Couple of other things to say:

re. Southern: they had a separate 'Scene South East' broadcast on Fridays only (the final edition from December 1981, which I find rather moving, has widely been distributed and I think it's on YouTube) and, latterly, 'Scene Midweek' on Wednesdays. They might have done more if Bluebell Hill, which was needed to fill a UHF gap in Kent between Crystal Palace and Dover which hadn't applied under VHF, hadn't initially been given to Thames and LWT when it opened in 1974, and indeed they surely would have done had they stayed on because the franchise would have been largened to move closer to London whoever had won it.

re. epilogues, in the last years before overnight transmission started in 1987 Thames' epilogues (also shown on LWT, as we know) became increasingly secular, as you'd expect for a more diverse city. They probably also included more representation of non-Christian religions for the same reason - the old BFI site used to give a full list for much of the 1980s, suggesting that they might have been given the tapes when Thames were winding down. In fact a load do still seem to be listed but not together, if you see what I mean.

One of my favourite jokes is that the Devon-based 'Postscript' booksellers would have to be called 'Company' once you get past Dorchester. Likewise that a Suede album was going to be called 'Company' but was renamed 'Night Thoughts' because Brett Anderson was the sort of Home Counties boy who aspired to being from London. Likewise, the Momus song "What Will Death Be Like?" refers to "the night thoughts of Late Call" - as an Edinburgh man who came to London, combining the name of two epilogues he'd have been familiar with.

Now I think about it, regions outside London with sizeable BAME populations / instances of non-Christian religious observance weren't really doing epilogues by the 1980s (and in Granada's case at least, never). It was mostly the smaller, whiter regions where, unlike in cities, decline in traditional Christian observance in recent times has largely meant decline in religious observance full stop (other than possibly, to a very small extent, neo-paganism which tends to thrive on ruralism).

If Granada *had* ever done them, though, they'd probably have used more Roman Catholic churchmen than those smaller regions did, because of the huge Irish influence in Liverpool & Manchester.

Talking about branding I was walking past UTV today and I saw the satilite truck in the car park and it now has no UTV branding on it at all makes me wonder are they gearing up for a rebrand soon maybe.