The Butchering Of Crossroads

Ooh, you b.astard!  You absoloute turd!  You t.osser! It's the best show on ITV1 at the minute and you know it.  Although you're right, a UTV Presentation slide wouldn't go amiss.  It's a shame you don't see many of those about these days.  Any reason why?

EDIT: While we're on the subject, if you ran UTV you'd be a threat to British TV. If I ran any ITV1 region I'd make sure Crossroads got a primetime slot on it.

(Edited by James Martin at 12:15 am on Dec. 21, 2001)

Wouldn't surprise me, more like. There's a girl in my Sixth Form who hails from Belfast. She's easily the most attractive person in our year but God, she's a dappy cow!

> While we're on the subject, if you ran UTV you'd be a threat to British TV

go on then, I'll bite; why is that then?

Oh. And UTV isn't an ITV1 region, so there you b*stard/turd/t*sser/whatever.

(Edited by jason at 2:56 am on Dec. 21, 2001)

Because you consider Crossroads, Carlton's flagship programme, to be a cheapo daytime programme. About £15 million was spent on it this year.



OK, ITV region. And if it's not, what is it then?

'Carlton's flagship programme'.

There you go, you've just proved my point

I don't think I'd be such a threat James. After all, it seems my only difference in approach to Crossroads to UTV is that I wouldn't bother trying to re-edit it. Oh no, what a disaster...

Clearly, by your logic, Carlton have no faith in their own product either. They're the ones who are quite happy to let UTV hack their programme up. If they're so bothered why aren't they doing something about it? As I see it UTV are just making the best of a bad lot as far as they can; it's not their fault the programme is contaminated with trailers at the end.

That'd be ITV Network Centre's fault. And last I looked, Carlton has far more influence in the goings on there than UTV will ever have.

And as for their 'crime' of not showing the 5.30 repeat, well, they really should be hung, drawn and quartered for daring to put their regional commitments first, shouldn't they???

So, perhaps this thread ought to be renamed The Butchering of Crossroads, courtesy of Carlton? Would be more accurate.....

The reason Ulster (UTV) show Crossie at 1.10pm is because they show RTE's excellent Fair City in the Crossie slot of 2.10pm.

What's wrong with UTV?Harlech TV (HTV) show their soap opera Nuts and Bolts while the rest of the ITV network show the People Versus.

It all helps to build up that amount of regional programming they are required to put in!

And who watches the People Versus anyway!

I say hats off to UTV for having the resolve to stick to their guns and not sideline their 5.30 regional slot to network stuff!!!

I happen to know that TTTV were most reluctant to move their similar section of NE Tonight to 1.10pm, but being part of Granada they had no choice. And I hear several other stations were none too happy about losing this slot to a daytime soap opera.

If it wasn't for Night and Day *as well* I'm sure UTV would have shunted Crossroads to 5.05 and got rid of the People Versus instead (which is an even cheaper and even tackier daytime programme), and to be honest I don't know what ITV were thinking commissioning *two* new soaps like this. It was asking for trouble, especially as they moved Emmerdale to 5 nights a week as well. All this reliance on a small number of programmes (the soaps, Millionaire etc) shows a very short-term attitude at Network Control and it's going to turn around and bite them sooner or later.

yes well ITV Network Centre is in London, they're like 15% down on the revenue from this time last year thanks to the advertising slump and since Crossroads is daytime, they're on about rejiggling the daytime schedule as it is underperforming (it has been for months way before Crossroads started - ever since Home & Away disappeared off ITV1).

And for their troubles, this is the only ITV region whose regional news beats the BBC. By quite a bit. They must be doing something right.

On the other hand, RTE manage to get a clean feed of Crossroads...methinks UTV should tape that instead. (On the other hand, RTE's version is in 4:3, UTV probably need a 16:9 Crossroads to add up their widescreen quota).

You lot would have been especially annoyed by what UTV were doing when Crossroads was going out at 5:05pm - on a Friday, they replaced the ECPs with their own home-made ones for Kelly!