Channel 3 North East and Carlton Central/Westcountry

I never once saw the live action versions after the ITV1 rebrand, although towards the end of the hearts run you saw more of the lines form-up with the main music, but that ident was only shown once every now and again.

Can't say I remember any discussion online at the time whether the live action idents were shown on any other GMG North or GMG South regions.

Only once ever deifintely recall seeing the traditional lines formation/music on Granada once, after the ITV1 rename. I believe it occurred more than once but it was very, very rare.

Basically, pre-ITV1, we had...

lines - the standard formup over the hearts end board, as initially seen in all regions that used the hearts package.
live action sequences - some, such as the washing line one, used a piano variant of the music (which was a GMG North Special)
already formed - the ident and spinning hearts are already in place. The music is not the beginning jingle and is from about 25 seconds into the tune, allowing the announcer to talk over the ident more or less immediately.

When the rebrand came, bar a very rare showing of the proper lines, we generally had...

already formed - the same as it was previously
lines with 'already formed' music - basically the lines animation played over the music from 25 seconds onwards. Again, so the announcer could just waffle over it. The music didn't go with the animation very well and I never liked it.

Basically, this...



Or this...

It did get very repetitive. Did Granada ever use the brown/daytime version of the idents?

Originally, yes. Don't think they survived the ITV1 rebrand. Could be wrong.

Ive only seen LWT use that version.

No, GMG North definitely used them too.

Is there any clips of it?

As far as I know after the ITV1 rename GMG North only had lines, short and short lines available. All live action ones and the yellow tinted versions were dropped.

Meridian & Anglia did have live action ones post ITV1 rename, whether they continued to use them often right to the end I don't know. The 'TV From the heart' strapline had probably got old by then.

Here's a still...

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-z/z-131/main-001-103.jpg

They did ditch them at some point, as I remember seeing Anglia in December 2001 and Meridian in August 2002. On both occasions, only lines or an already formed up ident with no sound were used.

Cheers, is there a clip

ISTR that Meridian and Anglia only had a couple of the live action variants redone with the ITV1 branding rather than the full set, they also were quick rehashes - in the original 1999 versions the transition from the action to the endboard was done in two parts, you first saw the station name text and then the station logo, ITV logo and border appears a few notes later, creating a flowing effect. The ITV1 versions just did a straight cut to the fully formed endboard.

Either way, they only seemed to be used at the start of the ITV1 era, I saw them frequently when spending a few days in the Meridian region in August 2001 but by the end of the year when ITV went on Sky and it was finally possible to see every region from anywhere in the country (and I do love the irony that for decades people would have killed for that facility, then by the time it actually became possible there was little reason to do so) they only seemed to be playing the lines versions. Did they go when the itv.com animation was added to the bottom?

I'm not sure that the Meridian/Anglia situation was truly that much better than GMG North - that damn strings jingle was getting very old very fast by 2002, I wouldn't have said they were that much stronger for keeping it after GMG North had largely ditched it. And Meridian/Anglia did sometimes use pre-formed versions too - except they were completely silent whereas at least GMG North still at least had the background music.

All a very very drab mess. Still a bit unbelievable that this tat was running alongside the amazing Carlton idents, 12 years after it was retired and this still doesn't get old...