Channel 3 North East and Carlton Central/Westcountry

I remember that blue background featuring the spinning squares with cut-out chevrons also had a TTTV variant, although only used on regional trails, not on the idents. I also have a very vague memory of seeing an LWT version on a trail once while on a trip to London. Not sure if anyone can confirm this?

I've seen a still of the LWT version you mentioned, which also had red and white coloured squares mixed in. Granada also had a version for regional trails.

Were they actually used on screen? The design outfit responsible ("Ballistix") used to have a website with lots of unused graphics and I remember seeing these on there.

The Granada version definitely was, I only remember seeing it a couple of times though. I have a cap of it somewhere...

Thinking about it, that could be where I'd seen the LWT version, rather than on screen.

I'm pretty sure that's where I saw the LWT version too.

http://www.oktane.co.uk/SCREEN_FOLIO_PDFS/OKTANE__LWT_PROMO_HOLDER.pdf

That's just jogged my memory, and no, it was never used.

The curious thing about that background is that it was clearly intended to be similar to the ITV hearts background... which surely casts into doubt the theory that YTV's regional idents were designed to be a full package across all junctions.

If that was true, why make them similar to the hearts, which must have been at a stage close to being ready to air in order for the style to be copied?

You could say maybe that GMG's idents did come first, and the ITV hearts background actually emulated GMG's. However... the hearts background was clearly in development when this was made...



...which must pre-date the GMG idents as it uses Yorkshire's old serif font, rather than the final Bank Gothic text.

So I wonder which actually came first.

When did the Channel 3 North East official end? and was any announcements made about it ?

I believe it was February 1998 when Tyne Tees was brought by back Granada. I don't think there was ever an official announcement about the C3NE brand ending, altough as soon as Granada bought Yorkshire Tyne Tees in 1997, all Channel 3 branding from Yorkshire got dropped very quickly.

No official announcements made, but Mike Neville made a remark on North East Tonight how nice it was to be able to say 'Tyne Tees' again.. or words to that effect.