UTV sell TV business to ITV

I wonder if we'll end up with UTV Live on ITV Northern Ireland...

Reminds me of HTV News, on ITV Wales, produced by Carlton (or something similar) that Welsh viewers had for a while!

Indeed...

I think HTV West had it worse, 'HTV News is a Carlton production for ITV1 in the West of England'

I think inevitably there is going to be some cross over, hopefully not as bad Carlton/HTV/ITV1. Here's hoping that the change is gradual and not sudden. The presentation from UTV Ireland has purposely been made to look like ITV's, whether UTV NI will take that, who knows.

Even if the UTV name is retained I would expect sooner rather than later for them to get the ITV News set, so be interesting to see how they work the UTV logo into that look, assuming it survives. Of course too also the possibility the channel remains UTV but the news is aligned with the national bulletins and becomes something awkward like "ITV News UTV Live".

I wouldn't be surprised too if the 10.30pm bulletin is one of the first casualties of the takeover - ITV didn't like the idea of it much for Border Scotland and with News at Ten sneakily getting longer plus interuptions for things like Champions League Highlights it's getting to the stage where it's more effort than it's worth.

There could try but there would have some fight on its hands, also Border Scotland is across a year, ie average; Still the amount of people which dont understand, why the rep border is on air and why its been aired for x number of days.

Even if they keep the UTV name for now, all they need to do is drop the dot above the "i" and you kind of have UTV

Though with all the talk of the BBC extending their National/Regional offering at 10pm to a hour, could we see some sort of compromise for all Nations/Regions? Surely ITV will need to try and compete in some way? However if ITV choose not to significantly extend their News programming post 10pm, I think you're totally right that UTV Live Tonight could be one of the first casualties of the takeover.

What if there is a clause in the contract?

It doesn't make sense to keep UTV. That's like Global buying Juice and running it as part of the Capital network but keeping the Juice brand. I wonder if it'll be a gradual change - possibly dual branded versions of the ITV idents in the spirit of the 1989 and 1999 network packages, then quietly retiring the UTV name over time.

Although we shouldn't automatically assume things based on ITV's previous actions. It is a very different ITV to the one of 10-15 years ago.

There is one thing in UTV's favour and that's the fact that UTV Live consistently beats BBC Newsline in the ratings quite comfortably - the only ITV region where this occurs unless I'm mistaken. Any changes to such a success story would need careful consideration.

I believe ITV offerings in Scotland beat the BBC but the ratings are spilt etc