The logo looks fine on the DOG, the weather sting and the weather logo but clearly more thought was needed on the endboard for the titles. It just looks awful.
The name strap animation needs adjustment. The name text appears just before the white background animates on. Looks a bit clumsy. And there appeared to be the odd technical glitch with the name straps too - or perhaps this was just the operator's lack of familiarity with the new functionality/options.
I think the problem is, too much teal, or even turquoise as the LED strips appear to be here.
If you look at this comparison between UTV and Granada, they have clearly crowbarred the key features of the news sets:
Notice the blue panel on the desk, wooden flooring, big screen set against a blue pillar. But there's a distinct lack of teal on the Granada set. The lighting on the UTV set is far more similar to the previous regional sets that were tweaked in 2013.
If those drab grey walls were more crisp and white, and they used blue LEDs closer to the one at the top of the Granada windows (or white to match the under-lighting of the Granada floor) it would actually make for a much nicer set.
Yes, teal isn't really a feature on ITV regional news anymore they have gone more blue. The desk and the walls of the regional news are distinctively different to National ITV News which is still teal.
Excuse the rather crude mock (screenshot from TVLive btw) but this is what I feel the colours should be in order to fit in better with the other regional news, and to make it look fresher too.
I thought that the picture quality on UTV HD was still poor for the new look UTV Live. But what else could I have expected within this short time? To be very honest; Not that much really.
When I look at the set; the new graphics for the bulletin looks a little better than it was when it had the old look.
On the subject of a new set though.
Building a brand new news set for the ITV Regional News teams are still a very expensive process to undertake for all of the regional news teams in England & Wales. ITV could be saving the best for last for UTV Live when they have their opportunity to move into a new tweaked set built for them in two years time.
This can allow ITV News to future proof new up to date standards for their ITV Regional News studios. However; that could only happen whenever the current ITV News look will eventually become out of date. It will not be a quick build if UTV are currently planning to move to a brand new building.
It becomes a pure waste of money by ITV if they decide to build the new UTV Live set in a near sixty year old building.
It is completely understandable why they haven't rushed to get the set in with a move to new premises on the horizon and I don't think they've done a bad job with what they've got - though I do think replacing the desk with one more in the ITV style would have been worth it - it would work within that space, especially if like ITV Wales they had a full height desk rather than a coffee table.
