Should BBC One become... just BBC?

The TV listings in many of the newspapers used to use the region names for ITV apart from “Midlands” and “London” - I believe this was still the case well into the 90s. I assume it was originally done that way to avoid having to name two companies (ATV/ABC and Rediffusion/ATV etc) and/or to avoid the confusion of ABC North and ABC Midlands. I expect that prior to 1968 the newspaper listings also referred to a “North” region (Granada/ABC) - but it seems strange that “Midlands” remained 20 or so years after the weekday/weekend split was abolished, and the company name had changed too.

I think it was really to denote it as the flagship entertainment channel, given it was originally called Sky Channel. Arguably that position has been weakened significantly over the last decade by Sky Atlantic.

Wasn't there an ATV regional show, at 5:15 on Fridays, called Friday's People, Chris Tarrant and Wendy Nelson?

Slightly off topic, but OMG! I'd forgotten there was still an international channel called BBC HD, and how lovely that those old UK idents are still in use. I had no idea!

It is one of the channels in the line-up provided to my and other companys' ships via MTN and Global Eagle (along with BBC World News, MSNBC and others - though not CNN International unfortunately).

Presentation-wise, BBC HD doesn't have continuity announcers. They just play the idents clean. But they put up a 'now, next, later' graphic at the top of the screen within the first minute or so of the start and end of each programme.
They have 1 or 2 trailers between each programme, including a lot of promotion of BBC World News.
Shame BBC HD isn't available in this country, as it would be a good ''4seven''-type channel.

The only way ‘BBC’ would work in my opinion is if you added ‘Television’ at the end and BBC2/BBC4 were closed (along with the online BBC3 service being renamed). ‘‘You’re watching BBC Television’’.

With the way the Licence Fee is being debated along with streaming taking over the industry, this might happen...

UTV was referred to as “Ulster” for many years after the rebrand. The Radio Times referred to it as “ITV Ulster” and “ITV1 Ulster” for a long time. Maybe they still do, not sure. I also remember “Carlton Central” used for quite a whiley some papers after its demise.

Yes, my local paper said "Carlton Central". We used to think that "Carlton Central" sounded more like a train station than a TV channel
In the early to mid 90s, we used to verbally always call it "Central", never really referred to it as "ITV".

The other general point is that, despite officially being renamed 24 years ago (and still being published by the BBC for much of that time), the Radio Times still refers to BBC1 and BBC2, with the numerals.

As do 99% of the population when they jot down, or type out the channel names

To think people complained when Central took over from ATV about it sounding more like a Train Station than a TV station...

Where I am, everyone just referred it as "ITV" or "ITV1".

From memory, some people even referred ITV as Meridian, which of course is understandable from a regional aspect.