Channel 3 North East and Carlton Central/Westcountry

I have a question regarding the infamous mid-1990s C3NE branding.

It is received pres fan wisdom that some legal technicality or other meant that the station brand couldn’t be completely devoid of mentioning some part of the legal company name (which remained as Tyne Tees). Or something like that. Hence the clumsy additional line of text on the already hideous ident, and the resultant disjointed sense of identity.

Crap logo aside, it might just about be conceivable that the whole “Channel 3” idea could have ultimately proved to be the way forward, rather than a short-lived experiment, without this additional complication.

But… A few years later it seemed perfectly okay for the midlands and southwest to have entirely “Carlton”-branded idents, with not a mention of “Central” of “Westcountry” (except sometimes verbally) anymore. I have always been given to understand that the legal company/franchisee names of Central and Westcountry were never actually changed during the “Carlton” era.

Can anyone please explain away this apparent inconsistency?

Thanks in advance.

Quite simply, the rule about having the constituent company name remained in place and theoretically, the ITC could've told Carlton to remove or alter the branding. However, Carlton called their bluff and other than a note of regret regarding Carlton's decision to do away with the Central and Wescountry brands completely, the ITC chose to do nothing about it.

So, theoretically, Yorkshire Tyne Tees Holdings could've also chosen to try and ignore the rule and see if they could get away with it then? Has the regulatory body (Ofcom/ITC/IBA) ever actually had any teeth?

Given that by 1999 it was all dual-branding anyway (i.e. region name with "ITV" logo beneath), it's just as well that we didn't end up with triple branding e.g. "Carlton, Central, ITV" on the idents!

In my mind, I can picture "what if" mocks of the blue hearts endboards with the Westcountry "W" logo and the Central "cake" both being entirely yellow and encapsulated in the small blue square, as per all GMG/UN&M regions. I'm thankful that the Carlton idents we actually got instead were a billion times better than that would've been.

The Central Cake logo had been abandoned before those idents came in... We had CENTRAL in capital letters with various forms of animation, like CARLTON in London, e.g. the A becoming a transmitter mast in the pre-news ident.

Yet didn't the announcers would say this is carlton serving the central region or the midland etc

Yes. The IBA/ITA did.

Ah the gold old C3NE ident. I hate what it stands for as much as the next person, but I still believe that when taken purely as a piece of design work it's not a bad ident (except for the glitch on the extended version posted above where the '3' doesn't flash at the right point in the music).


No. The first ever Carlton-branded startup from Westcountry in 1999 did reference 'Carlton Television for the Westcountry'. The last ever Central link in 2002 did mention 'the Central region'. I believe those were the only 2 times over the 3 years that the regional names were quoted in continuity. Normal state of play was just to refer to all 3 regions as 'Carlton' with no mention of Central or Westcountry (although Westcountry did occasionally mention 'the team here in Plymouth' and I think Central occasionally used the line 'the heart of the ITV network' in their links as an homage to their old 'the centre of the ITV network' strapline).


The IBA certainly had teeth, as they were the broadcaster and dictated to the franchises how they wanted things done. Post-1993 the franchisee became the broadcaster in their own right and the ITC/OFCOM essentially act as some sort of glorified steering committee towards what they want in an ideal world whilst never daring to truly interfere with the business plans of the franchisees.

Occasionally before the regional news at six.

Probably, though we'll never know if they'd have gotten away with it. Despite being only a few short years earlier, ITV was very different then and seemed as regional as ever. By 1999, things were changing fast and I think the ITC thought it was only a matter of time before they disappeared entirely; which for the most part they did in October 2002.

I think the Channel 3 idea could have gained some momentum, however because Tyne Tees was the bitch region (credit to Applemask), they didn't have the balls to go ahead with Channel 3 Yorkshire, which meant that although the Channel 3 branding was on both regions it all seemed a bit half hearted. If YTTTV had taken over other companies then I do believe they would have expanded the Channel 3 brand, however Granada got their way.

You get the feeling from looking online at abandoned ideas (check The TV Room Plus if it's still online) and others that Granada were probably planning a similar branding overhaul akin to Carlton, but chose to opt into the generic branding instead.

Looking at Carlton, makes me wonder whether if they had purchased HTV a bit earlier we would have had Carlton Wales and West. I mean they did go to the effort between 2002 and 2004 when all regional programming on ITV1 Wales or ITV1 West, such as HTV News was a Carlton Production, thankfully that was short lived.

No. Announcers on Carlton (Central) would regularly reference the 'Central Region' - Amanda Youngs who had the honour of announcing the last Carlton (Central) link made reference to the 'Central Region' as a complete in joke in that it was one of her favourite announcements into Central News at Six.

Ironically, Central stalwarts such as Ted May, Paul Vasey, Kevan Brighting and Su Evans were very comfortable calling the station just 'Carlton' - probably as they realised it could have been a lot worse in terms of centralised continuity. Let's not forget Granada Media Group and United News & Media were already running this kind of thing and as a result were broadcasting some fairly bland links. (Maggie Mash excluded of course.)

They'll have been under instruction to just call it just "Carlton". Likewise, when the cake got ditched but the Central brand was just about clinging on and they were all suddenly calling it "Central ITV".