Coronation Street

Back to the present for a moment, tonight's first episode of Corrie took a leaf out of the Holby/Buffy playbook with an opening roaming shot around the street that lasted about 2m40s. It started at the Rovers, went round the corner and up to Roy's, then past Victoria Court and ending at the garden.

Makes me wonder how many takes on these things they'll try before giving up and doing it the old-fashioned way...

Aw! I missed that! Luckily someone's uploaded it if anyone wants a look.

I noticed and enjoyed that single take shot. However there were a couple of very oddly framed shots also in the same episode, where characters were creeping out of the frame.

Very nice, although that female character clearly walked into Simon Barlow rather than the other way around.

Tomorrow's ITV3 episodes should be the first to use the ITV Generic look endcap.

Just out of interest, when was the last time ITV3 showed an episode with a frontcap? They seemed to appear intermittently on the 1988-89 episodes, and I’m not sure if that implies they were only attached to some of the episodes, or if ITV3 tended to join the programme after the frontcap had already faded into the titles.

The last one they showed which had a frontcap was from early February 89 I think.

As can be seen on the Network DVDs (which also have the preceeding VT clock), the frontcap was still attatched to the programme on the actual tapes throughout 1988, though around March 88 they re-edited the titles so the music didn't begin until after the frontcap faded out- which is the point ITV3 for the most part stopped showing it, though the silent frontcap did appear on ITV3 a few times after that.

There's no frontcap on any of the 1989 episodes on the Network DVD, the earliest of which is the 15th February episode, so seeing as they appeared on a couple of episodes on ITV3 in Jan & Feb 89, I can presume they stopped being attached to the programme some time during the first half of that month, possibly when Bill Podmore stepped down as producer? The use of cardboard End Of Part One/Part Two captions and endcaps seemed to stop at the same time.

I'm actually curious how it was handled by the ITV companies during those first few months of 1988 when ITV had officially stopped using frontcaps, but it was still on the tapes and the theme tune began while it was on screen- did they show the frontcap or did they leave their own ident up over it? Would be interesting to find any original off-air recordings of Corrie from Jan-March 1988 to see.

I know they weren't the only ones to keep frontcaps on after 1988- I know Yorkshire did, as I know their frontcap is on the second series of the New Statesman (as seen when Paramount Comedy repeated it), and the 4th series of Home To Roost (as seen on the network DVDs)- curiously the latter opens with the Liquid Gold frontcap, but ends with the 1989 ITV Generic endcap.

Also worth pointing out we haven't had a Granada Plus edit slip through on ITV3 for quite a while either, I think the last one was some time in the spring of 1988. Though now I've said this we'll probably get a deluge of them again.

Is tonight's second ep missing on the EPG for everyone else. Here on Freeview in Granadaland it's showing as an hour long POGDOGs.

It's showing up on the Virgin Media EPG here.

It very much depended on the region, but most wouldn’t show the frontcap, and would mix from their own company slide or ident directly into the titles, keeping their own caption on screen long enough to cover up the Granada one, in the case of Corrie. Tyne Tees, who had previously never joined programmes from a slide or ident, began the practice of showing a still of their own logo before most programmes (normally with no announcement), so it was inserted to deliberately cover up a front-cap, or provide a smoother way of joining a programme after an animated front-cap. Often part of the opening theme was missed, particularly where a jingle (such as Central’s or Thames’s) had been muted.

YTV, on the other hand, continued to show any frontcaps, animated or otherwise, if these were present on the tapes.

I’ve always wondered how such programmes were scheduled internally - eg. if Emmerdale started at 19:00:00, the YTV frontcap would play until say 19:00:08, then the titles would start. VT clocks would therefore count down to the frontcap rather than the point where regions would join the programme - which must have been misleading for the announcer and gallery staff. I would imagine the presence (or not) of a frontcap on a programme would have to be documented on the paperwork they received and then used to schedule their own presentation (idents, IVC, etc). I’m surprised there weren’t more on-air cock ups than there appeared to be.

I do recall a few split-second appearances of idents fading out, or hearing half a second of the end of some of the idents' music in the weeks after frontcaps were abandoned. The Central ident at the beginning of Blockbusters, which used to fade slowly into an image of the Earth from space was a regular offender.

Today's first episode still had the old blue Granada endcap. It was the first episode shown after the introduction of the generic look, I guess it hadn't been added to the mastertape? I wonder if the new endcap was overlayed on the original broadcast or not. The new endcap was on the second episode though.

Reminds me of when STV had uploaded every episode of Take The High Road to YouTube- on the first few episodes after the introduction of the generic look you could still hear the jingle of the previous endcap underneath it, as if it had been edited onto the tape at the last minute. Makes me wonder how much notice the companies had that they had to use the generic design endcaps if they were having to edit them in after programmes were completed?