The “Colour Production” frontcap and endcap was discontinued around September 1985 - any new Granada material, including Corrie, was topped and tailed with the Granada logo with no text underneath.
The Corrie opening titles must have been re-edited around this time to update the frontcap - so you would expect to look quite crisp compared to the titles themselves. Personally I never liked it as an endcap - the word “production”, or similar, should have been retained.
The more familiar “colour production” caption was still seen on repeats of Granada material well into the 90s, which may be why we associate it with being in use longer than it actually was.
Admittedly I would have thought by 1985 if they were going to re-edit the frontcap on the titles they'd have attached it on video, rather than re-editing it on film- but clearly not!
Actually leaves me wondering if the titles (and the location inserts) would have been run directly from telecine, or transferred to video beforehand. As has been pointed out with the "freeze" in the titles they must have been run off video by 1989 regardless (and the filmed location work had been gone for over a year by that point too).
All this has got me deciding to bite the bullet and buy the Network boxsets. Just bought the 60s and 70s ones for now.
I always thought they should have increased the number of episodes for the 90s and 00s boxset due to the increased episode count. Not sure 8 episodes per year provides a good enough representation when there were 4 or 5 episodes a week.
All this has got me deciding to bite the bullet and buy the Network boxsets. Just bought the 60s and 70s ones for now.
I always thought they should have increased the number of episodes for the 90s and 00s boxset due to the increased episode count. Not sure 8 episodes per year provides a good enough representation when there were 4 or 5 episodes a week.
I agree. In the 60s, 70s and 80s boxsets you can just about follow what's been happening in the episodes that you've missed. By the time you get to the 90s, it can be quite jarring as characters and story lines pop up, and you're left with the sense that you've missed a lot more.
Some on on Digitalspy emailed ITV over the absense of these episodes on the hub and got this response:
"I would like to thank you for contacting the ITV Hub.
Please note that the rights to these episodes have now expired.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused"
Seems to suggest it could be contractural? Maybe the fact Monday's episodes did go up then got taken down suggests they didn't realise there was an issue at first? I presume they'll be working to sort them out.