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End of the road for UTV?

Split from UTV - From City Quays 2 onwards (November 2020)

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CO
Colm
In my opinion, ITV has shown more interest in sustaining the golden goose of the Granada brand over all other former regional names.

For valid reasons, granted, but almost to the point of sycophancy.

Rhetorical questions for you:

What were ITV Productions branded as between 2004 and 2006?

The titles of which regional news programme were included in a 2005 documentary series to illustrate the *network* track record on current affairs?

Which regional news programme studio has the option of Barco-style walls or 'real-world view' backdrops?

Whose former studio base was the first to get a Saturday night primetime documentary?
BR
Brekkie
Worth remembering that effectively Granada were the company that outlived them all and bought everything else up, and Granada were the dominant party in the merger with Carlton taking two thirds of ITV Plc, which effectively was shown to be a continuation of Granada Plc.

nwtv2003 posted:
JAS84 posted:
Could be worse. At one point it was called Granada Tonight - and replacing the region name with North West would result in the name of the BBC counterpart, North West Tonight. I wonder if that's why they reverted to Granada Reports a few years before the local news graphics went generic?


I think there were a couple of reasons for changing the name back to Granada Reports. One of them was that the programme was still being called Granada Reports by a lot of viewers. It had been called Granada Reports from 1973 until the end of 1989.

However, I believe the main reason for the name change was it was a total change of programme outright. Granada Tonight was a very sofa-led programme, which felt like a cheap evening version of This Morning. In comparison to the rest of the regional news on ITV it stuck out. When it became Granada Reports, whilst the content remained almost the same, it ditched the sofa and was back behind a desk, looking like an actual news programme. It looked refreshed and sold a new image of itself.

I also believe at this time North West Tonight was rating very well, partly as a result of Gordon Burns’s arrival. I guess there were a number of reasons for the change, but I believe the change at that time was the right one.

Granada Tonight was in many ways in the mould of the standard breakfast show with the news for a period at least coming from a third newsreader (in a different city IIRC) at points during the show. Granada Reports was a return to a more traditional regional news format.
RD
rdd Founding member
The region itself is still referred to by ITV as “ITV Granada”, isn’t it? It hasn’t been renamed “ITV North West” or suchlike? (That said, are there much if any regional programmes other than the news in England now?). It might be argued that whatever sense it made to Sydney Bernstein in branding his company after a city in Southern Spain in the 1930s it makes little sense now.

Then again, it may also be about maintaining Granada as an active brand, on the basis that even into the first years of the 21st century it was one of the best known brands in British broadcasting and better to maintain it even in this small form than to allow someone else to adopt it as an abandoned trademark.
MK
Mr Kite
It's not broke and doesn't need fixing. ITV North West would bring nothing to the table that Granada doesn't. Okay, it gives a general frame of geographical reference but most people in the North West know what part of the country they live in.

Granada, more specifically, Granada Reports, is a well-established brand and everyone knows what is - even most people under 30, who don't really remember Granada as anything more than the local news service.

That said, ITV have made stupid decisions over these sorts of things before, in the name of so-called "brand alignment". No one can tell me that ITV News Channel TV is a better name than Channel Report.
Last edited by Mr Kite on 10 February 2021 10:44pm
EX
excel99
rdd posted:
(That said, are there much if any regional programmes other than the news in England now?).

A monthly regional politics show
Rijowhi, Cold Open and rdd gave kudos
CO
Cold Open
excel99 posted:
rdd posted:
(That said, are there much if any regional programmes other than the news in England now?).

A monthly regional politics show


Which are pan-regional (e.g. Central Lobby is one edition for the whole midlands, The West Country Debate is one edition covering Cornwall to Gloucestershire, etc).

They all have the same (Westminster-centric) title sequence, just with the respective regional programme names at the end.

I presume that Around The House is only intended for Tyne Tees & Cumbria viewers and includes no Holyrood politics, as there is a Representing Border opt-out programme for Border Scotland viewers? (Is that programme only on Freeview?)
MK
Mr Kite
Non-news programming tended to be pan-regional even back in the truly regional days. Only HTV put any significant schedule differences in its Wales and West services.
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BA
Ballyboy
I take it channel tv doesn’t have a monthly regional politics show?, just curious
CO
Cold Open
Ballyboy posted:
I take it channel tv doesn’t have a monthly regional politics show?, just curious


Indeed not.

They just receive the utterly irrelevant Meridian programme.
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PE
peterh
Itv channel really should try something and somebody said in another thread that representing border (available on satellite but not labelled as itv border but itv ) will now be shown in both halves of the border region. Also if you look around the country itv still has a few historically linked local news names look around and calendar as well as Granada reports and then there’s utv which is another thread and another story
WM
WMD
Mr Kite posted:
Non-news programming tended to be pan-regional even back in the truly regional days. Only HTV put any significant schedule differences in its Wales and West services.


In fairness, TVS also did some sub-opt non-news programming. Coast to Coast People and an entertainment strand with local listings info, for starters. I think the latter split three ways (South, South East and Hannington).
MK
Mr Kite
Coast to Coast people sounds like an extension of the regional news programme, so it makes sense, I suppose. Not sure about the entertainment things. Never heard it.

I've never known Central, as the other "dual region", to show anything different outside it's news. Then there were the far more informal regions that the likes Anglia and Yorkshire had.
Last edited by Mr Kite on 10 February 2021 10:13pm

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