I am going to be bold here and say that what ITV needs is a period of stability, and that means doing absolutely nothing to their brand. The reason they are in the mess they are in is because of all the changes. Virtually everyone I speak to bemoans the way ITV 'isn't as good as it used to be', and when you ask them what they mean invariably the disappearance of the friendly local atmosphere about the channel is cited as a big reason (along with the crappy unoriginal programming).
Make no mistake, the general public *did* notice the change, and they don't like it. The fact that they don't put it into words is only because they don't know enough about the subject.
Here's what i'd do.
Bin OnDigital, it's losing you too much money
Buy ITN so it is an in-house news service
Trash the idea of a generic ident
Bring back regional continuity
Get back all of the names of stations
Get rid of the idea of ITV branding and get all stations to produce their own trailers with their own style.
Get rid of this tacky programming that is more and more being associated with ITV, take Cilla Black as an example. You're just asking for trouble with a ginger.
Yeah right... but there's always hope.
ITV is certainly very different now. The whole point of ITV was that it would be
the
regional service, and it's moving away from that image and appears to think that people don't care whether it is managed from London, when really they do.
You only need to have a quick look through your old tapes to notice how drastically ITV has changed, and it's a shame.
The idea of a single identity did not work in 1989 and I don't think in 10 years television has gone through such a dramatic turn around that would allow it to work today.
It's odd, but hearing the word Granada/Yorkshire/Tyne Tees after an ident makes the service seem 10 time better.
It makes the service seem a lot more personal and even if the annoucements do come from Leeds it still gives the station a more local feel.
Looking at ITV today and looking at it 10 years ago just makes you realise how far it has fallen, compared to 10 years ago the ITV of today looks dreadful.
Nicly put Chesh, but don't get rid of ONdigital, IMO if they privatised it (you know what i mean) and don't rename it ITVdigital, which sounds awful, then get some new channels and improove it's advertising and stuff it could work, and make it nice and CHEAP.
Only then could it rival the, at the moment, vastly supirior Sky.
NOTE - I am giving SKY a complement, it doesn't happen often. Relish.
:-(
A former member
Aaron J Tibbett posted:
True, but from visits to Greece (and of course Andrew's site!), they have Ant1, which doesn't seem to be on button 1....
Ta Aaron! Different situation here, though. The first channel of the state broadcaster ERT (equivalent of the BBC) is called ET1 - and that usually
is
on button 1.
The name ANT1 is a play on words in Greek and represents the name 'ANTENNA' - the male form of the word one being 'ena'. It should, by my reckoning be button 4 after ET1, ET2 (now NET), and MEGA - the order they came on air.
Very good point, just goes to show that ITV is controlled by a bunch of useless thickos in London doesn't it!
I think S2 has now left us and ITV2 goes under a different name in Ulster, I can't think what it is though.
I'm sure it's something cheesy though.
On the subject of OnD, it would have been 10 times better if the stupid old ITC hadn't pushed Sky out of the consortium.
OnD would have been a real success if Sky had been let in.
Don't forget, Sky saw DTT (or OnD) as a serious threat to it's operations.
So much so that Sky phoned Carlton and asked to be in on the DTT business, and as I have said they were later thrown out.
There were also plans for a mini-Sky News to be put on OnD, but because Sky were removed this never happened.
And anyway, ITV2 was originally thought of ages ago, I think in the 60's or 70's, but was never put into place.
:-(
A former member
Quote:
I think S2 has now left us and ITV2 goes under a different name in Ulster
TV You, that's it. I knew it was something cheesy like that, I was thinking more along the lines of Life TV or something, but yes TV You, that's it, or more correctly WAS it!
Gosh... it's really thundering here! Looks like HTV is not going to last much longer... bye bye signal!!
the reason onDigital was so poor (and i have it - although have had cable digital installed recently thank goodness) is that SKY Broadcasting Services operate the company who negotiates the price to show a channel on any given platform: i.e., although Sky dont own the Discovery Network, they are the company who set the price for another platform like onDigital to show it. They set the prices on the good channels so high that onDigital couldnt offer it as part of their package - no customer would have payed the subscription charges they would have had to applied to cover it.
What that meant for me the viewer is only having the choice of Discovery Kids and Discovery Wings(?) no other Discovery channel was available.
the man at the subscription centre told me this when i called to complain so maybe someone could confirm this?
I think this is because Discovery changed their management from Flextech to Sky Ventures.
It is not the case on every single channel and Sky Ventures is in charge of things such as the Granada channels but is still available on OnD.
There is no such thing as Sky Broadcasting Services and it wouldn't surprise me if this is OnD trying to blame Sky for their poor performance.