ITV's 50 Greatest Shows

Thanks for pointing that out, ive edited it. Anyone else know who produced other programmes on the list of the top 50?

amazingly, Ulster TV is promoting this with the ITV 50 logo and website!!

Grampian and Scottish are also airing the promo, with four blue boxes under the ITV50 logo.

As it's 50 years of the ITV network rather than any specific franchise holder I'm not surprised, they'd be silly not airing the promos. I should hope they air any special idents that will no doubt be created as well

Well after viewing the list of nominations the 5 shows i'll be voting for in the TV Times will be;

1 Coronation Street (of course!)
2 Blind Date
3 Minder
4 World In Action
5 Footballers Wives

Those are the programmes I feel most deserve it

I'm actually starting to look forward to these celebrations, hopefully the quality of the 'tribute programmes' will be as good as ITV itself was - before Oct 2002

I think they'd have been better off issuing a larger shortlist then cutting it to the top 50. Is there an "other" option in the voting?


I noticed tonight ITV have began screening ads asking you to vote at itv.com/50


Also - noticing someone voted for World in Action and Footballers' Wives - just find it strange how Midsomer Murders didn't get in. As recent as FW - but with a couple million more viewers!

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I have never understood why TV stations do this kind of vote. They must know the programmes from the 1950s to the 1970s are hardly going to get a lot of votes unless there is a big appreciation group for a old series.

It'll all be mainly recent programmes in the Top Ten, although ITV will like that as they'll say it proves the new ITV is the best ITV. When really its only recent programmes because a lot of people won't have seen the older ones in the list.

This Morning have began a weekly feature looking back at 50 years of ITV.

Today they looked at soaps, with alot of archive footage and regional logos. One thing that stood out is how both Coronation Street and Crossroads began life as regional programmes before being networked. I'm not one to call for the reintroduction of regional branding - but I do think it's worth piloting series on a regional basis in some cases.

Next week, presumably Thursday, Trevor McDonald will be looking back at 50 years of ITN, which I imagine will be of particular interest to many members here.

You've just reminded me of Quayside which was a Newcastle-based soap shown on Tyne Tees and Yorkshire only about seven or eight years ago. Perhaps they hoped it would make it to the network eventually - in fact I've got a feeling it may have got an early afternoon network airing at a later date (although I might be imagining that). Unfortunately it was awful so didn't survive. IIRC it was also shown in the same time-slot as EastEnders which wouldn't have helped it.

I remember there being such a thing as a "Spitting Image Productions (un)Limited" endcap (e.g. on BBC2's The Mary Whitehouse Experience )

Given the name, surely they - not Central - made Spitting Image (i.e. for Central) ???

The only other explaination is that Central did make Spitting Image , and that "Spitting Image Productions" didn't exist until after their flagship show was axed from ITV(1) schedules.

Given that the final ever couple of seasons of SI on ITV(1) were in a heavily revamped form, perhaps the change from being a Central production happened before the show's ultimate axeing?