UTV sell TV business to ITV

Always interesting to see region by region breakdowns but what would be interesting to see is if this has always been the case and whether the dilusion of the ITV regional brands did affect the viewing of regional news too (though of course the 1999 schedule changes would have affected ratings in some regions too).

I believe Home and away helped HTV, Anglia, Scottish, Grampian, and have a great lead in to the local news at 18.30. while Lookaround, Yorkshire, Med, Westcountry, HTV, London kept its news at 18pm, with home and away at 17.10.

Not really worthy of its own thread in The Gallery and as we're talking about suggestions for the future:

I doubt it. Both those packages were a compromise between still independent companies keeping their own brands and also creating a cohesive network identity at the same time. Neither were without problems regarding implementation either. UTV will be wholly owned by ITVplc and so no such compromise will be necessary. I reckon it'll be more of a Grampian 'here today, gone tomorrow' sort of thing.

It probably won't happen on the day of the merger, although generic news titles for both regions and the network news were introduced on the same day Granada & Carlton merged. How it all pans out, in what order and what time scale will be interesting. It'll be like going back to the late 90s/early 00s again. Will they remove the continuity at the same time as the branding? Will transmission be moved too or will it get a stay of execution, at least for a short while, a la Central? Time will tell.

Last time I saw regional ratings a few months ago the BBC was a good 100k or so above STV's 6pm shows (regions combined).

I'm probably reading too much into this, but the URLs itvireland.com, itvireland.ie, itvireland.co.uk and itvireland.tv were registered by Michael Wilson (MD of UTV Television and UTV Ireland) back in January 2013, before the channel even launched...make of that what you will.

Would Border Scotland tip the figure over for ITV?

That is very, very interesting...hmm conspiracy theory. Will probably get it's own show on Channel 5... Think I'm one of the few who actually likes them programmes...but that's off topic. Thanks for sharing.

A change in name for the News programme wouldn't change this though. It's too much of a change in style, presentation and/or content that would be the issue. ITV would be wise to keep those sort of changes to the minimum.

Cybersquatter prevention, probably.

Could the signs at UTV's headquarters, on Ormeau Road, be slightly changed, to have the current UTV logo, and underneath, in small lettering "part of the ITV family"?

I can't imagine that there'd be as many as 100k watching in such a small area.

In fact the tab for the ratings said "Scotland" (though had an STV logo) so could well have included it anyway.