Yes this is true, all come from Meridian in Southampton. I had the pleasure of visiting the transmission area a couple of years ago when they were doing both Anglia and Meridian only. The technicians took great delight in telling me that some breaks opt out 6 ways! (4 for Meridian and 2 for Anglia!).

But they're still doing it, many of the junctions now have the same continuity guy for all 3 stations, but sometimes it catches the continuity announcers out, they forget which region they're doing in local links, and say "Now on Ang-Meridian....!"

How is the signal from Meridian get from southhampton to norwich?

When MAI (now United) bought Anglia, a merged Anglia and Meridian could have been given the name MerAng or Meringue. I think that would have been lovely

>How is the signal from Meridian get from southhampton to norwich?

Carrier Pigeon.

But what about HTV Wales?

I'm not an expert, but the Welsh generally insist in having annjouncers with nice Welsh accents, Mr Genetically Modified Meridian Man wouldn't be too popular.

>I'm not an expert, but the Welsh generally insist in having annjouncers with nice Welsh accents, Mr Genetically Modified Meridian Man wouldn't be too popular.

You're right - and I can just imagine "Mr Genetically Modified Meridian Man" being saig by Huw Edwards with that voice of his.

Not as bad as Mr and Mrs Genetically Modified Carlton Man and Woman though!

Of course all those beat the decidedly organic comedy-shaped-turnip-sounding older YTV announcers!! Maggie "my voice is so sharp it can cut glass" Mash and that bloke who sighs and talks through his nose so you can't hear a word he says!

>Of course all those beat the decidedly organic comedy-shaped-turnip-sounding older YTV announcers!! Maggie "my voice is so sharp it can cut glass" Mash and that bloke who sighs and talks through his nose so you can't hear a word he says!

From personal observations there seems to be 4 announcers on YTVetc at the mo

Older Man - The one who always says "now the news from the region" rather than recording regional annoucements

Main Women - "This is ITV at the heart of the region", shes been there years

younger man - him who comments on whats just happened on the soaps etc

and also another women

Andrew Hillyard

>Older Man - The one who always says "now the news from the region" rather than recording regional annoucements

That's the one. I hate this announcer. He's been on for years as well, though not as long as Maggie (she's been there since the 70's). Flatly refuses to use the regional opt-out module, and really doesn't seem to give a shit about what he's doing. He's on BBC North radio weekends -- anyone know his name?

>Main Women - "This is ITV at the heart of the region", shes been there years

That's our Mags. She's annoying as well. "ITV at the heart of your region". And she's taken to mentioning ITV all the time, "Now on ITV" etc. Euurrghh!!

>younger man - him who comments on whats just happened on the soaps etc

Now this announcer is just cool. Always mentions the station name, and he's a cheeky monkey as well!

>and also another women

Two actually. A young one who was off for ages that Bods knows the brother of (or summat), and an older one who talks quite slowly. They're both OK.

Indeed there is still a split continuity-wise in United. Meridian, Anglia and HTV West have the same continuity from Southampton from Graham Rogers (ex-TVS, still on 2TenFM Reading), Graham James (ex-TVS), Paul Seed (ex-TVS) and Fiona Honan (ex-HTV West) where transmission comes from. Anglia's and HTV West's announcements are recorded on McCart with regional identifiers mentioned (... and now on Anglia/HTV, etc ...) during the day, while Meridian's is done live. In the evening, however, most of the announcements are done across all three stations (apart from local progs) with no regional identifier. Nightime is announcerless with colourful generic [itv] idents used on Meridian, Anglia and Channel, but the normal HTV ones in the West.

Wales is still separate and runs its transmission in Cardiff with different announcers. This is apart from Nightime where the service is networked from Southampton and, like West, has HTV idents and break bumpers. Carlton-Westcountry's Nightime also gets networked from Southampton, although Cardiff transmission add CARLtON idents and break bumpers. A strange mix, I'm sure you'll agree.

In addition, quite a few announcements on end credits for the next programme on Channel come from Southampton.

>>Older Man - The one who always says "now the news from the region" rather than recording regional annoucements
>
>That's the one. I hate this announcer. He's been on for years as well, though not as long as Maggie (she's been there since the 70's). Flatly refuses to use the regional opt-out module, and really doesn't seem to give a shit about what he's doing. He's on BBC North radio weekends -- anyone know his name?

Bob Preedy (not sure of spelling of his second name, but that's how it used to sound when Calendar presenters handed over to him for a weather forecast).




>>younger man - him who comments on whats just happened on the soaps etc
>
>Now this announcer is just cool. Always mentions the station name, and he's a cheeky monkey as well!

I believe his name is Andy Haslam.

when a networked program is live, how do all itv regions get it? how are the nighttime services linked between regions?

I think ITV live programmes come through LWT's transmission centre at the South Bank, even on weekdays (though I may be wrong)

That's right, I believe LWT and Carlton's transmission come from the same site these days. Live programmes get sent to LWT, who then relays them back to the regions. This is also true of many recorded programmes. Granada in particular use South Bank, even though Yorkshire/Tyne Tees/Border programmes come through from the Leeds centre. The station which is making the local programme will generally not put out the network relay but instead send direct (this is most noticable when continuity is centralised, for example CITV. When TT had it's own continuity, there was a very noticable switch over from Birmingham to local when a TT kid's programme was being broadcast, sometimes the programme would start then a couple of seconds later it would fade out then back in again!!).

As for night-time, there are 3 main centres. The United one has already been covered, STV and Grampian continue as normal but with recorded announcements, the rest get their continuity from London, via Carlton or LWT. Carlton have live announcers, LWT use imprinted announcements for each programme, so that the news gets exactly the same announcement every time, for example. They also use YTV announcers for these, even though LWT put everything out. Occasionally this latter continuity will come from the backup point of the Leeds centre, if LWT/Carlton is opting out of the network at the time.

>>and also another women
>Two actually. A young one who was off for ages that Bods knows the brother of (or summat), and an older one who talks quite slowly. They're both OK.

If I remember she was off ill for a while. What i do remember is there *was* when Granada moved their continuity to Leeds, six people. Who the sixth is I don't know, but the only bloke to move from Granada to Leeds moved back to LWT (where he came from before) a while ago but has disappeared again.

Incidently, So Rahman (spelling very wrong), a Granada newsreader, recently apperared on London Tonight for one weekend only... Which is very interesting given that LNN is supposed to be a joint venture...

do carlton/lwt still have those weird moving colured body outlines during their nighttime broadcasts?

>If I remember she was off ill for a while. What i do remember is there *was* when Granada moved their continuity to Leeds, six people.

Most are all still there, apart from the Granada/LWT bloke and YTV's old chief announcer (the very well-spoken one who was also a YTV veteran). Maggie, Bob Preedy, the young female presenter, LWT bloke, another young woman and the two mentioned. One YTV announcer (a young bloke) lost his job to LWT bloke.

> Who the sixth is I don't know, but the only bloke to move from Granada to Leeds moved back to LWT (where he came from before) a while ago but has disappeared again.

LWT bloke now works on Granada Plus. A promotion then....

>Incidently, So Rahman (spelling very wrong), a Granada newsreader, recently apperared on London Tonight for one weekend only... Which is very interesting given that LNN is supposed to be a joint venture...

It is a joint venture but many of the production staff are different. There is still a line drawn between the two to an extent.

>I think ITV live programmes come through LWT's transmission centre at the South Bank, even on weekdays (though I may be wrong)

I think you are right - that may explain why viewers in Northern Ireland got LWT Plus on page 600, seven days a week for a period of time a few years ago.

>Carlton-Westcountry's Nightime also gets networked from Southampton, although Cardiff transmission add CARLtON idents and break bumpers. A strange mix, I'm sure you'll agree.

I think this is because when Westcountry TV started, it awarded its transmission contract to HTV, preumably for a ten-year period. See http://www.television-southwest.co.uk/westcountry_launch.htm for more.

>do carlton/lwt still have those weird moving colured body outlines during their nighttime broadcasts?

Those were odd, weren't they? But, no, these days it's a big [itv] ident against the blue generic hearts background.

Funny, really, considering Carlton and LWT don't use the generic hearts idents the rest of the time...

>Funny, really, considering Carlton and LWT don't use the generic hearts idents the rest of the time...

UTV wouldn't know what a heart was, and yet they take that generic feed also.

Why don't you losers start your lives?

Put it bluntly, since United News took over Anglia, the viewers have really suffered.

Firstly the news service has been reduced to the level of *kitten up tree in nice rural village* and local current affairs programmes have almost disappeared, or turned into trivia.

Secondly there is the *shared* regional programmes, where the setting is either the south or east of England, or sometimes both.
(Go Fishing is a good example of this).

I would try to put pressure on the ITC about this, but they are completely lame and useless.

Still, could be worse, I've heard the scare stories about Carlton......

On something similar but.. different..

Am I right in thinking one of the Carlton announcers used to be with Thames?

Also, it seems LWT have the same lot of announcers for as long as I can remember, since the late 80's at least.. especially that woman who sounds like she's permenantly smiling, think her name is Trish. Her booming voice scared me as a child, it did...

The Carlton Announcer who used to work for Thames is Mark Lipscomb - he also reads the news for Central News South at weekends.

Trish Bertram - announcer for LWT was also one of the announcers for the BSB Galaxy Channel - along with Graham Bannerman - who now also announces for Carlton and was indeed the first announcer on Carlton.

I hear a rumour that local announcers in the midlands are to go from Carlton with all announcements coming from London.

>Graham Bannerman - who now also announces for Carlton and was indeed the first announcer on Carlton.

Now if he's who I think he is, he's also got permenant smiling disorder, like Smashy and Nicey gone mad!

I think they already have moved it all to London.

>I think they already have moved it all to London.


Not yet, announcements are still coming from Birmingham for the moment.

I believe that there are two full-time annoouncers at Central at the moment. And the other shifts are covered by freelancers.

I know that one of the Yorkshire (or should that be GMG) announcers left to work at Central a few months ago.

>>I think they already have moved it all to London.
>
>
>Not yet, announcements are still coming from Birmingham for the moment.

What about the weekends, though, surely there will still need to be local announcers then?

>What about the weekends, though, surely there will still need to be local announcers then?

Why? Just cos Carlton isn't broadcasting doesn't mean they need local staff as all they have to do is run a London broadcast centre for just two regions instead of three.

>
>>What about the weekends, though, surely there will still need to be local announcers then?
>
>Why? Just cos Carlton isn't broadcasting doesn't mean they need local staff as all they have to do is run a London broadcast centre for just two regions instead of three.

I thought LWT and Carlton shared a transmission suite these days, just swapping over the idents on a Friday night. You couldn't have Carlton in the West Country calling itself LWT at the weekends!
>
>

I remember when the changeover from Thames to LWT was very obvious, Thames even stuck an extra cartoon on the end of CITV each Friday to make the time up to 5:15 so the channels could handover before Home & Away

These days the Carlton announcers rarely even do the "back on Monday at 9:25" bit

I rather hope you only could count on one hand the amount of times that has happened!