>In the southern ITV regions I know for sure that they all use the same. I know CARLTON are all the same. Any different (other than STV and GRAMPIAN)?

UTV doesn't use hearts at all (apart from the generic overnight service). It introduced new idents on c-day - there are four of them. Two contain pictures from around ni - one contains fish and other lots of shimmery colours.

I don't really like the hearts. The films are alright, but the actual graphic is a bit ugly looking. Without starting yet another bout of 'bad YTV/poor TTTV', Yorkshire's regional version is much better, and it's a pity that the other Granada Media stations haven't gone for something similar.

Bad YTV.

Poor old Tyne Tees.

There we go, that's that out of the way... ;)

>I don't really like the hearts. The films are alright, but the actual graphic is a bit ugly looking
I thought that the films were awful, i'm livign in the midlands, but have seen all the films from trips around the country, they really are awful, there's something that makes me cringe when I see them as is someone has a plastic knife on a polystyrene plate. The graphic but isn't great but is ok.

HTV's hearts logo is good because they use it well in other things such as programme slides and end captions. Their presentation is consistant and their logo fits in well against the blue hearts background.

>HTV's hearts logo is good because they use it well in other things such as programme slides and end captions. Their presentation is consistant and their logo fits in well against the blue hearts background.

You don't work for htv by any chance do you??

I would like everyone to understand, before I start that I am just as hate-filled at Carlton as everyone else, but I DO feel that their heart idents are much better than the generic ones. Because:

A) The generic ones are totally disjointed, they are really just 3 seperate pieces of film jammed together.

B) The spinning heart thing behind the logo is totally crap.

C) Carlton's hearts are vibrant and colourful and much more varied.

D) I actually quite like the Carlton logo (or maybe it's just such an improvement from the Central "letters" logo we had before.

I don't like the carlton company for being a maker of incredibly bad TV, all I'm saying is that their graphic design dept. have done wonders with little to work with.

On the other hand, I'd prefer to live in UTV or SMG-land

And why not?! Northern ireland is a lovely place to live, although I wouldn't come just for UTV. Idents or not, it still has ITV programmes!

BBC Northern Ireland is much better...

Anyway, you're quite right. Carlton presentation is much better than the ITV business.

>And why not?! Northern ireland is a lovely place to live, although I wouldn't come just for UTV. Idents or not, it still has ITV programmes!

I agree on both counts.
>
>BBC Northern Ireland is much better...

Definately - much more professional, though UTV have pulled their socks up. In the eighties, BBC NI were a bit unprofessional iirc, making mistakes on a semi-regular basis.

But - given that we both agree the BBC NI is better than UTV -why is UTV much more popular?

Well, it's ITV isn't it. Northern Ireland has historically been a very pro-ITV region. Never mind Coronation Street, Crossroads was the most watched programme in the province for decades!