>To these two regions are you ready?? Ready for what you might ask, Christmas maybe? No no no not Christmas you fool ready to re brand yourself as Yorkshire Television. Because its coming, enjoy your independence while you can because one day it will be gone.
>
>Ready for announcements from Maggie in Leeds like " YOUR WATCHING ITV"
>Ready to lose your regional output-most regional programs will also be shown on Granada TTTV YTV BORDER etc ect. Little things like Air watch will vanish.
>Coming next slides will have to disappear as there is no way they can announce the regions name on one of these using one announcer over 6 stations
>The hearts will be living on
>Lots of Northern programs being shown regually in the South
>
>This might sound drastic but believe me it is coming so you all better look forward to it
>
Oh I forgot to mention the brilliant new website you will be getting from GWIZZ, so much better than your own right now

>>To these two regions are you ready?? Ready for what you might ask, Christmas maybe? No no no not Christmas you fool ready to re brand yourself as Yorkshire Television. Because its coming, enjoy your independence while you can because one day it will be gone.
>>Oh and the Spirit of the South/Spirit of Anglia promos will go. Advertising time will take this up
>>Ready for announcements from Maggie in Leeds like " YOUR WATCHING ITV"
>>Ready to lose your regional output-most regional programs will also be shown on Granada TTTV YTV BORDER etc ect. Little things like Air watch will vanish.
>>Coming next slides will have to disappear as there is no way they can announce the regions name on one of these using one announcer over 6 stations
>>The hearts will be living on
>>Lots of Northern programs being shown regually in the South
>>
>>This might sound drastic but believe me it is coming so you all better look forward to it
>>
>Oh I forgot to mention the brilliant new website you will be getting from GWIZZ, so much better than your own right now
>

Ooooooh, I'm scared.

You will be scared and you`ll see I`m right it will be here sooner than you think

I thought the united [itv] websites are better than the previous ones and far superior and more relevant than say Carlton's (ie generic across the brand) and the naff g-whizz which has too many graphics....

it's nice to see itv has such a lovely grasp of grammar.



IT'S "YOU'RE WATCHING", NOT "YOUR WATCHING", YOU CRETIN.

and the logistics of changing the system in such short time?
IE lines to tx etc etc?

>Coming next slides will have to disappear as there is no way they can announce the regions name on one of these using one announcer over 6 stations

This is possible.

This is the begining of the end. Nobody who lives in the norh of Norfolk including myself watches YTV due the plain reason its shit. Everything about Anglia is so better from presentation to programming, from news and sport to continuity announcements. It can`t really be coming can it, we are not located in a northern region like the stations Granada owns

>and the logistics of changing the system in such short time?
>IE lines to tx etc etc?

not to mention the cost of lines between Leeds and Southampton

Get ready? what for? The changes aren't coming, they've already arrived!

As a resident Anglia and Carlton/LWT viewer, there has already been a few subtle changes.

This weekend saw Anglia & LWT run the same trails after programmes fro itv programmes. Continuity and trails before programmes remain the same. Also the same adverts are being screened either at the same time or swapped around during some breaks on Anglia & LWT, plus there has been a sudden increase in the number of ads for ONdigital and itv2 on Anglia.

I have to say that the Anglia (& Meridian) websites are both for better than anything under the *G-wizz* banner. Espically the fact they concentrate in backing-up their programming (such as news, info, weather, sport, etc;) rather than being commercial offshoots.

As for the accusation that we have to share *local* programmes, well, this is nothing new to Anglia viewers. We have had to share programmes with Meridian viewers ever since United (then MAI) bought Anglia.

I suspect that there'll be more little alterations in time, but I'll wait and see, and of course, report back here in the forum.

The cost of lines is nowt next to the savings involved in shutting down the Southampton broadcast centre. Much as it pains me to say it, I think this will happen. Give it a couple of years.

The Tyne Tees g-wizz site was quite reasonable a few months back, few adverts and a genuine attempt to back up regional productions (something we have no shortage of up here; TT make a lot of the "regional" programming for the other Granada North stations). But it's gone to pot lately.

Granada are just as bad as Carlton the only thing yet for them to do is change all the names to Granada and that`s something that can`t be ruled out especially as the number of stations it own increases and continuity becomes harder

> Ready for announcements from Maggie in Leeds like " YOUR WATCHING ITV", blah, blah, blah ...

Surely you're missing the point, which is that the threat doesn't come from Leeds, which itself will be shut down in the long term, but from London's South Bank.

Sad as though it may be, ITV is hurtling towards fully-centralised (and I don't mean Central as in Carlton Central) presentation. The only variations will be local news/weather and commercials. Full stop.

And I don't like it one bit.

announcements may come from LWT in London for Anglia in the future and not Leeds even during the week

announcements may come from LWT in London for Anglia in the future and not Leeds even during the week

On the subject of it, Granada's new media people have always been hopeless. They seem to update their sites a lot for a few weeks then obviously sack all the staff and just leave them for a year, before revamping them all, updating them then leaving it.

Your local news programs will get shorter in order to fit in more adverts. That`s what happened in the N West.And I think it`s right that your station HQ`s will be run right down just like TT HQ to save lots of money. Granada has lost a fair old bit of it`s regional id since it`s been run from Leeds. I`m afraid it is going to go that way for you guys too, seriously

There's been no change to the ads during Calendar.

Believe it or not ITV has only been really bad for a couple of years(except in TT case of course were it started in about 93).Over these two years we have seen joint continuity over different stations, the hearts appear, loss of final in-vision announcers, regional names vanishing, the generic ITV trailors rather than regions making their own, the loss of News at Ten --I could go on and on. Some of the above reasons are clearly aimed at saving money, in doing so destroying the whole purpose of the network being a regional one. They go on about the need to come together so they can be a big player in the competitive world of digital tv but personally, I think this is a load of bollocks. The big two companies are just thinking of themselves and being able to line their pockets even more. It`s just a pity that they are being allowed to get away with it so easily while the ITC sit back and do nothing.
I believe ITV will be totally destroyed by 2003. By then Granada will be controlling the lot. They may as well change the `I` to GTV as it will no longer be independant television. At the same time of all this happening the program standards seem to be slipping, underlining my point again that money is more important than the viewers

ITV continuity could wel be centralised in London - certainly for England&South Scotland (and possibly for HTV ) but for Scottish, Grampian, and UTV, I think they will stay in the regions (though I think I'm right in saying Grampian continuity now comes from Glasgow).

I am an ident fiend. I tuned my television in to faraway stations just to video their continuity. I love the differences.
But I accept that most people don't care about them.
ITV is a network. Most of its schedule is networked.
Most of it is (or soon will be) owned by just two companies.
It makes commercial sense to get rid of wasteful duplication of resources.
Surely the ITV companies should divert resources into regional programmes, rather than the luxury of having 15 different people saying pretty much the same words 85 per cent of the time.
OK, WE might not like it when the ident simply says ITV. But it's really not going to change television.
The only people it will hurt are graphics companies and the continuity announcers.
The big scandal is the programmes which are co-productions, like that health show with Philip Middlemiss, which is re-edited for TTTV, Granada and YTV, pretending to be regional.
And the football show that LWT and Granada did a while ago concentrating on teams from the NW and London. That really is cynical and spurious regional programming.

I completely agree with this RB. Regional programming is the real scandal at the moment, the ITC should act to force the companies to be completely transparent when it comes to where a programme comes from. If a regional programme says "Tyne Tees Production" this should mean that the idea came from Newcastle (or Billingham), and that it was developed, produced and presented 100% completely and only from staff working permanently at of of those sites. Else it is a co-pro. Simple as that.

But I think that if ITV were to play it right, they could improve the current situation by centralising continuity in the technical sense, but regionalising it simultaneously. All you'd need is one studio used for both the news and continuity (many smaller stations had this in the past). The same person who does the news do the continuity. Basically just give a 15-20-second timeframe in which control is given over to the regional centre. The station could then do what it wants, subject to making the branding the same. Hell, they could then get in-vision continuity back in if the station so desired. All this with a net cash saving, because you are employing one person to do two jobs.

Is this so far fetched?

And this idea would also solve the problem of small bulletins not being presented properly sometimes because they get reporters to do presentation...

God you lot are depressing - Changes are definitely afoot, but how stagnant would we become if we never had a challenge thrown at us every now and then. And who knows what will happen between now and a centralised ITV - we can only speculate. Whatever you think *might* happen.......never does!

Hey Mr announcer,perhaps you can tell us what is going to happen then as you must have an idea (without revealing yourself of course!)

I know this is slightly off topic, but what's happening re Carlton Central Birmingham continuity, because some time back, the local paper Birmingham Evening Mail mentioned that it was moving to London.
If it did, & the Central name came back, as mentioned on other threads, would it go the same way as the YTV etc operation, where, according to other threads, they seem only capable of saying 'itv', or does Carlton have a master plan?

I hope the Central name does come back. I get Central as a second ITV region and I watched it the other day for the first time in months and months. The announcer wasn`t the familar one who has been on there for at least five years, but some old guy I`d never heard before. I somehow doubt Carlton has got some trick up its sleave regarding continuity but we`ll see. Is Westcountry continuity moving to London also??

>And this idea would also solve the problem of small bulletins not being presented properly sometimes because they get reporters to do presentation...

Bizarre notion this.
National news replaced announcers with journalists in the eighties. That's why John Humphrys, Sue Lawley, Nicholas Witchell etc replaced Jan Leeming, Kenneth Kendal, Richard Whitmore etc.
A good journalist presenting the news is far better than an announcer. He or she can respond to mistakes and ad lib much better, or at least should be able to.
Surely, regional news should stay moving in the same direction.