Anglia Television

Infobox ITV franchisee
name = Anglia Television


based = Norwich
area = East of England
owner = ITV plc
airdate = 27 October 1959
old
"Anglia logo from 1988-2002"
captionb =
closeddate = lost on-air identity on 27 October 2002 (known as ITV Anglia before regional programming}
replaced =
replacedby =
website = [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia itvlocal.com/anglia]

Anglia Television is the ITV station for the East of England, which has been broadcasting since 27 October 1959. The station is based in Norwich, with regional news bureaux in Ipswich, Chelmsford, Peterborough, Cambridge, Luton and Northampton. "About Anglia", first broadcast in 1960, was the station's flagship television news magazine for over thirty years. Programmes were transmitted across the Anglia region which comprised Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire and south and east Yorkshire. From January 1 1974, Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire and North Norfolk were transferred to Yorkshire Television.

In 2006 ITV Plc did a subsidiary swap, which involved renaming Anglia Television Ltd as ITV Broadcasting Limited and vice versa.
However due to ofcom licensing regulation, the new Anglia Television Limited could not take up its renewed status as Channel 3 licence holder, which means that the East Anglia franchise, has now effectively been transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited.

Identity

Anglia's original ident was a short film of a rotating silver statue of a knight on horseback. At the end, the camera zoomed in on the pennon atop the knight's lance, which showed the station's name. An arrangement, by Malcolm Sargent, of Handel's "Water Music" was played over the film. The Anglia knight logo became so closely identified with the station that when, in 1999, the station produced a book to mark its fortieth anniversary, it was entitled "A Knight On The Box" (ISBN 0-906836-40-9). Before the ident, the channel's start-up music was Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Sea Songs", which was used from 1959 until the early 1980s.

With the introduction of colour television in the 1970s, the ident was remade with constant lighting, and the knight constantly rotating on a turntable. In 1988 the knight was replaced by the Lambie-Nairn designed quasi-heraldic stylised 'A' made of triangles, which faded in and out on a fluttering flag during continuity announcements. This was used until 1999, when (along with most other ITV companies), Anglia took the Hearts idents (which featured the stylised "A", albeit in a square, rather than a flag), which were used until 2002.

Its flagship news and current affairs programme was About Anglia.

In 2002, as with all companies now owned by ITV plc, the station lost its separate identity, becoming branded as ITV Anglia.

Ownership

Anglia was an independent company for much of its existence. In 1994, it was bought by MAI (owners of Meridian Broadcasting), who merged with United Newspapers to form United News and Media. They were joined by HTV in 1996. In 2000, following United's aborted merger attempt with Carlton, Granada bought the TV assets of United (but sold the broadcasting arm of HTV). In 2004, Granada finally merged with Carlton to form ITV plc, which ended Anglia's existence as a separate brand. During its period of UBM ownership, a 'youth' channel was launched to cable and satellite from Anglia's facilities, Rapture TV; some productions for the ITV network were also shared with Rapture, which was retained by UBM after the sale to Granada, but later closed down and its assets sold.

In 1993, the station took over the cartoon studio Cosgrove Hall, when it was sold off by its original owners, Thames Television. Although the station no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally (the last major programme being "Trisha", before she defected to Five), the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand now runs a thriving international business supplying content for Discovery Channel in the USA, Channel 4 and Five in the UK, and other broadcasters worldwide. Notable series include "Animal Precinct" and "Animal Cops" for Animal Planet, and "Real Crime" for ITV (credited as Granada Anglia). [http://www.commercialbreaks.co.uk Commercial Breaks] , the commercial production agency owned by ITV's sales division is also based in Norwich.

In 2006, Anglia sold its other major studio complex (which included its newsroom and twin news studios) in Magdalen Street, Norwich to Norfolk County Council, who, with the help of the East of England Development Agency, have created EPIC - the East of England Production Innovation Centre [http://www.shapingthefuture.org.uk/images/uploads/PDFDownloads/epicNewsletterSummer2007.pdf] . Intended as an "incubator" for small creative and media enterprises, Studio E (formerly home to "Trisha") is now available for hire as an independent facility [http://www.epic-tv.org] . One of the first tenants of EPIC is Televirtual, a company formed out of Broadsword Productions who made Anglia's legendary children's show "Knightmare" [http://www.televirtual.com] . A major education partner at EPIC in the shape of [http://www.nsad.ac.uk Norwich School of Art and Design] will be housing a new [http://www.nsad.ac.uk/courses/foundationfilmandvideo.php Foundation Degree in Film and Video] at the centre from September 2007. As a consequence of the sale, "Anglia News", which moved to Magdalen Street in 1999, has moved back to a new state-of-the-art facility at Anglia House.

Coverage areas

Anglia originally covered mainly Norfolk, Suffolk, the northern and more rural parts of Essex and Cambridgeshire before expanding to the less rural areas of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire with the opening of the Sandy Heath transmitter in 1965, covering an area which had previously been an awkward gap in ITV's coverage of the UK. Later in 1965, the Belmont transmitter opened, bringing Anglia's signals to Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, also being available to some viewers in cities such as Nottingham, Leicester and Sheffield.

The Independent Broadcasting Authority decided that Anglia's coverage area was now too large for a "minor" company, and Yorkshire Television's was too small for a "major" company, so YTV was given the Belmont transmitter from January 1, 1974, even though it also covered the northern parts of Norfolk, which now found themselves watching television from Leeds (subsequently, Anglia-only relay stations would be built, restoring the station to parts of north Norfolk). Also, with the transition from VHF to UHF signals, Anglia gained coverage of much of south Essex, including Southend, which had previously been considered part of the London region.

The Anglia region is currently split into two sub-regions: East (Aldeburgh, Burnham, Creake, Felixstowe, Gorleston on Sea, Linnet Valley, Little Walsingham, Overstrand, Sudbury, Sudbury B, Tacolneston, Thetford, Wells next Sea, West Runton, Wivenhoe Park and Woodbridge transmitters) and West (Darlington Park, Kimpton, Kings Lynn, Luton, Madingley (Cambridge) and Sandy Heath transmitters).

Future

In September 2007, chief executive Michael Grade announced proposals that would see Anglia broadcasting a single regional service rather than separate news services for the east and west of the region. [ [http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2167562,00.html Media Guardian: Unions slam ITV regional cuts] ] These are subject to Ofcom consultation and are not expected to be implemented until 2009.

Trivia

*Was parodied by Benny Hill as Angela Television instead of Anglia in the Women's Lib Television sketch.

Notable programmes

*Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)
*Knightmare
*Sale of the Century (UK game show)
*Heirloom (TV series)
*Vanessa
*Trisha
*Survival
*Bygones

References

External links

* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia/hods/?player=ANG_Hods_15&void=220011 Take a virtual tour of ITV Anglia] on ITV Local
* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia ITV Anglia] at itvlocal.com
* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia/allangles/?player=ANG_AllAngles_15&void=195073 ITV Local Anglia's entertainment show All Angles on Aldeburgh Festival June 2008]
* [http://www.angliafactual.com Anglia Factual]
* [http://www.commercialbreaks.co.uk Commercial Breaks] ITV's commercial production agency based at Anglia
* Some screen captures: [http://www.penelope.demon.co.uk/atw/atw-ang.html later years]
* [http://www.transdiffusion.org/ident/album/anglia/ Video of Anglia idents]
* [http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/info/anglia_knight.html The story of the knight logo]
* [http://www.itw.org.uk/Anglia/ A history of Anglia]
* [http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itveastofengland/index.html Anglia Television at TV Ark]