ITV television presentation

Since its origins, various ITV stations have used different idents to define each of its franchises. Not until the late 1990s did ITV begin to introduce a consolidated presentation package due to a dedicated effort to unify its identity.

ITV1

eptember 1989 - October 1998 (ITV Studio only) November 1999 (ITV1) (Various depending on ITV franchise)

ITV introduced its first official corporate logo and national on-air identity in September 1989, using branding designed by English Markell Pockett and music by Lord David Dundas. However, Ulster, Anglia, TVS, Channel Television and TSW declined to use the generic idents that were designed for their regions, preferring to stay with their distinctive on-screen branding. A whole branding package was designed around this logo; in addition to the idents, there was also a clock, trailer style, font, break bumpers and various other elements. The ident was generally formed by beginning with the franchisee's logo, then going into a sliding sequence featuring a dove, a couple in period dress, Big Ben, an athlete, a pair of dancers before an ITV logo is formed which featured an abstract form of that franchises logo in a triangle in the V of ITV.

Some regions took elements of the package, but not others, and these were slowly dropped over time with most regions reverting to their own looks. Scottish Television, Granada and Central did so almost immediately, with HTV adopting a brand new look on New Year's Day 1993. Thames Television dropped it a few months after losing their franchise in 1991. The three newcomers to the ITV network in 1993, Carlton, Meridian and Westcountry Television all launched with their own brand images.

The regions to have the longest use of the generic ident were Yorkshire Television, who kept it on until October 1994, and Grampian Television who continued to use the 1989 generic ident right up until ITV's new corporate logo was introduced in 1998, although they were by then part of SMG. In addition, Tyne Tees, Border and Grampian continued to use an edited version of the 1989 ident's music in their first idents after dropping the generic look, whereas London Weekend Television used a re-recorded version.

October 1998 – October 2002

A new ITV logo was launched in 1998 and a second common ident was introduced in 1999 which started the "TV From The Heart" era. This logo was changed when Carlton & Granada (later ITV plc) introduced the "ITV1" on 11 August 2001 on the stations they owned.

Some of the idents had a live-action animation, with several people and/or objects forming a heart shape, which then flashes to reveal the ITV logo on a background of spinning hearts. Another generic ident started with the spinning hearts, then lines crossed each other to form the ITV logo. The "lines" ident had two different backgrounds. One had a blue/yellow scheme for Daytime, whereas for Nighttime, the background was the one otherwise seen in the "live-action" idents. Another version of the ident was simply a static ITV logo on the "hearts" background. Sometimes, it would feature the yellow heart from the "Daytime" ident, coloured purple, and no hearts at all. All of the idents were modified in August 2001 to replace the ITV logo with that of ITV1 and three months later, the "live-action" idents were discarded in most of the ITV regions when an animated "itv.com" website was added to the bottom of the "static" and "lines" idents.

Granada, Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, LWT, Border, Meridian and Anglia used the idents through 2002. It was far more difficult for individual regions to opt out this time, with all these franchises now owned by Granada Ltd, although in late March 2000, LWT discarded the heart idents because "they were not exciting enough", and debuted their own video wall idents.

Carlton had their own heart-themed idents made by Lambie-Nairn for the London, Westcountry and Central regions. These idents came into service on 6 September 1999 when the Central and Westcountry names were dropped in favour of Carlton. Each animation would end with a silver star flashing on the top-right corner of the heart to reveal the Carlton logo with a star next to it, the ITV logo underneath it, and the Carlton website at the bottom, on a rotating star background. Sometimes, the animation was shorter, and sometimes, it was a static Carlton logo on the star background. The idents were intended to show that if ITV was TV from the heart, Carlton was the "star" of the network. Fact|date=April 2007

When Harlech Television was acquired by Carlton in July 2001, the Carlton animations were "married" to the end boards of original 1999 HTV idents and did not include a star. After the flash, the heart would appear on the "spinning hearts" background and zoom out and become the "V" of the HTV symbol. UTV, Grampian Television and Scottish Television boycotted the new look for their regions. But in early 2000, Scottish Television and Grampian adopted a common logo (a shimmering blue square bearing the station name) and a new ident package reflecting life in modern Scotland.

Channel Television had the most thorough implementation of the Hearts look, creating a full rebrand out of the elements of the new look. Major changes included a new logo (featuring comets forming a heart around a spinning globe), a new slogan ("The Heart of the Islands), and the idents, but with a completely different soundtrack. A clock ident was also used, and idents with no ITV branding and more prominence of the Channel brand were also used. Even after the Hearts era, the logo and slogan were kept and were adapted to future idents until the January 2006 rebrand where the look was officially dropped.

October 2002 – October 2004

The era of the 'celebrities'. Monday 28 October 2002 marked the centralisation of continuity in London for all regions in England, the Isle of Man and the Scottish Borders. Regional idents, and all regional continuity announcements now were pre-recorded and only appeared before regional programming. The regional announcers were replaced with a national team of six, working from the former LWT announcer booth. In 2006, this was reduced further to four. HTV Wales, now ITV1 Wales, would retain its own announcers until the 2006 relaunch.

The idents consisted of footage of celebrities 'off-stage'. There would be a clip of the celebrity chilling-out when they were supposedly off screen. The 'ITV1' logo would then animate on in the bottom right hand corner, being formed from 3 aligned blue blocks and one yellow block. The ITV1 Wales idents featured a yellow rectangle containing the word "WALES" under the ITV1 logo, Granada variants had the ITV1 logo and the name of the franchise below it in a blue square and Carlton kept its identity under the ITV1 logo in the Westcountry and the Midlands.

Grampian and Scottish did not initially use the new look, although later adapted it to match their logos. UTV and Channel Television also tailored the new look to their logos.

In 2003 the set was updated to reflect changes to the faces you could see on ITV1. The new idents were very much like their predecessors, shot in a middle-blue and yellow studio. Idents were filmed in both London and Manchester. The logo would animate on as before.

November 2004 - January 2006

1 November 2004 heralded a new on-air look coinciding with the launch of ITV3. It consisted of a reworking of the ITV1 logo, splitting it into squares (see image, right). On screen, the 1 was seen in a large yellow square with the three blue squares, each with one letter of "itv", on top. The new ITV1 logo would animate in various ways against different backgrounds such as clouds, windows, water and (most commonly) ribbons.

The plan with this relaunch was to move away from traditional idents to mini-menus which showed you what's coming up later as well as what's on now. The ITV1 squares could reform into a menu pattern which allowed short clips of forthcoming programmes to be shown. ITV took on a team of associate producers to produce these promotions, but they gradually became less and less in the period up to 2006. It perhaps did not help that ITV spent a lot of this period using themed idents specific to particular programmes, such as "Celebrity Love Island".

January – November 2006

On 16 January 2006 a brand new logo and presentation package was unleashed. It brought ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3 in line with ITV4. It was part of a major re-brand of the ITV network, known as "Brand 2010", which also included the News and Sport divisions as well as off screen content.

Dubbed the 'Emotion' idents, several of the idents were shot in South Africa, in them the 'ITV1' logo would open out and enclose the footage it was superimposed on to.

All but one of the idents were a montage of unrelated scenes, which include such things as a man rubbing his bare chest, girls rolling down a hill and two people hugging trees. The idents were supposed to represent a feelings such as joy, pride or sadness.

The entire network re-brand was made by Red Bee Media, though faced criticism by critics online and in print, mainly due to the almost complete removal of regional variation on the channel.

ITV4

November 2005 - September 2007

The new ITV logo was launched with ITV4 in November 2005 making it the first of the channels with the new branding style. The idents were designed by Red Bee Media. The idents start with a normal environment, but when the ITV4 logo slides in and forms, it slides the 2 halves of the image together with it, slightly changing the context.

eptember 2007 - present

ITV4's second set of idents launched in 3 September 2007, and comprises a 3D CGI logo

External links

* [http://www.redbeemedia.com Red Bee Media]
* [http://www.itv.com itv.com]
* [http://idents.tv/blog/?p=389 idents.tv] Video of ITV1 idents
* [http://idents.tv/blog/?p=477 idents.tv] Video of ITV2 idents

ee also

*BBC television idents