ITV in the Face Episode 11: Border & Channel
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- čas přidán 17. 01. 2019
- Made in 2015 to celebrate 60 years of ITV, a look back at a time when it wasn't a single channel but a conglomerate of regional channels, all with their own idents and identity: occasionally bizarre, often charming, this is the show that looks the history of ITV in the face.
Episode eleven: Border and Channel. Two companies that couldn't sustain a full half hour, mashed together into one, starring Craig Austin, Oscar T. Puffin and Rudyard Kipling.
bobthefish.org.uk
The lion passant was the symbol of the Duchy of Normandy, which was William the Conqueror's patch and whose successor Houses ruled England until 1485. The last part of the Duchy of Normandy to exist since 1204 is the Channel Islands.
Oh when that new logo appeared...I too thought and said out loud...Viacom!
I was thus in stitches when, a second later...so did you!
Fantastically written and presented...all of the series. Take a bow and keep up with the dry humour!
25:51
Great series. I'm an American who lived in the UK in the 80's and witnessed which I assumed was the Silver Age of Regional Television. I found the infrastructure odd but charming as the US has local affiliate stations which are all pretty much carbon copies of each other and don't contribute programming (with the exception of an occasional news story) on a National level. Central was my favorite station, probably because it produced Spitting Image...: )
I mean you guys have PBS don't you
@@SegaMegadrive we do and PBS of course had regional programming. Hell in the 80's we still had regional programming with affiliate stations of the big three plus we still had plenty of independent stations running all sorts of stuff on the UHF band, hell that's how Mystery science theater 3000 started. You can find a fair bit of the local market stuff on CZcams with channels like history of Chicago television as well as Fuzzy memories.
As an interesting note for viewers who wonder how Channel fared in the blind auction, Channel survived it after bidding £1,000. They weren't unopposed, but the other guys were ex-Channel employees who thought they could do better and bid £102,000, only to be shot down on quality grounds.
The rival bid was called CI3, in the consortium with the ex-Channel employees was Bergerac himself John Nettles.
@@stuartkenny7430
Wow 😂
21:55 - Channel Television provided a scaled back television service during the infamous 1979 ITV strike. They had no access to the ITV network and had to reply on imported material to Jersey to air, along with local news and local programming. This gave the channel a weird mix for a typical schedule, which was reduced to run from 5.00pm until near midnight each day. Usually films, repeats of ITC made programmes such as Danger Man, The Prisoner and repeats of The Avengers, The New Avengers filled the time between local news, local documentaries and imported movies from the 1940s and 1950s.
The timeline for analogue television in the Channel Islands was thus - 1) Monday 3rd October 1955, BBC Television arrived on the Channel Islands from Les Platons transmitter. 2) ITV (Channel Television) arrived on Saturday 1st September 1962 from Fremont Point transmitter. 3) BBC Two, colour television and UHF transmission began on Saturday 24th July 1976. 4) Channel 4 arrived on Tuesday 2nd November 1982.
One of the few good things ITV have done in the past 10 years is giving Border their sub-regional news back - the Scottish side's political show, Representing Border, has quite honestly the best coverage of Scottish politics (not that STV or BBC Scotland really try all that hard...)
Representing Border is filmed in Edinburgh produced by Border but using STV's Edinburgh studio at Fountainbridge, which STV let Border use for next to nothing.
15:50 - In September 2013, Border news return to full separate news programmes with no pan-regional news. All bulletins were now dedicated bulletins for the Border region. However, they still use the same presenters and studio in Newcastle, so 99% of the time, Border news bulletins are pre-recorded. Also they do have access to material from other ITV regions to fill their news content when required. Better than nothing I suppose.
I thought the Border logo was some times referred to in design language as "Chopsticks in a bowl" ?
One of the problems that Border had was that its region wasn't a region.
Why was Berwick news "local" news in Stranraer?
Yet Lookaround's per-head ratings were higher than every other ITV regional news programme.
I guess that in 30 minutes, the chances of your town being mentioned in an area of c600,000 people were higher than in a region of seven or eight million.
Border covered three jurisdictions, England, Scotland and the Isle of Man (re the duke of Channel Islands thing, the Queen is the Lord of Mann - yes two Ns, don't ask).
A hard task.
Even in the 90s, film shot for Lookaround for the Isle of Man had to be taken to Ronaldsway Airport, flown to Liverpool, picked up by a taxi and driven up the M6 to Carlisle to be edited into a package that might look slightly familiar to the island-based reporter who'd tried to put it together.
It wasn't very often that Border would do a "live" from the Isle of Man.
But then neither did BBC North West, unless it was during the TT races.
The Isle of Man's population was officially about 13% of Border Television's population.
But, if your aerial pointed the right way and you lived on a hill, you could watch Granada, Ulster or even HTV Cymru Wales.
And a lot of people did, instead of watching Border, whose adverts for Bullough's department store in Cumbria made little sense to them.
So, much as I liked Border in many ways, I have to agree that it didn't make much sense.
An ITV region covering the three Crown Dependencies would be possible these days. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. All offshore low-tax jurisdictions, whose relationship with the UK is more or less the same. How's that for a good idea?
The Border ident with the rearranged ITV 1989 music actually continued to be shown in tandem with the final (pre-Hearts) ident. There is a video of the ident introducing the ITV Nightly News, launched in March 1999.
Thoroughly enjoyed this whole series - thanks. But a little puzzled why this program on Border/Channel (and on other sites I have seen) can't see the obvious meaning in the Border symbol. As suggested, it may (sort of) form a "B" in the centre but it plainly represents an eye and a tuning fork - symbolising "Sound & Vision"
You should have 10x the amount of subs with the great content you produce 😄 Sound could be a little better but nonetheless great. 👍
I grew up in the Border region (before moving to the Tyne Tees region) - I remember adverts for livestock medicine on Border in the early 1980s - gives you a flavour of the demographic!
8:37
OH GOD DAMNIT!
ITV br-OH GOD DAMMIT!!!! 8:36
I discovered your vids a few days ago, watched them all and this is the one I’ve been waiting for.
I’m from Border TV land.
The chopsticks are part of me! And seeing the Border logo at the start or end of a network show on ITV air Ch4 brought a sense of pride of my local ITV station ❤️
The Cleveland Browns & Detroit Lions of ITV.
Are there any other NFL descriptions of each ITV company you can think of?
@@MrWEWE5 Thames = Patriots
LWT = Packers
Carlton = Washington Football Team
Granada = Bears
Anglia = Steelers
TSW = Broncos
TVS = Giants
Tyne Tees = Eagles
TVam = Cowboys
Central = Colts
GMTV = Bengals
HTV = Bills
STV = Seahawks
UTV = Raiders
Grampian = Chargers
Yorkshire = Saints
@@jakubwidlarz Hahaha! Thank you!
Why are you all comparing itv Reigons to US Sports Teams of all things?
@@rocky.rollcake Because Cleveland & Detroit are like Newcastle United and Sunderland of the NFL having not even played in a Super Bowl in 54 editions. They haven't won a championship since 1964 and 1957 respectively. However Border is like Cleveland because of having produced one memorable show: Mr & Mrs. Channel is like Detroit because they don't even have Border's charm of loveable losers. Just like Detroit are only seen nationally in the US on Thanksgiving Day, Channel were only seen nationally during the three ITV Telethons.
The coronation had viewers in the Channel Islands watching live from the transmitter at Alexandra Palace!
The coronation was relayed to the Channel Islands from the Wenvoe Transmitter, with the signal picked up on Alderney and relayed to Les Platons on Jersey, and then distributed to their cable network in Jersey.
Thank you for this of course-it is most interesting too! And the research you must have done too as well!
The CTV logo at 26:00 actually aired from 1988 to the end of 1992. I know this as 1988 was the year I started high school. Also a frosted striped CTV emblem appeared on the 27:05 logo for a brief period before being phased out to what you saw here. I'm guessing they were phasing it out gradually before the 1999 corporate revamp.
8:36 ITV Br-OH GOD DANG IT!!!!
Tbh, Isle of Man being part of the Granada region makes more sense than you think. Considering that Heynsham and Liverpool are both in Granada land, and that's your two main ports for sailing to Mann.
Location had nothing to do with it, it was which transmitter was best to serve the Isle of Man. The Caldbeck transmitter of Border Television provided a more stable signal to the Isle of Man, compared to Winter Hill (Granada). The isle also received various signal quality from Divis in Belfast and Arfon transmitter in North Wales.
And on BBC1 the Isle of Man always got North West Tonight at 6:30 so it makes sense they switched to ITV Granada when Michael Grade butchered what was left of ITV regional news.
@@johnking5174 I know this, though I still argue that Granada is a better region for the Isle of Man. It is on the North Sea, it isn't Northern Irish, nor Welsh. And, as stated, Ferry links to the isle are in the Granada region.
At a guess, the cat featured in the top hexigon of early Channel Television ident, is supposed to be a Manx cat; representitive the collective term for folk hailing from the Channel Islands (Manx people. Not cat people though - that would be weird).
That would be a good theory, but for the fact that Manx refers to the Isle of Man.
It’s a leopard - originating from the heraldic coat of arms of Normandy - historically the Channel Islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy until they chose loyalty to the English Crown.
I had never heard of either Border or Channel before getting the internet, they were that small.
Channel 31 (public access tv in Melbourne Australia) kept continuity announcers till about 2002. I was one of them
25:25 Looks like after TSW not only did Gus Honeybun cameo on Channel TV, it looked like he developed an ac-eeeed, ac-eeeed addiction. 😉😁
He always looked like that.
@@applemask I'm not sure, I've seen other clips on this series and he didn't look like that. 😉
1:04 Erryforrdd...in Wales.
23:45 I've watched this a lot and it had bothered me that I couldn't work out why it looks so American. But you just know that "CTV 25" is exactly how it would be styled if it was an obscure American cable network.
The '25" was *NOT* a channel. It was there because Channel Television was celebrating 25 years of broadcasting. It would be an *INSULT* to Channel TV to describe them as American!
@@neilforbes416 I know that! My point was that the presentation looked like it was!
Or perhaps even Canadian, where they actually have a CTV!
No reason they had to be consumed by a gigantic itv br- God damit!!!!!!!
Channel & Border TV could have just used the "CTV" and Border logo part of the 1989 ITV generic look by just rocking & rolling the 1st part, like HTV West occasionally did. At least they would have had a animated, computer generated look. Just a thought.
"Superstars Suite" by Keith Mansfield?? I thought it was Johnny Pearson who composed the Superstars theme (aka "Heavy Action")
It was. The name's a coincidence.
28:48 is quite honestly adorable.
What, not even a mention of Major Benest? F'shame!
Too many superlatives.
Don't forget Border made several big programes for the ITV Network
anyone know the music at 7:07?
Found out today that it’s the opening to 96 Tears
13:15 is that a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference?
It's a reference from the Bonzo Dog Band's "The Intro and the Outro".
have q would you cover htv west
Where did you get that 21 years of Border from?
A one-off "Robbie Coltrane Show" from 1989 which is on CZcams.
1998
The Isle Of Man is also not technically part of the UK
Neither is the Channel Islands. However because the Channel Islands were farther away from the UK mainland than the Isle of Man, that is why they got their own region, and the Isle of Man was left with Border and then Granada. In fact the Isle of Man could receive Ulster television, Granada Television, Border Television and HTV on the isle.
So who was it that enforced the generic looks? ITV plc, or "ITV" as in the IBA/ITC/Ofcom?
That was the problem, there wasn't an ITV plc and they weren't enforceable. It was a sort of collective decision between all the companies to launch a new and more unified identity for ITV in the face (ta-da) of the looming broadcast bill and the Peacock Report and all, but not all of them wanted to go as far as having national generic idents and there was nothing forcing them to take them on if they didn't.
@@applemask So who actually made the idents, and for whom? It seems that the bigger stations (i.e. Granada, Yorkshire modified them (implying that they had no hand or interest in them)) didn't want them, and it's not like the smaller stations would have the clout to even create a look for the whole network, never mind the money? So, was it the IBA/ITC who created these, or?
@@TakeMeOffYourMailingList I've never been able to figure that detail out myself. Someone hired English Marshall Pockett and David Dundas to make the idents, but I don't know who. If it wasn't the IBA themselves, then Thames had the greatest ratio of influence and import to length of time they stuck with the damn things.
@@applemask I honestly cannot imagine Thames shelling out for idents for all its at the time competitors! At the same time, I don't see how this would have benefitted the IBA or be seen as a worthwhile endeavour.
@@TakeMeOffYourMailingList I suspect it could have been the ITCA (the ITV Companies Association) since the ITV Network Centre wasn't around until 1992.
Channel Television broadcast programmes in French
0:10
60
Odd how Channel was poorer then Border, yet could afford CGI idents before Border
62
My Late Mum fancied Craig Austin great history of Border TV remember the old logo's as a kid hardly watch Lookaround now bit boring prefer BBC Look North
Lol
Who is Gus’s Honey bun?
He was the puppet mascot for TSW.
Why end this ep with dreadful music?!!!!!
At least your British TV stations had *PROPER* identifications. Australia's TV stations all hid behind their channel numbers and *NEVER EVER* identified themselves properly, that is until recently but it was a flash in the pan and didn't last.
Sorry but the North was Britain's workshop. Rural my arse. And Then Thatcher came along. Is she still dead? Oh thank god.
Border Television was a *STATION,* not a channel! Channels have *NO* physical presence *ANYWHERE* but *STATIONS* occupy a huge chunk of real-estate in whichever city or town they serve. Channels earn no revenue, employ on-one, pay no bills, produce no content. *STATIONS* have a large staff of people working in all departments from on-air presenters(including news anchor-persons), technical staff, sales staff and administration.