Get Ready for ITV 1989 - the distribution

[jamesw83]

I was having a conversation recently, and thoughts turned back to a video I saw a while ago, now preserved in the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/download/yorkshire-t...oolkit.mp4

Effectively, this is a set of the various idents, and graphics for construction of everything to do with Yorkshire's version of the generic look (as originally designed). A generic ITV logo is also there, as well as the backgrounds and colour schemes to use when making up slides.

Presumably a version of this went out to all regions, but I wonder if anyone can shed any light on whether there was any more to it? I don't see a typeface guide or generic style info here, but presumably that must have been there too.

[Neil Jones]

All the various regional variations were done I believe for that look (they're all online I believe), but not all regions took them, and those that did didn't all take them in their intended format. Indeed Grampian was the last bastion of it, still using it as late as 1998, years after everybody else had dumped it.

[Rob]

You can see all the different variants on TV Live.

[James Martin]

The culture in 1989 was so different though. I think what also didn't help was the way some of the logos were shoehorned into the V, a problem Yorkshire addressed.

And of course none of the 1993 newcomers had the ident kit made up for them.

[Steve in Pudsey]

The fact that the VT clocks have a YTV identification on them suggests that this is a compilation kit of parts that Yorkshire put together, perhaps from the full kit provided by the designers?

[JAS84]

The culture in 1989 was so different though. I think what also didn't help was the way some of the logos were shoehorned into the V, a problem Yorkshire addressed.

And of course none of the 1993 newcomers had the ident kit made up for them.

Yeah, Granada's had a yellow blob at the bottom of the triangle, and a ^ at the top, but no line joining them! Can't blame them for only using an edited version combining the generic ITV logo and one of their previous idents. Anglia's triangles were the wrong colours, so of course their version wasn't used either. TVS and TSW's logos were both unrecognisable in that triangle, and also went unused.

[jamesw83]

The fact that the VT clocks have a YTV identification on them suggests that this is a compilation kit of parts that Yorkshire put together, perhaps from the full kit provided by the designers?

It looks that way, or at least it's been specifically branded by whoever put it together. What I did notice even in that kit there seemed to be elements that were never used, or certainly not in the form they were included there.

[swaggyboi128]

The culture in 1989 was so different though. I think what also didn't help was the way some of the logos were shoehorned into the V, a problem Yorkshire addressed.

And of course none of the 1993 newcomers had the ident kit made up for them.

Yeah, Granada's had a yellow blob at the bottom of the triangle, and a ^ at the top, but no line joining them! Can't blame them for only using an edited version combining the generic ITV logo and one of their previous idents. Anglia's triangles were the wrong colours, so of course their version wasn't used either. TVS and TSW's logos were both unrecognisable in that triangle, and also went unused.

Ulster and Channel also didn't use them, the former because (i guess) their logo did NOT look like itself in the triangle, and the latter had only a small part of the C in the wrong colour scheme!

[JAS84]

Huh? The colours look right to me. Gold stripes on a blue background.

[reworP wehttaM]

Say, y'ever wonder if we can scout out the other region's ITV packages to see what their version looks like outside the general ident?

[swaggyboi128]

Huh? The colours look right to me. Gold stripes on a blue background.

CTV's logo was orange-on-black in 1989...

[From The North]

TV Live

Yes, the whole concept was good in theory but flawed in design.... The whole animation in my opinion should have been reversed to end on the full station logo, that way it might have been more universally accepted.

[ChipperBird]

Maybe it's just me, but the smooth jazz style of the theme was something I enjoyed during its brief time running as an actual ident on various regions. Now I'm older I can somewhat understand why it was a rare occurrence and why the regions would rather dislike the whole "one big happy family" vibe it was trying to go for. But man that sax

[JK1985]

The 1989 generic look on ITV was unwanted and unnecessary. When you spend all the money on creating new ident package, and created a "Get Ready for ITV" promotion package, and then not enforce every region to use them, it was doomed to failure before it even aired.

I never understood why they bothered, surely they knew strong regions would never use their ident. Scottish Television, Ulster Television, Granada Television, all had very very strong regional appreciation for their own unique look, feel and style of presentation. Even the smallest region, Channel Television was fierce independent.

Why construct a new corporate ident package, when over 50% of the regional companies were going to drop the new look like a stone?

[James Martin]

Whose idea actually was it, as in 1989 there was no "network centre" as such, only the Big 5, and even they didn't really use the idents, with only Yorkshire really using them as intended once adapted to put the chevron front and centre. Thames adapted their logo for it but I don't remember it lasting too long, and LWT adapted the music and formup for themselves as they would do a decade later.

Even in 1999 they couldn't get everyone on board, with only Granada and United using the package* - Carlton went their own way with a superior look, LWT adapted again as I said above, and SMG/UTV kept doing their own thing too.

Ironically it's only the Celeb era that achieved a true common look, with SMG and UTV getting on board but keeping their branding.

* and Border, who I think were owned by Capital Radio Group by this point, who wanted the radio assets and had agreed to sell the TV assets to Granada.