The Many Faces of ITV
Created | Updated Feb 20, 2003
This entry is meant as a companion for ITV.
Throughout its history, ITV has had more on-screen identities than all the other British Terrestrial channels put together. This is hardly surprising, though, given the fact that for so many years, ITV was essentially a network of regional channels. This, combined with the companies losing and winning contracts, and their own internal managemant shifts, has led to the channel having lots of different faces around Britain. This is what they looked like...
Rediffusion - The Adastral
Rediffusion served London Weekdays from 1955 to 1968. Though the company is long gone, its symbol is still known for adverts, from the days when it moved at the viewer between Rediffusion's adverts. It was a sun-like shape, with its rays coming out at an angle, and it was called the Adastral after the company's headquarters.
Rediffusion's story has two chapters. In the first, from 1955 to 1964, it was Associated-Rediffusion, a very formal station, with millitary-sounding music to match. Here, on the idents, the Adastral would appear, fully formed, and spin clockwise for a while before stopping. It was, it has to be said, rather plain. The clock that went with it was, however, anything but. Known as 'Mitch' after continuity announcer Lesley Mitchell1, it showed looked like a coat of arms. The clockface was supported by a lion and a griffin, and 'Associated-Rediffusion' was written below on a scroll. The Adastral sat atop the clock, spinning. British TV has really never seen anything like it, before or since.
Rediffusion's second chapter began in 1964, when the company suddenly became swinging Rediffusion, London. The change was total. Suddenly, Rediffusion was hip. The Adastral stayed, but now spun anticlockwise, constantly - a black band or the word 'Rediffusion' to be on having first grown in the centre of the screen. The clock lost all its heraldry, and the Adastral moved to the centre. As proof of the station's new grooviness, a digital clock was added, too. But it all only lasted four years.
ATV - The Eyes
ATV served London at weekends from 1955 to 1968, and the Midlands at weekends from 1956 to 1968 and all week from then until 1981. Anyone who watches Thunderbirds will have seen its logo - two eye -like shapes, overlapped with one below the others and 'ATV' in the spaces. In the first black-and-white ident, a white dot would grow into the first eye, which the second would then 'fall' from. The letters would then appear to a chime each. ATV also had a clever clock to go with this - one eye, with the clockface in the eyeball.
ATV were very pleased with the invention of colour television. From 1969, their ident began with three circles in primary colour, growing and then merging to form the white dot, from which things went as before, though to different music, and in yellow on a blue background2.
Granada - The Arrow
Granada served North England at Weekdays from 1956 to 1968 and the North-East all week thereafter. Unusually for early ITV, they set about getting their name associated with their region. Hence the logo that has been with them throughout their long life - an arrow pointing upwards. People sometimes say 'It's grim up North', and Granada did not seem to want to prove them wrong. Thus their first ident was silent. The arrow grew up from the bottom of the screen, the words 'from the North' would appear above its head, and then some squares would revolve in from nowhere to spell 'GRANADA'. And that was the third ident - the first two just had a form of the end result fully formed.
With the changes in 1968, Granada went even plainer - just the name between two horizontal lines. But colour arrived soon after, and, like Granada decided that it was then time for another change. A 1969 children's game show had teams representing each ITV region, with the relevant company's logo on their shirts. One had to invented for Granada children, so the arrow was revived, now growing out of a G. Granada's bosses liked it so much, they decided to make it the official logo. Thus it appeared in the first static colour ident above the name. (Again, blue-and-yellow, albeit with white as well). The G-Arrow idents changed design and colour over the years, but were always static, though they did have tunes.
Granada briefly used a half-hearted version of the first corporate look, before going back to the old look. (See below for details of the corporate looks). They were, however, very keen on the second - not surprisingly, as they owned six other ITV companies at the time, though they didn't use all the little films and later abandoned them. They also adopted the third corporate look. Though Coronation Street's Tracey Shaw was used nationally, Granada were particularly keen to use her in their regional idents - after all, she came from their best-known show.
ABC Weekend - The Triangle
ABC served the Midlands and the North at weekends from 1956 to 1968. Parent company APBC had been reluctant to go into TV, and only did so at the request of the ITA - the only company to go in by that route. This is reflected in the first ident for ABC - ABPC's shield logo without the P. They had no great identity against their weekday rivals. In 1958, the ITA severly criticised ABC for this in an otherwise very positive report. The company vowed not to have this happen again.
In 1959, ABC came up with its response - the Triangle. Nobody knew what it meant, and that was its strength. It was made of three smaller triangles pointing inwards3, with 'ABC' beneath. In the ident, three arrows came down the screen to chimes, with the letters appearing at the bottoms. The arrows then lost their tails, becoming trianges, which then rearranged themselves into the big triangle to drum beats. They changed the look once, but not by much - they just had the triangle move towards the viewer and disappear before running the old ident. (Though 'ABC' was in a different font).
ABC tried to keep the Triangle for their child, Thames, firstly just by changing names on the old look, then by building it into the skyline look. Neither worked, but it had done its job - the ITA never complained again.
Scottish - The Lion and the Thistle
Scottish TV have served central Scotland since 1957, and seem to have had something of an identity crisis ever since. They wanted a recognisably Scottish logo and chose the Lion Rampant. Nothing wrong with that, but the ident it led to looked rather silly. A white box pused its way into a grey screen to a whistle tune, and the lion then literally spun forwards inside the box to a drum roll, and stopped to a cymbal clash. They later took out the spin, but the ident still didn't really work.
With colour, Scottish, or rather STV, dropped the lion. Instead, they just used their initials as a logo. They first formed it up with coloured lines that looked tartan-like, which worked quite well. But then they replaced the tartan with a solid 'STV' and one in outline zooming in and meeting halfway. It was quite possibly the dullest colour ident ever seen on British TV.
Fortunately, in 1985, Scottish used computers for a ident that really worked - the Thistle. They used quite a solid, blocky thistle, which formed up by its parts flying in space before settling on a metallic sheet. Interesting without being silly, Scottish had at last got it right. After briefly using the first corporate look, Scottish then used a flatter thistle, with colourd disks rolling onto the round part of the thistle. They used this look, and others like it, until 1990.
Now effectively owners of Grampin, in 1990, Scottish gave a new look to both companies. The logo was now a box of shapes, with 'Scottish TV' written in small letters below. It was placed in the middle of the screen at the end of a version of one of these films:
Castle: A storm lashes the rocks around Stonehaven's Dunottar Castle.
Celtic Girl: A Highland girl visits her family in the town of Brora, and the family dogs run to greet her.
Chef: In Glsagow's Lighthouse restaurant, a young chef is hard at work.
Horse: A young woman and her horse have a day out on Luskentyre beach on the Isle of Harris.
Old Men: Three old men on the Isle of Lewis share a joke as they walk into the sunset.
Rigs: The sea ripples around some North Sea oil rigs.
Tea Dance: In Glasgow's Langside Hall, some elderly people enjoy a dance.
Tweed: The three old men on Lewis engage in their craft of making tweed.
Waitress: In Glasgow's Republic Bier Halle, a young waitress serves drinks to a group of friends.
Scottish used these idents instead of the second corporate look. Not long after the launch of the third, however, they joined in. They used their own name all the time, though, and added some celebrity images of their own, with their own colour scheme.
Southern - The Star
Southern served South and South-East England from 1958 to 1981. Throughout this period, they had one logo from start to finish - the eight-pointed Southern Star, and it had only a few forms. Southern were never very adventurous, which is why they lost their franchise.
To be fair, the first Southern Star was a very pretty art deco style design. To a nautical theme4, we would zoom in on it, and its bottom prong would then grow downwards, with the name of the company completing the logo.
After that, from the early 1960s, Southern basically used the same star to the end, with slight tweaks and changes in the way 'Southern' was written. A simple star, looking a bit like a compass, it grew up in the middle of the screen to a restful acoustic guitar jingle. Often, it was prefaced by the words 'Independent Television' (a rare early use of the channel name), and appended by the Southern's motto - 'The Station that Serves the South'. In colour, the black background was now blue, but the star still white.
At the end of Southern's last night, New Year's Eve 1981, we saw the star against a night sky. It started to spin, and then flew off to join the other stars in the heavens. The guitar played for one last, haunting time, and Southern was gone for ever.
Tyne Tees
Tyne Tees have served North East England since 1957. The header of its entry here might lead you to think that it never had a noticable logo. That would be unfair, but Tyne Tees' look was certainly very nondescript. It was simply the compny's initials in a slightly stylised form. Still, its form-ups were usually quite good. The early logo can best be described here as 'tTt'. (All the Ts were capitals, but the middle one was much bigger.) They used a number of different form-ups, but the best known had the an anchor turn into the middle T. At the end, the anchor's rope loop danced accross the top to spell 'Tyne Tees'. All to a nautical theme, and rather fun.
With colour, in 1969, Tyne Tees added a V to their logo. You can probably work out what it stood for. The four letters were arranged in a square, with only the top T's not joined together. Tyne Tees came up with a number of good ways of forming up this look. The first was simply some yellow lines (yes, on a blue background), making the TTTV. The next is best known - the TTTV zoomed in, an a sort or reverse-Star Wars style, and was a supperb piece of animation for 1979. In 1988, Tyne Tees was using a 'flowing rivers' look (more like little trickles, actually). Water flowed in to form the logo, with the yellow and blue reversed. And all of these looks had nice jingles with them. It's just that the end result was rather plain.
Tyne Tees liked the first corporate look, but only used it for a few years on realising that hardly anybody else did. They kept the music for their next look, though, and a similar animation - north easter images flashing before our eyes before revealing TTTV, now in a metallic look. Tyne Tees stayed matallic for the next look, but separated the letters and made them chunkier. Its form up was strangely similar to the first colour look.
The Channel 3 North East Interlude
In 1996, Tyne Tees' new owners (Yorkshire TV) decided to rename the channel as Channel 3 North East, and a new lgo was needed to get people used to it. The one they chose could not have been worse. Some say that it was cobbled together in an afternoon, and one can quite easily believe them. Simply, a big gold 3 would fall into a blue background, taking a tiny 'North East' with it (on the wrong side, so it read 'North East 3'). Oddly, the words 'Tyne Tees Television' were very clear at the bottom of the screen. The North East hated it. Thankfully, it was dropped after one year.
Tyne Tees Restored
Mind you, the restored Tyne Tees look wasn't up to much itself. Badly arranged and with an unbalanced finish, it looked as if Tyne Tees was deliberately ruining itself. Sure enough, Tyne Tees adopted the hearts look when it was launched. But only before networked shows. A new logo, which has a loop of circles around the 'TTTV' came bafore rgional programmes, and was actually quite good. It appeared in a flash after a little film, and was often accompanied on screen by the Angel of the North.5 But this only lasted until Tyne Tees joined the Third Corporate look.
TWW
TWW served South (and, after 1964, all) Wales and West England from 1958 to 1968. Int its ten years, TWW didn't really have a logo. Its first on-screen look was a fully formed 'wTw' in a circle (the T being so much bigger, it could be taken as above the 'w's). The second was 'TWW' in capitals inside three oblong boxes - the boxes would spin in turn, adding a letter as they went, to a simple tune. That ident saw out TWW's short life - on the last night it superimposed over a studio 'EXIT' sign to show that TWW had stormed out of the building. But it still wasn't a logo. TWW never had one.
Anglia - The Knight and the Flag
Anglia have served East England since 1959. At their launch, they introduced a new type of logo - a model. This was a statue of a medieval knight on a horse carrying a banner, which had 'Anglia' written on it. The early black and white idents had him being filmed from lots of different camera angles to moody lighting, before settling on his banner, all done to a good classical tune. Very nice.
With colour, Anglia spoiled the knight, by just showing him slowly spinning round in circles, with bland lights. He looked like they'd put him on a record player (though he is actually four feet high). They used the same excellent music, but it really felt like they'd lost something. Perhaps the knight could only ever have worked in black and white. In 1988, he was pensioned off to guard the Anglia's Norwich studios.
In his place, Anglia introduced a flag, with a pattern of triangles on it to look like an 'A', and give the impression of pointing east. It was formed by the triangles fading into view one by one until the flag was able to wave freely to a gentle tune. (The triangles were well used in the pretty clock that went with this look).
Anglia had refused to use the first generic look, which somehow ended with the triangles pointing west, but took up the second and third. The big 'A' had a little box in the second, but was gone in the third.
UTV - The Oscilloscope
What symbol can you choose to represent a region that is full of deep internal divisions? Ulster Television, which has served Northern Ireland since 196?, was faced with this problem fron day one. Its solution was a symbol that showed some dots to represent the six main cities of Northern Ireland, with lines joining them - something about the region, but saying nothing cultural. In black and white, it formed up with the dots individually appearing to electronic music, followed by the lines.
