This was an interesting discovery, Anglia Television from 1988 (I'm guessing this was the exact period that the flag took over from the knight) into the ITN News at 545. Bloody hell, were they still using those titles as far towards 1988?
They were replaced (as were quite a few other idents and graphics) in the same year having been used since 1979 but the longer a logo or ident runs, the longer it will stick in the viewer/listener's mind.
The same with Thames Television in London, most people including those who weren't even alive when the ident was running will always associate Thames with St Paul's Cathedral.
The petty ITC who had taken over from the IBA just would not respect the heritage or success of any of the companies they removed the franchises of and judged it all in terms of bidding and that evil word: money.
As a matter of fact, I've found a documentary about the 1991 franchise auctions on Youtube so expect a review in the next post!
Mike Morris at TV-AM had every right to be gutted, along with Bruce Gyngell and the rest of the staff. But then again Bruce Gyngell wasn't perfect himself to be honest as I think he let the bitterness of TV-AM's franchise loss get to him when he joined Yorkshire Tyne Tees as their chairman.
He wanted to blend the networks together as "Channel 3" which was fair enough but was a bit hasty, re-branding Tyne Tees to "Channel 3 North East" and using the Tyne Tees name at the same time! Yorkshire however kept their name on screen although their ident did make use of the channel 3 image. But for me that was a very moving ident as it brought back the legendary "daah, da,da, da, daahh!" jingle that is part of Yorkshire as a whole. I always preferred Chris Gunning's arrangement from 1982 onwards in the key of E major but the 1996 version did have me in tears when seeing it first time on a visit to Grandma's in Haworth back in late November 1996. Especially as it was preceeding an edition of The ITV Chart Show which I always thought was their programme as they were the ITV company presenting it.
They were definitely big on the ITV brand throughout the 90s.
Composed by Derek New who also wrote the theme to University Challenge,
YTV's signature was based on the song "On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat" and I've heard plenty of stories about the logo scaring many now 30-40 year olds. I can honestly say that I've had nothing but affection for Yorkshire Television and the golden chevron and got rather excited when seeing someone's suitcase in town this morning with a yellow Diadora logo! I was almost that red in the face.
Christian Spooner at Real Radio put together a great package on the loss of YTV as an on air brand in October 2002 which if my FTP equipment was working I would upload but I'll try and sum it up in my own words.
Basically it looked how treasured as a brand the station and the chevron were and how it was always YTV despite the company adapting generic brands from ITV over the years.
As shown in the first clip above they even altered their 1989 generic ident to include the chevron in full!
Contributors to the piece included MP and former Calendar presenter Austin Mitchell and the late Richard Whitely who even gave his own rendition of the "daa, da,da, da,daah!"although he did mention that the jingle was no longer used. That wasn't necessarily true, although it was a shadow of it's former self, the jingle was used in idents that preceeded local programmes on the station.
But moving onto the point about the News at 545 titles, I've found an extract from the third edtion of the Chart Show broadcast in January 1989 featuring The Style Council and I immediately thought "were they still around in 1989?"
I think it's a good time to explain why I have an enthusiastic interest for The ITV Chart Show and the fairground era in particular. And I will get there eventually!
The reason I've referred to it as the ITV Chart Show probably proves a point on how much the generic look meant to me and how the people at the top planned this in advance as way back as 1987.
To be honest it's the only corporate decision I've fully agreed with as it made things a lot easy for me to understand when I was younger although I had the ITV brand firmly inside my head months before the generic look was introduced. It's shocking, when you put my age into consideration but it was true.
All these changes were not coincidental. The idents before programmes were removed from the first of January 1988 which didn't please all ITV companies. Some including TSW who had a right to be proud of their local heritage still prefixed their programmes with their ident although it was nowhere near as good as the first one with the tune "That's Soul Write". Composed by Will Malone and brought to life by the legendary, underrated, a man who really knows a thing or two about music that is Ed Welch.
This trailer from 1987 proves a point, the announcer says ITV but on screen it's TSW.
And I'm very tempted to go off on another rant about Diddy David Hamilton but I'll try and avoid doing so. "More Madonna and less Mantovani!"
Central weren't happy neither but they came to the conclusion that if they couldn't put their ident on at the beginning, they would put it on at the end! That resulted in this endcap (apologies for the quality) which I found so scary, I found it difficult to watch Blockbusters, or Family Fortunes again. It's shocking to think how short the period was that the endcap was used but it made a mark on me and many other viewers. Memorable but not for the same reasons!
Although the tune does sound very similar to the theme to Family Fortunes!
Anglia, Scottish and YTV also followed suit by using animated endcaps which weren't as scary as Central's but on the 1st of September 1989 the bosses at the top said kaput. Although I think Central still used their endcap for local programmes having produced the some of the best graphics ever seen on the ITV network. A short gardening programme which sneaked through the regions being one of them.
The day was planned heavilly in advance, if I remember correctly the generic look was introduced to the network after Children's ITV finished that afternoon as according to a Tyne Tees viewer, Bill Steel was in the blue studio in the morning and after 5 was in a yellow studio for his annoucements.
The whole look for me was a great way of bringing things together and "getting ready" for the 90s with a logo and accompanying tune that used more in the name of real instruments and people and less so of computers and synthesisers. A selection of idents can be seen here although TSW, TVS, Anglia, and Channel refused to use their idents full stop.
I didn't take notice of it until the following Monday before the Krypton Factor and if I'm being honest it was a refreshing change from the rather unnerving fanfare previously used by Thames. Although that had already been removed two months earlier, as in July Thames introduced a special ident for their 21st anniversary that used an updated version of the Thames signature tune but with the logo encased in a triangle. Now that's what you call a seamless transition!
I've kept that in mind for whenever I've wanted to make changes to my show on Smoke Radio not to be hasty with changes, unless the show has taken a long break. That's probably why I'm still the head of production as without sounding arrogant, it's easy to identify if I've produced a jingle as to someone else's effort.
Now finally, I'll explain how I believe this is connected with the ITV Chart Show!
Basically it's probably because of desperate station controllers as the Roxy was launched as a rival to Top Of The Pops in Spring 1987 with Kid Jensen at the helm. Whilst it was very bright and enthusiastic, it didn't do too well due to various ITV companies messing about with it in the schedules, leading to its demise a year later.
Channel 4 on the other hand had found a long term replacement for the Tube in The Chart Show after a succesfull (well, it could have been even better if the Musician's Union hadn't gotten in the way) first run in the Summer of 1986.
The programme had a simple enough name but a very distinct format and stood out for itself. I never bothered comparing it with other programmes on the television because it was very unique in the fact that computer graphics held the show together and there were no presenters or voiceovers.
And I bet ITV were jealous of their success so in September 1988 the Chart Show went on hiatus making it's final bow from Channel 4 on the 2nd of January 1989.
And it definitely looked like ITV had a very big influence on the programme when it returned at 12:00pm on Saturday the 7th of January with new opening titles and stings that were more vibrant, more exciting, more catchier than what had been on the Channel 4 equivalent emphasising on the fairground theme by basing the opening titles mainly on a rollercoaster as opposed to the dodgems that were used on Channel 4. And the music was also the bollocks and matched the vibrancy of the graphics they accompanied which in the case of the theme music even covered up the lazy editing towards the end of the titles!
You could actually sing along to the stings as well, they were and still are that catchy!
The graphics introducing the show features were also legendary as they affected you as a viewer both physically and emotionally. Watching old episodes lying in bed and close to the screen wearing headphones really has that effect and on viewing the episode I saw on Wednesday I yelled rather loudly when the train graphic came up when I least expected it! But the timing was spot on, the HUD display came up on screen during a middle 8 or instrumental break and a sting would only start after a refrain or verse.
The people behind the scenes definitley knew how music worked functionally.
But that's only part of the story. The HUD display used in the middle of the videos was changed once again and those icons would be used for the next 7 and a half years despite a brief change one week to animated icons for the first show sponsored by Pepe Jeanswear which I still have lurking on DVD.
Back to 1989 and the Star Chart even had it's own icons representing the Star Signs!
ITV obviously kept a close eye on the programme as the End To End feature was dropped after the first show and replaced by "The Hot Shot", another excuse for an exclusive really.
And when the generic look came in in September the Chart Show rebranded to becoming The ITV Chart Show where new features such as The Chart News were introduced and the specialist chart was moved to the second part of the programme. Also introduced was the Vintage Video and according to Off The Telly, the reason for this was so the programme could be previewed fairly in the TV Times before they went to print.
But the biggest change was how the charts were ran down. Before hand they would show snippets of all the songs in the rundown and then stop at Number 1 (or number 2 in the Top 10) then rewind to show a selected video in full.
This all came to an end in September 1989 for the better and from that point onwards the Top Ten took up the majority of part 3. This resulted in both the Singles Chart sting with the Big Wheel and the Top Ten one with balloons being joined together and as I'm sure you'll have heard me say, the result is fantastic! And I've used the word "is" which means I still love it!
The subsequent graphics used were not as good as the fairground ones but I still carried on watching the show, mainly during the summer months when Going Live!/Live and Kicking was taking a break and it always made little changes to the structure, graphics over time to stay fresh.
That was until 1998 when ITV realised that it's preceeding programmes in the 9:25 slot were doing really badly and Ant & Dec along with Nigel Pickard and Ric Blaxill came up with an idea for a three hour Saturday Morning show to wipe the floor of previous efforts such as "Tricky", "It's Not Just Saturday" and so on. And I'll definitely be talking about those programmes in a future post!
With names like that, ITV couldn't refuse and this meant the untimely demise of The Chart Show (now without it's ITV tag) on the 24th of August 1998. I even set the video to record it whilst we were on holiday in France and it was on the top of my mind throughout!
They didn't get too nostalgic apart from a self made video for Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You" consisting of classic graphics from the show's 12 years and ended with the first ever video shown, "Addicted To Love" by Robert Palmer.
I now have that episode on DVD and treasure it well, along with the first one shown on ITV back in 1989.
As metioned before, CD:UK despite it's moments was never as good and even had the nerve to nick some of it's features! "Hot Shots"?! The magpies!
SM:tv on the other hand despite a shaky start went onto becoming one of the best Saturday shows ever "destroying" in Frank Skinner's words, Live And Kicking. And I may be tempted to revisit Ant and Dec's final show from December 2001 after joining a Facebook group set up by fellow Uni student Steph reminiscing about the programme.
Whist the two programmes were strongly connected from the start (even having very similar sig tunes for the first three weeks) by the time of SM:tv's demise they were like two seperate shows and this more or less continued throughout MOM/Saturday Showdown.
Although the catchphrase "You Know Where It's At!" will always remind me of when I was about to do my shopping in Canterbury City Centre!
I won't be doing the same as Steph for The ITV Chart Show however. I'm not desperate for other people to remind me how good it was when this rather long tangent explains just about everything that springs to mind.
This whole blog is turning into a fucking encylopedia! And I know that quite a lot of people don't tend to like looking inside them!
Overall it's something for me to look back on as to why I love radio, television and most importantly music so much.
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