Mark Jeffries wrote: > I have a feeling that beyond the "anoraks" who want the regional > identities back (and the live on-camera announcers introducing shows and > test patterns and signon theme songs), there is going to be a reaction to > the local news shows losing their names, with the interesting exception of > Yorkshire's "Calendar.... > And is Big Ben and "The Awakening" now out of the national ITV newscasts? >
Hello, long time lurker, first time poster. Another Brit, I'm afraid, but I do love the discussion about British telly on here. You may know me from www.tvcream.co.uk where I put together the Creamguide listings. End of advert. Anyway, the reason Yorkshire keeps Calendar is because, thanks to the way the transmitters are arranged, many people who receive it aren't in Yorkshire - it also covers Lincolnshire and bits of Norfolk - and also the Northern bits of Yorkshire don't receive it, they're part of the North East. You may wonder why it was called Yorkshire Television in the first place, but when it began in the sixties, it did mostly cover the whole of Yorkshire. When UHF began it was decided that the transmitter serving North Yorkshire should be allocated to the North East because loads of people in the North East could pick up the signals, but to make up for it they gave them Lincolnshire which until then was part of East Anglia, because they felt it had more in common with Yorkshire than East Anglia (which it does, I live there). The net result of all that is that if they called it ITV News Yorkshire it would be inaccurate, but the actual name of the region would be long-winded, hence Calendar is a happy catch-all. They're far more likely to refer to "the Calendar region" on air than they are Yorkshire. As mentioned, ITV nowadays is almost entirely a national station with the only regional presence being the daily news bulletins - five minute summaries at lunchtime and in the late evening and the half hour shows at 6pm. The only other regional programming is a political show once a month in the middle of the night. This is somewhat different to how it was twenty or thirty years ago when they had their own identities and produced all manner of local shows, much like a US affiliate, I suppose. In fact in the past decade or so, it's the BBC who have taken up the regional mantle. The BBC splits up the UK into smaller chunks - so Lincolnshire and the bit of Norfolk gets its own local news instead of sharing with Yorkshire - and there's a weekly local political show and a weekly magazine show and so on. They're also more likely to opt out of the network if there's something important locally, so when the Olympic torch came round the UK last summer each area got its own local show when it arrived there, and there's even the odd local documentary. It's not much - aside from the local news it's about an hour a week - but it's more than ITV. And in addition the BBC are more prominent in the local community, their regional buildings are now more likely to be in the middle of a city and have a public space attached to them, while ITV sit in anonymous buildings in a business park. ITV do sort of still use The Awakening for the news but it's a bland rearrangement that only has the tiniest fragment of the original theme. They stopped using Big Ben as a major part of the brand a few years ago as it was felt to be too London-centric but, as you can see here - http://tv-live.org.uk/wp/index.php/itv/itv-news/late/itv-news-at-ten-2013/ - it does still play a small role. Watch out for it on one of the screens behind the anchors. I promise I will be more interesting on future posts in this group. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
