The disappearing UTV brand.

It may have been happening for a while, but I notice that UTV is now showing the ITV1 DOG on all its programming now bar the UTV news & weather. Theres no DOG for these programmes. The UTV logo is still in the introductory graphics for the local news & weather.

icdg

Been that way a while - the UTV brand for most purposes was very quietly dumped in favour of ITV national continuity during Covid-19 (April 2020) and the remaining UTV announcers (Julian Simmons and Gillian Porter) were let go a few months later (Nov 2020). They originally announced it as a temporary Covid measure and quietly made it permanent when it became clear nobody really minded.

UTV is as you say still used for news and weather, for the talk show UTV Life, and in promos for local programmes. It’s also still the label of the channel on the EPG.

ITV rebranded it’s main channel to ITV1 last week - you are probably noticing the change now because of the wider changes that were launched- ahead of the debut of their new (or rebranded anyway) U.K. streaming service ITVX.

Another local programme ‘The View from Stormont’ on at the minute. No DOG on screen.

mackersdublin

When mentioning upcoming World Cup matches on ITV1, only ITV1 and STV have their logos on their graphics/promos

RoTelly

I am surprised that each local veriation of ITV 1 hasn't got its former name on the branding e.g. ITV 1 ULSTER rather than UTV.

Schorpio

Keeping the UTV brand never really made much sense to me. All of the other regions (HTV, Thames TV etc.) all disappeared when the itv rebrand happened. It always seemed like an odd outlier to me that UTV and STV remained.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912035#Comment_119912035

Up to 2016 UTV was a separate company, bought by ITV, STV remains a separate company.

UTV owned a number of local stations around Ireland including FM104 and Limerick Live etc, which they sold to Wireless while UTV Ireland was sold by ITV to Virgin Media.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912354#Comment_119912354

More accurately, UTV sold the TV stations and became Wireless. Which was then bought by Newscorp. Wireless is the legal successor to UTV Plc, renamed as they sold the brand with the NI franchise.

RoTelly

@L1011 who were the people who bought UTV plc and then change the name to Wireless who then sold to Newscorp, who then sold NI Franchise along with UTV Ireland to ITV?!

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912441#Comment_119912441

Nobody.

The UTV Plc shareholders sold off everything over time - UTV Internet, their NI web assets, UTV Ireland, UTV NI - except the radio stations.

That company was renamed Wireless and continued as a listed, independent Plc for a while before being sold to Newscorp.

icdg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912030#Comment_119912030

Why are you surprised? Local branding hasn’t been used in England and Wales before programmes since 2002 (except regional programmes up until the late 2000s). To think they’d change back now would be folly.

The Sky EPG labels did originally include the region name. It was removed a very long time ago, in the late 2000s or so.

And it was never “ITV1 Ulster”. Such a thing never existed outside of the minds of TV listings editors. The on air name of the station was “Ulster Television” (and always with the “Television”) from 1959 to 1993, and “UTV” from 1993 to 2020.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912778#Comment_119912778

I notice that if you do an add channels search on a Sky box for itv1 Wales HD (11.053H) its stored and named as itv1 Wales HD not just itv1 HD. Seems to be the only itv1 region thats named like this, bar utv & stv of course.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912778#Comment_119912778

I assumed local variations continued to use the likes of ITV Tyne Tees or ITV Granada. I suggesting the ITV ULSTER name change for simplicity as it is not part of that company, ITV UTV doesn't seem like a great name, and neither does ITV NORTHERN IRELAND considering the history of the name.

Why do it, because BBC your main competitor does.

icdg

Just to say right now, here is not the place to debate the name of the neighbouring jurisdiction, can we confine our points to television please.

They don’t care any more about regional branding, changing was about saving the salaries on the two announcers (at least one of whom was with the company since the 1980s) and very little else. As far as they are concerned “ITV” is the master brand and UTV is a legacy brand that will probably be gotten rid of some time in the future when it suits them to do so, the same way that the old ITV company brands have either been reduced to regional news programme names (Anglia, Border, Central etc) or gotten rid of altogether (Carlton, HTV).

The BBC are taxpayer funded and can do these things that a public company like ITV can’t any more. ITV will get out of regional news as soon as having the 103 position on EPGs is more costly than it’s worth. If the audience moves primarily to steaming that will be the tipping point. In the end it will be a simple financial calculation and they’ll hand back the linear channel licenses at that point.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913652#Comment_119913652

We didn't there is a radio station called BBC Ulster. The point was that U stood for Ulster and I assumed other regional variations still used their regional monikers along with the ITV brand.

Lots of things causing viewers to depart ITV over the last decade if not more, their move away from regional programming and channels is one of them IMO. If you can have opt-out ads for a region you can afford opt-out links/indents/promos.

medoc

ITV are slowly getting rid of the UTV branding. Bit by bit so as people won’t notice or care. Next I think will be the change to ITV on epg’s. All that will be left of the brand will be the name of the local news shows.

mackersdublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119912953#Comment_119912953

ITV1 Wales (SD/HD) and ITV1 Border (SD only on satellite) are the only regions of ITV1 that have their region in the title on satellite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119915215#Comment_119915215

Any particular reason why this would be so?

afatbollix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119913652#Comment_119913652

ITV are doing MORE news not less. They have 90 minutes at 6pm and the 10 o clock news.

In fact that's their unique selling point these days.

ITV make more money selling TV shows than running TV channels, They buy small production companies up and then sell the formats around the world. Most countries now have a love island & I'm a celeb. Even Come dine with me is an ITV show.

icdg

Actually, that’s virtually the same amount of news UTV and ITN collectively had in those time slots in 1993. The difference is that the regional news is shorter. (Also at that time, the Early Evening News was shorter and News at Ten was longer). UTV introduced an hour long UTV Live at Six in 1993 and that remained until 1999 after which it was split into a features programme at 5:30pm and a hard news slot at 6. Even so they retained an hour collectively for many years after that. So in the 1990s, you had the ITN Early Evening News followed by UTV Live at Six for an 80 minute team time news slot and later News at Ten followed by the late UTV Live for 40 minutes.

If you think ITV’s strong point v the BBC is news, well this is the network that infamously put the news watching public through the News at When? debacle, and it has never ever recovered from it. The BBC News at Ten (which would still be Nine if not for News at When?) has gobbled the audience while Barbary on News at Ten practically editorialises. ITN as an operation is a shadow of what it was pre 1999 when it was a strong competitor to the BBC and Sky News was an upstart that was more popular in Ireland than Britain. Pretty sure if you add up all the news on BBC One and Two and all the news on ITV the BBC will still win by a considerable distance. The overnight news channel simulcast will account for a lot of that as will the fact that GMB’s status as a news programme is definitely debatable while BBC Breakfast’s is not.

But that is all not really anything to do with UTV in Belfast.