I suppose this means that tynetees.tv is the only unique ex GMG site left in ITV Plc? They also have one of these Generic Sites, but it all links back to their own site, and the titlebar for some reason says we're at tynetees.tv (generic site is www.tyneteestv.co.uk. Also, the links
itv.com/tynetees
itv.com/northeast (bad link)
itv.com/tyneteestv
all link back to the main site. Why are TTTV the exception here (although it's clearly a superior service to the ITVRegions pages)?
all link back to the main site. Why are TTTV the exception here (although it's clearly a superior service to the ITVRegions pages)?
I believe that Tyne Tees (or an affiliated unit) offer a web design service, and so whilst every other ITV plc station except for Anglia (who now make all the regional websites) have lost their web design team (and so their ability to maintain a unique website), Tyne Tees is still able to put up something made in house.
Hmm, I see some people still can't keep themselves from writing 'West Country'...
Where? Unless James Hatts originally spelt it that way, and has since changed it following your comment.
By the way...
"West Country" is the gramatically correct spelling - check a dictionary, or type "Westcountry" on MS Word, and it'll get underlined in red by the spellchecker.
In 1991, the wannabe broadcaster must have chosen to spell it "Westcountry", in order to make it more of a "copyright-able" type name, if you get my meaning.
Presumably, Carlton changed it to "Carlton for the
West Country
" so that "Carlton" would be the only "company-sounding" part of the name and the "West Country" bit purely grammatical.
Where? Unless James Hatts originally spelt it that way, and has since changed it following your comment.
On the new website, in the title bar, 'itv west country'.
Quote:
"West Country" is the gramatically correct spelling - check a dictionary, or type "Westcountry" on MS Word, and it'll get underlined in red by the spellchecker.
Indeed, 'West Country' is two words - two words to describe the patch which is mainly covered by HTV West! Westcountry Television's main audience is located in Devon and Cornwall, which are in south west England, not the west country.
Quote:
Presumably, Carlton changed it to "Carlton for the West Country" so that "Carlton" would be the only "company-sounding" part of the name and the "West Country" bit purely grammatical.
Yes, but Carlton is gone now, and the station is now officially known as ITV Westcountry - even the logo now has it written like that. We shouldn't still be getting 'West Country Live' appearing in TV listings (infact, we should never have had it at all since onscreen it has always been 'Westcountry' even throughout the Carlton era), and we shouldn't be getting 'itv west country' in title bars.
Quote:
With the word "Central" there was no such issue.
Except of course that Central broadcasts to the midlands, which I never heard referred to as 'Central England' before Carlton came along.
As an aside, try doing an archive search on your region's old website (http://web.archive.org/web/*/insertwebsiteaddresshere/). If you think your region's website is acceptable now, try looking back at how it was in 1998! I was very surprised when I had a look at Meridian's far superior website from its pre-Granada days. There was a huge amount of detailed and relevant content, as well as an archive of press releases dating back to 1996 (example: "Anthea Turner, who left GMTV last Christmas Eve..."). And check out all of the factsheets for the local programming!
As an aside, try doing an archive search on your region's old website (http://web.archive.org/web/*/insertwebsiteaddresshere/). If you think your region's website is acceptable now, try looking back at how it was in 1998! I was very surprised when I had a look at Meridian's far superior website from its pre-Granada days. There was a huge amount of detailed and relevant content, as well as an archive of press releases dating back to 1996 (example: "Anthea Turner, who left GMTV last Christmas Eve..."). And check out all of the factsheets for the local programming!
Didn't Meridian's website used to sell merchandise too, so that you could get a Meridian brolly or T shirt etc? Slightly diverting here, but even in 2001 - only 3 years ago - I was at Longleat where there was an HTV West trailer parked up (proudly displaying giant sized HTV logos and the www.htvwest.com url - not an ITV logo anywhere either) giving away HTV pens and HTV spiral paper hats etc. Regional merchandise used to be very prominent.
Yeah, backup information is one of the few areas where the regional websites could be genuinely useful (since the demise of a decent regional teletext service anyway) yet ridiculously, the regions can't always directly promote that from within their programmes; the only website allowed to be promoted is itv.com, and so unless they have managed to arrange for an itv.com/<programme name> website, they can't promote any backup information which might exist for their programmes. This is beyond ridiculous.
The new regional websites are such sorry looking pointless things that I really don't know why they bothered at all.
The Meridian Shop, as it was called, still existed up until last year.
ITV has indeed beaten the life out of the regional websites, as it has done for all of its websites (and indeed, every part of its company). While I can understand it from Charles Allen McScrooge's point of view, I really cannot comprehend why OfCom doesn't care. How can it possibly benefit from letting ITV carry on like this?
Anyway, back on topic (sort of): the Granada TV website from the late 90s still has most of its graphics intact in the archive, remarkably. The Coronation Street section towers over today's offering, though it is of course 6 years out of date...
