Historical details of Central and other ITV Companies

Thanks for all that. The company that produced the services for Carlton, LWT and presumably GMTV was Intelfax who co-incidently were based just round the corner from the London Studios. The ITV ancillary services were quite useful but I don't think they were ever really promoted that much. I think Westcountry's was one of the earliest and one of the only ones made in house

The reason they moved Thames News to 6:30 was because more people were home to watch it then. Carlton did the same thing less than a year into their license for the same reason.


I think that sounds more tricky than the way they actually did it! Not only would it mean giving Thames 5 minutes of fairly pointless time to fill after Children's ITV but LWT would lose out on advertising and promotional time, I'd imagine that break between H&A and the news was a bit of an earner.

I would have thought that the reason it was 5:15 in the first place was because the news started at 5:45, thus giving LWT a full half hour to start with, when did that change?

13 February 1989, Actually first day of Home and away starting its weekday broadcast, I never clicked to these two points.

Came across this link on my www travels later today:

http://www.darrenlock.com/2005/01/16/i_am_wearing_my/

Sort of confirms the Carlton/LWT/GMTV linkage I mentioned.

Also, don't forget, that 1982 to 1992 C4 Crystal Palace also had that 'bump' at 17:15hrs, because back then
the ITV companies sold and inserted the ads in their own patch on C4, so the same BT switch was applied on C4 London too.

Normally at the start of The Tube, that was often led in with C4's continuity clock. In later years its start time drifted, and sometimes it was 17:14:xx so the bump was during the opening credits, however, any ad break just before 17:15hrs on C4 was always completed by 17:14:55

Good find, I assume he did more than just those 3, I wouldn't have thought there was enough to do.

Intelfax seems to have disappeared without trace, I wonder what happened to them?

The same happened at 9:25am, though not just in London.

It all seems so clunky now, though I wonder how it would look on air if the same arrangements were in place today? It would be a lot more complicated a switch due to the various platforms and their various needs but presumably it would be virtually seemless on air.

Indeed, though not until May 1989, when C4 launched a breakfast service (which TV-am sold and inserted the ads for).

I must say I don't ever remember any clunk at the end of GMTV, or even TV-am, though I was very young in those days. After 1993, though I would assume London viewers would see no clunk due to Carlton & LWT sharing playout facilities with GMTV, I would've thought everyone else would see such a clunk. All I remember is the "See you tomorrow" end board of GMTV, followed by about 3 to 5 seconds of black and then into a few Granada-originated promos before introducing the next programme.

And what about today? How does Daybreak, or rather ITV Breakfast, work? I know it's 100% owned by ITVplc but is the old system of taking over playout for all the UK still operated? Do UTV and STV get a clunk? Or even the northern ITV regions played out from Leeds?

I do remember the flick/clunk/ switch between GMTV and Scottish, during the 90s.

here an 1994 version: To be fair it was much smoother: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlmYnwjQ9mQ



There is No cluck now adays up in STV land.

Of course videotape recordings of these sync disturbances make them look much, much worse, because the VCR speed is governed by the sync pulses. Disturbe those and the speed fluctuates, thus greatly exaggerating the blip on playback.

If there's no clunk on STV now, what's the arrangement during Daybreak/Lorraine? I assume STV keeps control of its transmitters rather than ITVplc taking over and just opts in permanently from 6-9:30am, just leaving it, even during the ad breaks?