ITV In the Face Episode 2: Granada
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Made in 2015 to celebrate 60 years of ITV, a look back at a time when it wasn't a single channel but a conglomerate of regional channels, all with their own idents and identity: occasionally bizarre, often charming, this is the show that looks the history of ITV in the face.
Episode two: Granada. The North West in excelsis, starring Charles Foster, the Bernstein Brothers and Colin Weston.
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"someone whose balls are dwarfed only by his ego" is quite possibly the best description of Phil Redmond I've ever heard ever.
I was talking to a work colleague the other day and she said as a kid used to watch Sunday afternoon football. I asked her if it was on Sky or Granada. She was born in 1996 and had no idea that Granada had ever existed. After a brief explanation from she said "Ah, that's why the local news is called Granada Reports".
kinda makes sense that she wouldn't know. the generic look would have come in when she was 6
Granada loved staying on the air later than most other ITV franchises each day. Until 1972, broadcasting hours were tightly controlled in Britain, and from 1955 until 1968, ITV stations were only allowed on the air for 7 hours a day of normal programming, 7.5 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Granada were infamous for using every spare minute of their allocated ration, often opting to start at 5pm and end at midnight in the first decade of their existence.
To those who wondered why the North West ITV television station was called Granada.
I write as someone who has lived in Manchester for the best part of my life.
I read some time ago that one of the founders of Granada (I think it was Bernstein) was on holiday in Spain - somewhere in the Granada region. He thought Granada would make a good name for the new venture! Yes, it's as convoluted as all that. The following comment, which was written at the bottom of the piece, always stuck in my head: ''What would have happened if (Bernstein) was on holiday in Torremolinos or Benidorm? Would we have Torremolinos TV or Benidorm TV?.
In the words of Arthur Askey: I than' youw...
PS: My family always rented from DER - anyone remember DER?
You're showing your age mentioning DER.
I'm showing my age recognising the reference.
I remember DER from the 1970’s, we lived in the Granada region then, but our tv was rented from a shop called Telefusion, anyone else recall them?
My parents worked for Rediffusion in Rochdale. In the late 1970's and early 1980's. I remember DER. When we moved to London in the mid 1980's, we had a DER house nearby. An office block of around 10 floors.
Granada is, undoubtedly, the most interesting company out of the others within the ITV. Granada had everything: cinema, electronics, books, fast food, a TV station, and everything else. BTW, everytime I hear the Coronation Street song, I can also hear a baby crying in my head.
Came here after hearing the sad news on Charles Foster. May he rest in peace 🙏
Granada, along with Rediffusion also had a great knack of using exempt programming to extend their broadcasting day during the restricted hours era. Putting in adult education programmes meant they could extend their broadcasting day, and gain extra advertising revenue slotted into peak time programming in return. This was the norm especially for Granada from 1968-1972, when the 8 hour broadcasting allowance was introduced, Granada padded it out with a lot of adult education.
@@areasquirrel What do you mean? Open University was used by the BBC to fill large amounts of unused hours on BBC 2 during the 1970s and 80s.
@@areasquirrel No, adult education was on ITV a lot, especially during the 1960s. "Sunday Session" was a block of adult education programming on a Sunday lunchtime. The ITV companies were encouraged to produce these, under a carrot and stick approach. The stick was that ITV had a monopoly on commercial money and so for that monopoly they should do adult education. The carrot was that 1) adult education was exempted from the strictly controlled 7 hour broadcasting day, meaning producing and airing adult education meant you could stay on air for longer. 2) The authority did not allow any adverts during the adult education programmes, however for every programme made and aired, the authority would allow ITV companies to put in an extra commercial break in prime time. This gave them the incentive to produce a lot of adult education. Sorry for being long winded, hope it helps?
The G with arrow head was probably the most recognised symbol of all the ITV companies. It had the virtues of being clear, simple and meaningful; the arrow points northwards and G stands for Granada. The only issue was the name Granada itself. It had no relevance to the region, being a Spanish city and also a Ford car model. But like a lot of meaningless brand names it became established and accepted without question. Hence the North West adopted the name Granadaland. Of course the symbol got national recognition not just through networked programmes but the Granada TV rental shops and motorway service stations.
As a kid I misread the name as Grandad. In a funny way perhaps Granada became the grandfather figure of ITV. It was there almost at the beginning and survived all other franchise holders, having outlived them or absorbed them until there was no longer a regional network, rather a single channel, as you rightly point out. But rather than rebranding the whole of ITV as Granada (I suspect Carlton would have replaced the name ITV with its own had it been the dominant partner), they could see the sense in dropping their own name in favour of the one that everyone everywhere recognised.
There is an argument that the complexity and sophistication of idents was often in inverse proportion to the scale and influence of the regional station. That might explain the difference between Granada's unremarkable static silent ident used well into the 80s versus the colourful animated Grampian ident of the same era. It was as if the minors had to punch above their weight with their on screen identities to stand a chance of getting recognition.
"I mean c'mon, who was going up against them?"
*cue Metal Gear ! sound*
"PHIL REDMAN! That's who..."- Narrator, ITV in the Face
It's spelled Redmond.
@CreeWilly That'll be the sound of another plane crash scene in one of Redmond's programmes again to take out most of the old characters.
19:15
Love that Granada was your second video after the South West!
Fabulous 👋from a viewer of Granadaland 😁
Born 1997, and yet not only do I remember the Granada endcap used until 2001 became 2002, it used to scare me shitless for - as Matthew might put - reasons beyond the realm of human understanding.
Granada were never in favour of religious programming. The "epilogue" which most ITV stations did was never really introduced by Granada. When day Rediffusion would air their epilogue at 11.45pm, Granada would simply put in an adult education programme such as "Music by Guitar" in the 15 minute epilogue slot leading up to midnight.
It was a heavily Catholic region (nearly half of Manchester, two thirds of Liverpool and West Lancashire), with a relatively high ethnic minority (non-Christian) population by the 70s. Before the 80s, there were considerable populations of Methodists, Baptists and Unitarians as well. While hardly Northern Ireland in terms of religious strife, North Western England was never an area like say, East Anglia or the West Country, where you could assume that most people would go along with a broadly Anglican religious consensus. Also, the owners themselves were Jewish, as were a substantial number of Mancunian media movers and shakers- so the Book of Common Prayer was firmly off the agenda in any case.
I was quite alarmed to find out at secondary school that Granada was, in fact, a city in Spain. Until then I thought it was a town in Lancashire.
The Bernstein brothers named their company after a Spanish city, which explained the name.
In 1968, the Yorkshire region was given its own franchise and split off for Yorkshire Television while Granada Television carried on serving the North West Of England.
That world in action theme was terrifying haunting back in the day good only knows why they went with such nightmare fuel for a theme
You should take a listen to the full version of Picture Box from Granada's school programmes, that will give you nightmares. 😉
Agreed, World in Action had a haunting theme.
Home. A fun fact about the Granada Liverpool Newsroom on the Albert Dock, if memory serves, it still had the Arrowed 'G' logo for quite a few years. I'd like to say up to the 2010's. They're still offices now, though I am unsure who occupies them.
Really? I thought the former Granada Liverpool studios at Albert Dock now serves as the Merseyside Maritime Museum.
It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know
1:14 The classic GTV logo
Oh, one more thing - has anyone noticed that the Arrow in the early Granada idents point straight at, or goes through, the N wordmark? And that the Arrow G sits directly below the N, as if to emphasise Granada's northern-ness?
We used to have a secondhand Granada TV which seemed to have a forward thinking Energy Saving feature by the fact of rather than the button on the remote putting the set in standby mode it would actually pop the power button out & turn off the TV fully.
RIP Tony Wilson
I had no idea what that logo was as a kid. It was a weird meaningless shape to me. In my teens I finally worked out the bottom bit was a G, just in time for it to disappear with the generic look for then - watching UTV, which never used it, meant it only showed up in credits for shows, where it just looked like eerie smoke, didn't realize that was meant to be hearts until years later - then another few years until clocking that it was an arrow on top, not as I had come to believe, a stylised T for Television. It's a bit like what Matthew said about the HTV Aerial, if you look at it long enough it doesn't look like anything anymore.
Granada memories include early 90s Coronation Street, You've Been Framed with Jeremy Beadle as the last thing before bed on Sunday, This Morning when off sick from school (along with ITV/Channel 4 Schools), Jeremy Brett era Sherlock Holmes, and The Krypton Factor.
7:21 for those that love Granada.
Well done. I loved your previois Happy Shopper logo. I love your niche product!
19:15 INSERT ITS ME AUSTIN MEME HERE:
Who can it be?
IT’S ME GRANADA!
AW SON OF A B
My favourite Granada ident was the one they used before any F1 programming during the period when they'd poached the rights from the BBC. It was CGI with the sparks shaped like metallic Granada logos flying up from the back of the cars and landing on the track. It sounds more impressive than it was, but I loved it at the time..... th-cam.com/video/ut7UY1LpaSE/w-d-xo.html
The Hamtaro theme but with ITV reigons. Let's go! (sorry if I missed any reigons)
It's granada time! Kushi kush ticky ticky woo!
Granada! How great it is to be a reigon! Granada! We like signals kumpf kumpf
My reigons! If your in a pickle just watch us!
Granada! Reigons big adventures!
The ITAs at school let's go and do our things! We can give out quality just be happy as can be! Watch out for the BBC they are very bad news! But if we do quality we can make their plans sink!
Granada!
Anglia, Yorkshire, Grampian, Channel! Our reigons!
LWT, Thames, Border, Westward! My reigons!
Tyne Tees, ATV, Scottish, Ulster!
Granada!
Reigons Big adventures! Exsuse me but I need to care for business Wee! Granada!
And no mention of Granada's first business location, Dover. About as south as possible.
World in action theme tune used to scare me.
Picture Box was scarier. Search & listen to the full version on here.
@CreeWilly You need to listen to the full Picture Box theme, it makes Tales of The Unexpected seem like Jackanory! 😉
@CreeWilly Told you didn't I? See, I ain't lying, that full theme is some scary shit, especially when it drops down a few octaves lower. Especially when the host after that theme eerily says "Hello". Certainly more scarier than Yorkshire TV's 1970s frontcap ident, we can agree on that too?
@@Sheffield_Steve yes
I remember picture box. That was spooky. But world in action was usually covering the troubles or catching the Yorkshire Ripper. I don't know how I've made it to 56.😂
I knew every different name for the regional ITV stations in the 1980's. Then they went and changed them at the end of 1992. Which was annoying. I'm originally from Rochdale. Which was in the Granada region. So that's the TV i grew up with. I always wondered whether the service stations were owned by the television people as well.
Colin Weston has an official Facebook account.
You forgot to talk about ABC UK which was the weekend franchise for ITV North & the Midlands until July 1968).
ABC feature in the Midlands episode.
At 9:45, is that Colin Weston or Terry Dyddgen Jones?
8:52
WTF WAS THAT GRANADA ACCCENT FOR?
The documentaries are great, but I maybe just have one thing to mention, it might have been better if the clips of idents in slow motion to talk over should have been muted, because its a bit eerie when listening via headphones, because all you here in the background is the very slow sound of the voice over. Especially rough if the same clip is repeated whilst narrating on a subject involving it. A bit more eerier than waiting for the old YTV ident. 😉
I agree
I thought I had done. Sorry.
when you say great service and great sets and you mean sex: 1:34
Granada was sort of a secondary name for ITV for non broadcast subsidiaries
Colin Weston was a regular on Tyne Tees too - and very popular with the viewers.
Tyne Tees from what I've seen (and received from Yorkshire on the DX) looked a lot more fun.
@@zetametallic Being one of the smaller regions, I think things were a bit more chilled there. Certainly in the 70s and 80s, anyway.
@@joannegray5138 Honestly, Granada was like watching paint dry. No wonder I got into DX like you did x
Granada was my region growing up. It was boring, very boring. I'd go to TSW land and even had him do bunny hops for me when visiting my cousins in Plymouth on my birthday. Colin Weston was decent and Andrew Brittain in the 1980's was pretty good looking in continuity. I also liked that music to the striped logo, really gentle. Not the 1995 one that was too corporate looking.
We used to DX and watch HTV, Yorkshire and even Central through the snow which was far more vibrant.
But in granadaland you were lucky enough to have Tony wilson! In Yorkshire, we had...umm...richard whiteley? And a news presenter who became a labour mp?
Now THAT is dull haha.
Tony Wilson was pretty good on Granada Reports. I fancied Richard Madeley in the mid 80's I will admit. ❤ Still doesn"t make up for the boring presentation mind. Yorkshire was a bit rubbish but you did have 'picture roll' in the ITV Schools intervals- I'd have tried to get my toddler drawings on that 🤣
FYI - the music to the '89-'94 stripe logos and the glass G/timelapse clouds logos is actually a borrowed piece of music used by the IBA during their engineering announcements...
@@whatamalikeThe Labour MP who worked on Calendar was the late Austin Mitchell, MP for Great Grimsby.
bob, are we going to have the rest of the series with subtitles
Are you sure Sydney Bernstein was from North London? Because he sounds more American.
Born in Ilford. Which admittedly was in Essex at that time.
Thank you for doing a video on our Subsidiary Granada, Anyways
- Granada Legal Team
"Granada legal team"?🤦🤦🤦 I've watched all of the, "In the face" videos and I've really enjoyed them. I have also been through the comments sections, and haven't found any other comments from any other ITV subsidiary of this nature.
Come on, what he said on this video is available for the public to find for themselves anyway.
Never understood the success of "Coronation Street".
Ident is like the disabled toilet sign
But our programmes are amazing 👏.
Granada did not use the ITV generic ident but they did make their own
Which generic one do you mean?
@@johnking5174 1989 a handful of the other regions never used it some did it and some didn't
@@jamesdelboy The 1989 ident package was a misfire by ITV - it came at a time when the public and indeed the advertisers didn't want a unified look for ITV. They were happy with their own regional companies. I believe the 1989 look was created, as ITV knew that the upcoming franchise round would take place come 1991, and they wanted the whole network to look and feel modern, unified, all one. Sadly that didn't happen, as you rightly say, many regions either dropped the look entirely, adapted it to suit their own needs (Yorkshire for example) or did keep it, but the ones who kept it were Thames Television, LWT, Border and Grampian. The first two of those had to keep it. They were the capital regions, and the main networking centres for ITV. The other two used it as they were some of the poorest ITV regions around.
7:30 The reference to "Channel 9" in that station identification was unnecessary as the channel has *absolutely no importance whatsoever* in TV broadcasting. It's the *STATION* and the *STATION ALONE* that counts.
Back in 1950 or 1960 it was important
@@andreeaionita9769 It's *NEVER* important to show a channel number as part of a station's in-air call-sign. Reason being that a channel has *NO PHYSICAL PRESENCE ANYWHERE!* while a station occupies a large building in any one of a city's suburbs, or possibly right in the heart of the city itself, with a huge tower located near the building to transmit the signal.
In America, however...
@@GoldenDaggerProductions Doesn't matter which country. The channel is nothing more than a chunk of spectrum space. It has *ABSOLUTELY NO PHYSICAL PRESENCE AT ALL* but a *STATION* is a *HUGE* building located in the city or town in which it serves, occupying a LARGE area of real estate and employing any number of people in a wide variety of roles within its confines.
You must absolutely despise Channel 4.
The countdown will begin now 9,8,7,6,5,4,3, (coronation street theme: ACTIVATED)
The O...................G!
¿What earth does Granada Have to do with this location?
Not a lot, I think the founders wanted something vaguely exotic sounding. Which has bugger all to do with the region it serves.
Edit: I believe it's named after a village in Spain, where Bernstein (the founder) went on holiday to. I also thought it was a tongue in cheek thing about the area that it was serving being grey and miserable.
Please read my post for an answer. Cheers!
would look at htv west
He already has
Honestly, I think it’s time they retired the “Granada Reports” name and simply called it “ITV News North West”.
a l is f with h a
That could've happened if Phil Redmond had won the bid overall with North West Television.