Andrew Bowden on the miserable fate of one of the original ITV companies
The 1990s weren’t exactly a good decade for Tyne Tees. The ITV company for north east England had been taken over by Yorkshire Television, scores of staff left or were made redundant as departments were closed or moved to Leeds, and its name was replaced on screen by a giant golden 3. Still at least they’d poached Mike Neville from the BBC.
It had been a turbulent time as costs were slashed, partly due to the large license payments both companies had committed themselves to as part of the 1992 franchise round. So it was not surprising that one of the pioneers of ITV consolidation fell to a takeover itself.
The arrival of new owners, Granada, saw the much hated Channel 3 North East brand thrown away for good in 1998, but the subsequent return of Tyne Tees to our screens was still rather lacklustre with a new ident that looked liked it had been cobbled together in an afternoon.
It was a rather depressing sight to see the station looking such a mess, but in many ways, it continued the story that was the final decade of the 20th Century. Tyne Tees was in a great big muddy ditch and no one seemed to want to help it get out.
It took a new decade for someone to pass it the ladder and on 4 September 2000, Tyne Tees was reborn. The new look covered almost every aspect of Tyne Tees – idents, news, sport, weather, trailers and the production slide all got a makeover, based round a new TTTV logo.
The new logo, in the traditional TT stacked on TV arrangement in a new sans-serif font, was surrounded by thirteen circles. Each different version was based around the same theme – a background of moody blues (usually featuring circles somewhere), with a thick horizontal white stripe across the screen. With the exception of the production slide, this faded to blue as the white bar drew closer to the right of the screen.
The new ident, one of Tyne Tees’s finest since the 1988 ident that saw streams of water form the TTTV logo, featured blue-tinted North East related video clips. The clips included the giant wheels of a steam train, a horse jumping over a fence on a racecourse, and ended with a shot of the stunning Angel of the North – its giant wings merging into the white bar overlaid as the ident reached its climax.
It was one of the most visually stunning idents of recent times, putting to shame some of Tyne Tees’s other recent efforts. North East Tonight’s new titles took a slightly different slant, with several programme and news related video clips enclosed in circles, moving around the screen, before being overlaid by the white bar.
The theme tune was given a new synth based arrangement, replacing the older orchestral arrangement that had been used since it was introduced for Tyne Tees News in 1995. A similar style was used for news bulletins, replacing the shots of Mike Neville for pictures of the North East.
The version for North East Football Special deviated slightly by using colour video clips of footballers rather than blue-versions. Even the weather bulletins were given the makeover treatment, with a relaxing montage of swans, plants and trees to go with new look graphics. Sadly this was not to appear on screen for long, quickly replaced as the station got a new sponsor for the weather, although it was to make several return visits as various sponsorship deals ended.
With such an elegant rebrand, it looked like Tyne Tees was on top form. Well until you peered beneath the seams anyway. The whole rebrand was marred by the fact that the new ident was relegated to appearing only before regional programmes – the existing ITV hearts ident, introduced in 1999, remained in use before networked programmes, and continued to use the old Tyne Tees logo introduced in 1998.
To add insult to injury, the ITV generic ident went in for several retouches, changing the ITV logo to ITV1, and adding an ITV.com URL. Each time, Tyne Tees’s logo remained two years out of date. It set a dramatic precedent.
A rebrand that encompassed every aspect of the station was quickly eroded in the case of standardisation by ITV, and Tyne Tees’s owners Granada Media. Whilst the news programmes kept the faith, the original and rather minimalist North East Tonight set (little more than a wooden desk with a blue backdrop), was replaced in October 2001 by a more interesting grey and corporate blue set, complete with lots of rivets, the destruction was about to start.
The production slide was the first to go in the autumn of 2001, as Granada Media standardised slides across all of its production arms, using a new purple style. The weather graphics were next in January 2002 when a new pastel blue colour scheme was introduced for Granada Media’s northern stations.
It took nine months for the next change, and this time it was by the news department. At the beginning of September a new set in the Teesside studio was unveiled with a new purple colour scheme. By the end of the month, the news titles and graphics had changed. Whilst the new titles featured circles, the colour scheme was changed to a blue-purple, and the new logo featured a map of the region.
The ident fell as regional names were banished in October in favour of the ITV1 brand. When Tyne Tees’s name was used, it appeared as TYNE TEES spelt out in a small font under the ITV1 logo. The old logo appeared on trailers for a few more weeks as the Leeds based presentation department adjusted to the changes, but it was not to last.
North East Tonight finally ditched the rivet studio at the beginning of 2003, replacing it with a rather odd collection of shades of light and dark blues with some browns. All that was left were the title sequence for the weather. And that wasn’t to last for much longer. By the end of January it had gone, replaced by a new piece of footage based on that used by Yorkshire.
In the space of just over two years, every single aspect of Tyne Tees’s 2000 rebrand had been consigned to the dustbin, in the name of generic styling and branding. Indeed all that remains to remind us that the rebrand ever happened is the appearance of the new station logo on the generic production slide.
Had it been introduced in the early 1990s, it would have been a rebrand that would have lasted years, a look and style the station would be proud of. Unfortunately it came ten years too late.
