When Granada Media took over Yorkshire-Tyne Tees, it declared that Tyne Tees required a strong visual identity and that the Channel 3 North East tag would be ditched, although it took several months before any movement was made.
Even when the new ident arrived, it wasn’t much of an improvement - if the C3NE ident was designed in an afternoon, this one got no more than an hour.
As part of the ident, yet another new TTTV logo was created, this one using a more serif style font. However it had an element of simple bad design which made it look just plain sloppy - the two rows of letters are close together on the horizontal, but vertically the spacing is much wider, leaving a rather messy result.
In the ident, an outline version of the new TTTV logo appeared, with a vague map of the North East in the background. After some flickering, the logo was filled in. Fantastic.
There were two colour schemes created - during the day, a version with a lighter shade of blue and was used between 9:25 until 6pm.
At six, a dark blue version was used until the station handed over to the generic ITV nighttime continuity, roundabout 1am. For each colour scheme, three lengths were created - 3s, 6s and the whoppingly boring 9 second version.
The over-the-top Channel 3 North East jingle remained, although was slightly quieter for no apparent reason. However its dramatic tones seemed rather out of place in a jingle that featured little of anything.
Indeed it only really looked right when the sport and news variations were used. Used for sport and news, these idents were re-edited in Newcastle whilst the original was created in Leeds.
The re-edited versions had video footage behind the outlined Tyne Tees logo. Both were used from March 1998, although they disappeared in March 1999, although a changed news version returned six months later (sadly we do not currently have the re-edited version.
The original news version was used at 5:58pm every weeknight for the introduction to North East Tonight. It also featured a voiceover proclaiming “You’re watching Tyne Tees Television across the North East and North Yorkshire.”
The sport version was similar but with mainly football scenes in the background - sadly this version is a little blurred.
The main idents were used until 3 September 2000, although from 8 November 1999 they were relegated to being used before regional programmes by the arrival of the second ITV generic look.
