Introduced 8 November 1999, the 1999 ITV generic look had a heart shaped theme, to fit around the latest in a long line of ITV slogans - “TV from the heart.”
To go with the slogan, an assortment of heart shaped idents, all of which featured a similar jingle, and ended up with the ITV logo, ITV region name and some swirling hearts.
All the idents featured the same theme - a video clip which saw things happen that amazingly ended up with some sort of heart shape on screen, before cutting to the end board.
For example, one ident featured two people walking through a dark forest, shining their torches. Their torches crossed, and voila, two beams became a heart.
Then there was the shot of chefs being photographed. They pose in such a way that when viewed in the viewfinder, they’re upside-down and in a heart shape.
In a third, people are having fun at a fairground, and two big wheels end up in a sort of heart shape when viewed from a distance. You get the picture - however just ask this one question… How many fairgrounds have two ferris wheels?
There were more versions - others featured removals men (with a sofa), underpants on a washing line, sand, swimming, road lights, umbrellas, welders, lawn mowers, mist, windows, and floor varnishing. And then some…
As well as the film versions, a shorter ident where the ITV and regional logo was formed by lines coming from the left and from the right, was used by Granada Media companies. Indeed by 2001, this would be the only ident actually in use.
And as 1999 drew to an end, one more interesting thing occurred. After many years of waiting, Tyne Tees got a website. On Monday 13th December, the url www.g-wizz.net/tttv started being displayed on the stations ident.
This was later changed to www.tynetees-tv.co.uk when the ITC ruled that g-wizz.net URLs could not be used - g-wizz.net was a Granada Media-owned ISP, and thus a commercial service, thus promoting its URLs directly was not to be permitted, so www.tynetees-tv.co.uk was used instead.
2001 - It’s all ITV1 now…
On 11 August 2001 the ITV generic idents were updated to reflect the change from ITV to ITV1 branding. At the same time, Granada’s northern stations quietly reduced the times the film versions of the idents were used
In their place, the ident formed by lines coming in from either side of the screen.
A few months later in November, the idents were updated again. This time the addition was a rather distracting, animated itv.com logo. Around the same time the film versions of the idents were finally put to rest in the north of England.
Around the same time, the ‘option’ to cross promote ITV2 and the ITV Sport Channel was added by fading in and out an ITV2 logo whilst the announcer was talking. The result was a scrappy, messy looking ident, with far too much branding.
