Arctic Television (remastered)

Originally by **Qasim Masoum**
Remastered by **Ben Gia Tran**
Compiled by **Theresa Hendren**

A bit of a history lesson first. In this parallel universe, the British Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies, and Commonwealth Realms (where Britain owns Greenland) are also to be served by the BBC and IBA just like in Mainland Britain, however for one reason or another, only the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Arctic region (Greenland and North Canada), British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, and Australia are given the stations. The Arctic franchise round was won by Arctic Television Ltd against only 1 competitor, the largely Canadian backed ACB (Arctic Circle Broadcasting). The company was partially backed by Magnet Communications, who also helped run Antarctica Television and Antarctica Isles Television on the other side of the world, and as you will see later on, there would be some similarities in terms of presentation.

The station launched on 11th November 1967, just over a year after its sister station in the Antarctic. The first ident, as seen here, would remain in use for the first 20 years of the station's life.

Due to the stations remote location, installing a colour 625 line UHF transmitter network only a few years into the stations existence was never going to be a technically feasible or cost effective procedure. Arctic Television spent most of the 70's broadcasting in monochrome, until they were finally able to catch up with the UK in July 1977. The original ident was retained, with the word "Colour" being added to the ident. Most importantly, the ident was now in yellow and blue, taking note from the BBC (although the fact that the logo is now yellow takes the stylized A-Iceberg thingy out of context).

Arctic were somewhat more richer in 1986 than they were in the 70's, and to coincide with the launch of the refurbished transmission area of their studios (which weren't even that big in itself), Arctic brought in this simple 3D computer animation in October 1986 which would be seen in various junctions to compliment the old 70's presentation devices. The ident was adapted from their new title sequence for the national news magazine Magnet.

Arctic Television finally got themselves into the world of CGI presentation on September 15th 1987 which saw a complete overall of their graphics, the centerpiece being this ident, the first new full time Arctic ident since 1967. This was also complimented by a new computerized clock, and slide design generated by a Quantel Paintbox system (how Arctic were able to afford all this, especially in the mid 80's is anyones guess).

This variation of the main ident was used for the Arctic Overnight schedule, which was introduced in November 1988, the last of the ITV regions to broadcast a 24 hour schedule. Their overnight programming consisted mostly of content from Thames and LWT's night time schedule, most notably Night Network on weekends. Most of the second part of the weekday schedule was filled by a simulcast of the Canadian 'Jukebox Channel', which usually rebroadcast TBS's Night Tracks, until the ITN Morning News at 05:00. This service was replaced by Thames and LWT's 'ITV Night Time' service in May 1991, which in turn was replaced by Granada's 'Night Time' in January 1993.

Despite introducing their new 3D objects in space graphics in 1987, Arctic took on the 1989 generic look rather keenly across most of their presentation. The 1987 ident and breakbumper was retained however, mostly during regional programming, but also occasionally during peak time.

Arctic brought in this secondary ident alongside the 1989 generic look in September 1992. This would indeed be the last evolution of their 1987 branding.

Arctic completely overhauled their presentation on October 9th 1993 by ditching the generic look and the ident they had been using since 1987. The "Lighthouse" ident replaced Arctic's yellow colour with silver (white in print) and introduced a different typeface, to bring it more in line with its sister station Antarctica. This version of the ident was used before local programmes.

This version of the ident, utilizing the ITV logo, was used before programmes broadcast across the ITV network.

Arctic's graphics were redecorated on April 11th 1998, with an ident that could be described as slightly more friendlier in terms of the new colour scheme. It also saw the introduction of a new typeface with the logo, which the channel continued to use until the Celebrity era. It would only be a year and a half later when it was replaced by the 1999 ITV hearts look, although the ident would continue to be used solely before regional programming until 2002.

The short lived ITV 1989 logo version of the network ident. It would be swapped for the new blue lowercase ITV logo on 5th October 1998.

Version 2 of the network ident, using the new ITV logo.

Arctic took on the 1999 generic look like most of the ITV stations in November 1999. At this point, Magnet Communications, parent company of Arctic, Antarctica Isles, and Antarctica, had been acquired by Granada. When the network was renamed ITV1, Arctic kept hold of the ITV name on the idents until they were dropped in October 2002, most likely because a digital cable service wouldn't be introduced until June 2002, thus making ITV2 unreceivable.