Northern Television (Ashley Barrett)

**NORTHERN TELEVISION : 1955-2002**

**Graphics and text © Ashley Barrett**

**Northern Television - 1955**
1955 and ITV is launched. The North Weekday license is awarded to Northern Television, with Granada winning the Weekend license. A bold square logo with an arrow pointing north was adopted. The first ident was a very simple animation with no music.**Northern Television - 1968**
1968 and after winning the license for Yorkshire, losing the North West side of the original franchise to Granada, but now broadcasting 7 days a week. A new animation was introduced to celebrate, still no jingle though.**Northern Television - 1970**
1970 and the first colour ident for the station was introduced, a simple animation with no jingle. The logo remained white, but the "Northern Television" legend was now in yellow.**Northern Television - 1984**
1984 and with computer generated graphics available, Northern introduce this design. The logo now has a more 3D feel but still no jingle.**Northern Television - 1985**
1985 saw Northern's 30th anniversary, and to celebrate, a special ident, a revolving square with the Northern logo on one side and "30" on the other, all to a rather haunting tune. The station reverted back to the previous ident at the end of the year.**Northern Television - 1989**
Northern Television joined in the ITV branding with their own ident as they didn't like the version they had been given which restricted the logo to an abstract form in the triangle. The ident uses the generic ITV music and starts with the Northern logo (blue on black) which fades out and the ITV logo forms, this spins round and zooms until only the silver of the logo is in the screen and the Northern logo forms again on the screen.**Northern Television - 1993**
In 1993 it was decided the channel needed a new fresh look and so a new ident was created abandoning the ITV branding. New music was composed for this ident which sees the letters of 'Northern' appear on screen 1 at a time in time to the music before the logo forms on the screen.**Northern Television - 1994**
In 1994 Northern took over Carlton Television, the contractor for London weekdays, as part of its expansion: buying Tyne-Tees, Central, Westcountry, Meridian, Anglia, and HTV as well in the time period from 1993-1998. While the other regional names were kept, it was felt that the Carlton brand was not suitable and so Northern decided to rebrand the channel Capital TV. This took place in two steps so as to make the transition as smooth as possible. First it was renamed Carlton Capital with this ident based on the Northern Television version.**Northern Television - 1994**
The next step saw the removal of the carlton brand with this slightly amended version of the ident.**Northern Television - 1995**
To celebrate Northern's 40th anniversary in 1995 a special version of the ident was produced based on the current ident but with '40' appearing instead of the letters and with a special piece of music to accompany it.**Northern Television - 1999**
In 1999 Northern joined the rest of ITV with a new branding strategy, the heart. Although the ident does not actually carry the ITV branding, just the heart. The ident also used the music from the generic ident it had been given. Again Northern preferred to produce it's own version. this was also Northern's first widescreen ident.**Northern Television - 2001**
In 2001 Northern decided it to add the ITV1 branding after the introduction of ITV2 and at the same time started to move away from, but still keeping the heart branding. It edited it's current ident by changing the ending to rotating Northern logos, and adding the ITV1 logo and a new piece of music.**Northern Television - 2002**
In 2002 Northern joined in with the ITV generic look, again in their own way. In addition to the four squares, a fifth square in yellow was added where the Northern logo would form and the word 'NORTHERN' underneath the formed logo. They decided not to take the celebrity ident but opted for a collection of animated idents, one of which was this one, named simply 'dark'. In 2004, Northern merged with Granada to form ITV plc.
**LAST UPDATE: 4th February 2003**