Antarctica Television (remastered)

Originally by **Darryl Antoniw**
Remastered by **Ben Gia Tran**
Compiled by **Theresa Hendren**

Antarctica Television, the ITV contractor serving the British Antarctic Territory launched on 2 November 1966. Their first ident was in black and white, naturally. This ident would be used until colour arrived in 1977.

This ident was the colourised version of the previous monochrome ident, and was introduced when Antarctica TV started colour transmissions on 7 March 1977.

From September 1986 to September 1987, Antarctica would sometimes use this new computerised ident. In comparison with this, the original Antarctica colour ident was looking very dated by then. This ident was a predecessor of the computerised Antarctica ident that was introduced in September 1987, and followed a simliar animation technique.

Another relief ident, used from June 1987 until September 1987.

Antarctica Television launched a brand new all-computerised look on 7th September 1987, to coincide with the day that ITV relaunched its morning schedule and moved ITV Schools programmes to Channel 4. (Also the day Television South also launched a brand new look.) And this was its main ident. In 1989 Antarctica adopted the ITV Generic look, but despite that, this ident would continue to be used sporadically.

From the later months of 1987 and throughout 1988, the various ITV companies started to broadcast 24 hours a day. From then onwards, ITV would broadcast from 09:25 to the beginning of the breakfast franchisee's (TV-am / GMTV) daily transmissions at 06:00.

Antarctica was the last ITV company to go 24/7, and it did so on 2 November 1988 (on the day of its 22nd birthday). Up to then Antarctica had resisted going 24/7, since it felt overwhelmed at the idea to fill so many extra hours considering its peculiar situation and its economic status, and argued that it was pointless to them to broadcast around the clock since they would have practically no overnight viewers, and that the subject matter of most ITV overnight fare was irrelevant to its viewers. But the IBA told Antarctica that it was not fair to see all the other ITV regions broadcasting 24/7 and Antarctica being given the exception just for the sake of it.

This was the variant of the 1987-89 ident used during the small hours: from 23:30 to 6:00 (start of TV-am). A prototype version was also used back in 1987.

It was accompanied by a special overnight presentation package, using the same graded colours in the background of the ident (in contrast to the main gradiently-coloured background used at all other times).

In January 1988, Antarctica began using a second variant of the 1987-89 ident, used occasionally during the daytime. The original version was always used during primetime. However, by the middle of the year it fallen out of favour, and from then onwards the main ident was again always used all day.

Christmas 1987 and 1988 saw a special festive edition of the above seen Antarctica ident, as seen here.

Antarctica, with the rest of ITV franchises, went all corporate in 1989, using the English M. Pockett corporate style. This was used until October 1993.

Even though Antarctica adopted the 1989 ITV Generic look and used it until October 1993, the main versions (daytime/primetime and overnight) of the 1987 Antarctica ident would continue to be used sporadically. And a new, more polished version of the 1987 Antarctica ident would be revealed in September 1991, and would be used alongside the 1989 Generic look.

In October 1993, Antarctica finally did away with the 1989 ITV look, and presented a new, haunting look, which was to last until early 1997. There were two variants: this one here was the regional variant, used before regional programmes and other programmes that were not networked.

This is the variant of the 1993-97 Antarctica ident with the ITV logo, which was used before programmes networked across the whole of ITV.

On Monday 10th March 1997, Antarctica launched a brand new look - much more polished than the previous one. Suffice to say, it was to be used until November 1999, when Antarctica adopted the ITV 1999 Generic look. This is the regional variant, used before regional programmes and programmes that were not shown across the network. Indeed, by 1997 the amount of regional variations were in clear decline.

This is the variant of the 1997-99 Antarctica logo with the ITV logo, which was used before programmes that were networked across the whole of the ITV regions.

The third variant of the 1997-99 Antarctica ident with the new 1998 ITV logo first appeared in September 1998, replacing the old 1989 ITV logo.

Antarctica adopted the ITV Hearts look in September 1999. At this point, Magnet Communications, parent company of Arctic, Antarctica Isles, and Antarctica, had been acquired by Granada. Antarctica didn't recieve ITV2 until 28 October 2002 and didn't use the full ITV1 branding.