Three Counties Television (remastered)

Originally by **Amanda Davey**
Remastered by **Ben Gia Tran**
Compiled by **Theresa Hendren**

In 1968, at the time when TV broadcasting franchises were up for renewal, a breakaway broadcasting company was set up by two ex-employees of ATV and Rediffusion. Its aim: to give a proper identity to three of the counties usually overlooked as a general part of either the Midlands or London, but in reality weren't really either. The counties in question were Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex (counties east of Essex were already being served regionally by Anglia). Although operating on a shoestring budget, the trickiest part o beginning operation was deciding on the name - various permutations of the counties' initials were debated and dismissed, along with county landmarks; the eventual name was - perhaps rather unoriginally - 'Three Counties Television'. Three Counties won the right to broadcast, although the other counties were also still, ironically, partially served by another TV region, handing over to London Weekend with the London region at weekends. However, by 1970, Three Counties was the predominant company for, well, the three counties.

Three Counties Television launched in 1968 with their first ident which was a very simple animation with no music.

In November 1969, Colour arrived, leading to this madly new innovative design. Well, okay, it was just the old design in a rather garish amber-yellow, actually...

In 1974, boundary changes meant that parts of Essex and Hertfordshire were swallowed up in the new, larger Greater London. Therefore, the Three Counties logo became dated overnight. When in doubt... get the new map and use the outline only, which was considered more modern. This first effort was criticised for not making much use of colour...

...so lo and behold, the response of the Design department was to... make the text blue. Wow.

The 1983 ident. This seemingly unrelated "triangular" model was described as "a stylistic representation of the shape the counties formed". Many people thought it was just because it was the only thing they could make the new computer do. Note that by this time the word "Television" has been dropped.

By 1985, someone had obviously read the computer manual, and proceeded to create Three Counties' most popular and fondly-remembered set of idents. This ident would be shown in the mornings and in the startup sequence after TV-am...

...while this ident would be shown during the bulk of the day...

...this one would be shown in the early-mid evening...

...and (you guessed it) this one would be shown in the late evening - and through the night, when 24-hour service was introduced to the region a couple of years later. These idents were considered rather technically ground-breaking for the time.

The first wave of the ITV generic (groan) appeared in 1989; three Counties were happy enough with their version, so took up its use.

1993 saw the abolition of the generic and the introduction of Three Counties' least-liked set of idents. Criticised for looking 'bland and cluttered', they somehow managed to stay on-screen for six years with no real change, although it got to the stage that in 1997 they were occasionally alternated with the idents produced way back in 1985, albeit modernised. The white idents depicted short films of life in the region, and like Carlton's 'people' idents from 1993, rather a lot were produced. This ident shows children playing in the water by Shoebury Beach in Southend.

Argh - it's Attack of the Generics again! Many people thought that the 1989 generic had killed off the popular mid-80s idents, and although they weren't too bothered when the 1999 idents were taken off-screen in 2002, it signalled the end for Three Counties. Unsurprisingly, they were bought out by GMG in April 2000, and within two years and six months, with the death of regional continuity on 27th October 2002, Three Counties was no more, being replaced by ITV1 Counties entirely. So much for giving the counties their own identity... although the region did last for 34 reasonably popular years.