Antarctica Isles Television (remastered)

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

In 1966, Antarctica Television, an ITV contractor for the British Antarctic Territory was born.

However, an ITV contractor needed to be set up in the islands surrounding Antarctica (eg: South Orkney, South Shetland, South Georgia) and so, in 1968, Antarctica Isles was born. This was their first ever ident.

When colour arrived in 1977 (on the same day as its "parent" region - 7th March 1977), the ident would be tweaked accordingly. This ident was used for the next 10 years.

In 1986, alongside the original mechanical ident was looking very dated and requests from viewers asking the station to use something more modern, Antarctica Isles sometimes used this computerized ident alongside the original ident. It was used till the big relaunch in September 1987.

Antarctica Isles launched their most famous ident on 7th September 1987 to coincide with the day that ITV relaunched its morning schedule and moved its ITV Schools programmes to Channel 4 (also the day that TVS relaunched). This computerized ident replaced the old, now dated mechanical ident that was used from the stations launch. It was used regularly until 1989 when a 21 years ident was used for 3 weeks. That was soon replaced by the 1989 generic look. However, even during the 1989 generic era, this was still used sometimes as a relief ident. This one however was replaced by an updated 90's style of this ident in 1992, used as a relief ident.

ITV stations from 1986 started introducing overnight viewing from the time they used to close down to the startup of TV-AM. Antarctica isles were the second last to broadcast overnight (last being its parent region, Antarctica) but they would only broadcast for half the night, e.g: 11:50pm to 4:00am. At about 4:00am, they would hand over to one of the sattelite or cable stations in the Americas, Africa, Australia or New Zealand (a similar style used by Antarctica). This kind of scenario lasted until late 1989 when Antarctica Isles used the Night Time feed from Granada in Manchester, and then the LNN feed (London News Network) in 1995 to 2002. From 2002 onwards, they used their own continuity for overnight.

Like some of the other ITV regions, before the conversion to dual branding, Antarctica Isles celebrated their 21st birthday in 1989. To mark this, a special 21st birthday ident was made. This was later replaced by the 1989 generic look.

A new unified look came to ITV (apart from TVS, TSW, Granada, CTV, Anglia and Ulster) and was used by Antarctica Isles. This was their version. They used it for quite a long time, from 1989 to 1994, while some other regions only used it briefly. It is also worth mentioning that they still used the 1987 ident as a relief ident.

From 1992 to 1994, Antarctica Isles sometimes used this relief ident alongside the 1989 generic ident. This was an updated version of the 1987 ident. This was used until 1994, when the 1989 generic ident was dropped and a completely new look was introduced.

In 1994, Antarctica Isles did away with the 1989 generic look and the 1992 relief ident to introduce this all new, rather spooky ident. This ident did well with the viewers, using a style of many TV idents used at the time of other stations. It lasted until late 1997.

Antarctica Isles introduced a new more active ident in 1997 to replace the spooky ident that was used from 1994. This first version was used from 1997 to 1998 and featured the 1989 logo.

With the new ITV logo in September 1998, Antarctica Isles updated their ident to use the new ITV logo. This ident lasted until November 1999 when new dual branded ITV heart idents were used in nearly all the regions.

Antarctica Isles adopted its own version of the ITV heart idents in November 1999. At this point, Magnet Communications, parent company of Arctic, Antarctica Isles, and Antarctica, had been acquired by Granada. The islands of Antarctica also didn't get ITV2 until 28 October 2002 and Antarctica Isles never used the full ITV1 branding.