Branding
From the founding of the ITV Network in 1955, it was known nationally as Independent Television (later ITV) and locally by the regional branding of the local ITV franchise operator.
In 1989, the ITV Association set out a generic presentation package with a new "ITV" logo, which included idents, promotions and general on and off air design, and an edit of this package was designed for each franchise holder. The dual branded idents included a large "ITV" logo, in which the "V" contained part of the franchise's logo, and written below the logo in a grey capitalised font was the name of the regional broadcaster. However, only half of the regional broadcasters opted to use the package, which had completely failed by 1997.
In 1999, another second common presentation package (once again using dual-branding with the ITV name) was launched, under the theme, "TV From The Heart". Like the 1989 attempt, a version was created for every franchise holder, however it was only taken by nine of the fifteen ITV broadcasters, two of which resorted to other designs, being London Weekend Television, which actually used the look for a year but then adopted a more original look (claiming it "wasn't exciting enough"), and HTV which adopted Carlton's identity when it was purchased by the company in 2001. Carlton, owner of three ITV licences at the time, did not adopt the generic look and instead used another package designed by Lambie-Nairn, which again followed the "TV from the Heart" theme, however with more emphasis on the Carlton corporate identity.
By 2001, all eleven franchises of England and Wales were owned by either Granada plc or Carlton Communications, and a new common name, ITV1, was launched on 11 August 2001 to coincide with digital channel ITV2. The existing "Hearts" idents were simply re-edited.
However from 28 October 2002, in England, the Scottish/English Border and Isle of Man (where all the franchises are owned by ITV plc), the station dropped regional branding and identification before most programming and adopted a unified national branding of ITV1. In Wales, although the HTV name has been dropped, some regional identification remains in the form of ITV1 Wales. At this time all regional continuity announcers were replaced with a single team of six national continuity announcers. Since the re-brand of 2006, that team has been reduced to just four.
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