ITV Wales & West - Identity

Identity

HTV's on screen branding began in 1968 with their launch ident. The design was that of two words 'Harlech' spinning in opposite ways and which eventually met up to form one word. This design would have been clearly seen to viewers of the service then, however viewers today would have encountered lots of black lines and a barely noticeable 'Harlech'. This is due to the fact that the ident was designed for 405-line television system used at the time, and due to the use of 625-line UHF system, the ident appears differently on sets that receive the 625-line transmission.

When colour came to the region, a new logo was designed. Due to criticism from viewers in the West region, concerning the bias towards Wales that Harlech presented, the new logo featured the letters HTV. The symbol created, named "The Aerial", featured the letters HTV in such a way that it looks like a television aerial. This was introduced in the early 1970s, and the logo remained with the station until 1993. The aerial would animate on through use of lines, accompanied by the same jingle as used before. The white logo on blue background was seen plain when both Wales and the West received the programme, but would otherwise have the region name included. For the west, this was 'West' at the top of the logo between the 'H; and 'V', whereas for Wales, the caption Cymru Wales was placed at the bottom of the logo, as a reference that Welsh programming was still shown on the channel.

Following the launch of S4C in 1982, all Welsh language programming was transferred to the new service, and the Wales ident was amended so that the caption 'Wales' was displayed at the top of the logo. These idents continued until 1987, when the idents were changed in favour of computer generated versions. This time, blocks flew out of a large suspended blue surface and landed to form the HTV aerial logo on a dark blue background.

HTV adopted the first ITV generic look in 1989, and it was their slanted 'H; that appeared in their regional section of the ITV logo. Despite the video sequence being the same, there were three variations of the ident, all featuring a different lower caption; HTV, HTV Wales and HTV West. In addition, HTV also made their own variation where the HTV logo remained on-screen the whole time. All these idents were dropped on 1 January 1993.

In their place, a new HTV logo was made, featuring an upright, but stylised HTV, with two triangles for the 'V' section. Originally this logo was seen as a translucent blue logo moving back onto a multi-coloured blue background accompanied by an ambient tune. This was later changed to a more upbeat tune, ending in a more noticeable crescendo. This ident package marked the end of specific HTV Wales and HTV West idents, as all of the idents that followed used the single HTV brand. As a result, fewer programme variations were made, and regional variations were dictated by the voiceover.

The ident itself was again altered in 1995, to feature small triangles which grew and combined to form the triangular V and the remainder of the HTV logo. The tune accompanying it was stronger than its predecessor, and the colours were warmer than previous, with a gold HTV and a changing blue, green background. In 1999, HTV brought in their last in-house look, featuring the camera panning over the HTV logo in dark blue against a bright yellow background and accompanied by 2 remixes to its predecessor (although the tune from the previous ident was used on some occasions).

However later that same year, HTV, as part of UNM, adopted the second ITV generic look based on the theme of 'Hearts'. However, when UNM was merged into Granada, the broadcasting arm of HTV was sold to Carlton to comply with competition laws. As a result, HTV part adopted Carlton's star branding. The resultant idents featured Carlton's 'Star' opening films, before the screen flashed white, drawing back to become the 'V' in the HTV logo against the spinning hearts background as used previously.

When Granada and Carlton introduced national ITV1 branding to all stations in England and Wales on 28 October 2002, the HTV channel identity ceased to be used for presentation. It was replaced by the on-screen name ITV1 Wales and ITV1 West of England. ITV1 Wales still uses a variation of the generic theme, however with the name Wales consistently present under the ITV1 logo. ITV1 West of England however has seen their regional identity less and less since 2002. Originally, prior to regional programming, an ident featuring the celebrity package was used, with an ITV1 logo placed above a small West of England caption to the left of the screen. In 2004, the regional idents changed to four coloured cubes are seen dotted around a regional scene, with an ITV1 logo and ITV1 for the West of England caption in the bottom right corner. This was replaced in October 2004 by a national ident, consisting of three small ITV cubes above a large '1' cube, with the caption West below. This was one of the last idents for ITV West, as regional idents were abandoned soon after, with the exception of Wales. The HTV brand was retained for local News programmes until Granada and Carlton merged on 2 February 2004 to create ITV plc. The Carlton name appeared on endboards from 2001 until 2004, when it was replaced by a generic ITV Wales or ITV West endboard. To this day, the company is still HTV, however used ITV1 branding on screen.