ITV Yorkshire - Identity

Identity

Yorkshire Television's on screen identity has always revolved around the use of the station logo: the chevron. This yellow symbol was seen on nearly all Yorkshire television's station identification films, or idents for short. The first symbol used was a black and white chevron, formed by slit-scan techniques and accompanied by an orchestral version of the tune On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at, a famous tune in Yorkshire. This music was later to become the station's signature tune. This ident continued until Colour television arrived to the region in the 1970s.

The new colour ident featured the yellow chevron on a black background with the caption Yorkshire Television Colour Production, which would appear suddenly, along with a simplified version of On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at. This ident was modified in 1981, so that the caption Colour Production was changed to In Colour, and in 1982 the colour caption was removed altogether. This new version also featured a deeper tune than previous.

Supplementing the ident throughout this period were idents promoting the station's coverage, with the slogan Serving Six Million Viewers. One version, in 1983 featured a giant chevron logo, made up out of smaller chevrons, and another in 1986 featured the view zooming in from space, to the earth, to Britain and finally to the Yorkshire TV region, which then flipped over, becoming the chevron. This last version was computer animated, with 3D-style lettering and chevron.

In 1986, Yorkshire Television introduced a new ident, entitled Liquid Gold, featuring a pool of liquefied gold, with the chevron rising up from it, and rotating into the sky, where the station name joins it. This ident features a fully orchestrated version of the theme tune and reportedly cost £40,000 to make in 1986. This was occasionally supplemented by a large rotating chevron over a gradiented blue background, used over continuity.

In 1989, Yorkshire Television adopted the first ITV generic look, featuring the large ITV logo, which the company used until October 1994. The segment of the 'V' in the ITV logo denoting the region, featured the left segment of the chevron. The whole package was used by Yorkshire Television, and an adapted version, where the whole chevron appeared in the V segment before moving into centre screen, was used before regional programming.

Upon YTV dropping the generic look in 1994, a new ident was introduced, featuring a textured background with a strip across the centre of the screen containing images of the region itself, with the chevron placed in the centre of the strip. The most noticeable thing about his ident set was the smooth nature of the chevron's appearance, and also the fact that this was the only ident ever used by Yorkshire that did not feature the On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at theme music. Instead a smooth orchestral jingle was used, that mixed with the relaxed ident gave the station a relaxing feel. The background was later changed from a cream to a light blue, and variations on the theme for special occasions and yearly themes were also introduced.

However, the look was not to last. In 1996, Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television adopted a new branding package, based on the concept of Channel 3. The new look was fully implemented in the Tyne Tees region, where all on-screen branding was replaced by giant numeral '3', and the Tyne Tees brand became secondary, however the look was only partially implemented in the Yorkshire region. The entirety of Yorkshire's Channel 3 look included an ident where the chevron span against a light blue background with numeral '3's covering the background. Another ident featured the chevron with the '3' numeral embossed on the side, which the camera would then zoom into, before revealing a spinning numeral 3, which in turn had YTV chevron on the middle of the 3 and when zoomed into, the chevron re-appeared spinning against the background. The look also heralded the return of the On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at tune, which was now noticeably higher in pitch.

The Channel 3 look was dropped in 1998, following Granada's acquisition of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television, with the look returning to a spinning chevron against a misty blue background, light blue during the day and dark blue in the evenings.

In 1999, Yorkshire Television adopted the second generic look, based on the theme of hearts, which was used for the entirety of the branding period before network programming. However, for local programming, Yorkshire created their own ident featuring a background of spinning chevrons, with pictures of the region featuring inside a central box. In 2002, the brand was dropped in favour of a national ITV1 identity, in which local regional identities were dropped except before local programming, when the Yorkshire name appeared below the ITV1 logo only. These regional idents however were dropped by 2006.