Через 30 лет после редизайна бренд ITV North East вернул логотип Tyne Tees Television

The short-lived rebrand had a tough act to follow with viewers in the region… It’s 30 years ago today that bosses in Leeds unleashed their vision for the ITV north east region – Channel 3. It was farewell to Tyne Tees Television and hello to a whole new look, style and host of programmes for a new era of local television. It was certainly an unusual idea and one that hadn’t been done by any other ITV region prior – all other major name changes to ITV regions had been forced through the loss of a franchise. Tyne Tees had survived all these franchise rounds, name intact, until 1996. Initially Yorkshire Television – owners of Tyne Tees – were to also rebrand the parent region as Channel 3 Yorkshire but opted not to late into the plans. Instead, it was TTTV on air since 1959, launching a full nine years before YTV, that was sacrificed in the experiment of a big gold 3. It wasn’t the first time Leeds executives had meddled with the Newcastle based sister station. In 1992 they ditched the famous TTTV logo, introduced in 1970, for a more ‘trendy’ version. This change also saw news show Northern Life axed after sixteen years. Visually it certainly wasn’t aiming for a younger audience, with a style that would suit Wetherspoons branding, a jingle from a production library CD and a legal issue with the television regulator that saw ‘Tyne Tees Television’ as the licence company have to remain seen (and often heard) somewhere on-screen. The result was ‘You’re watching Tyne Tees Television broadcasting on Channel 3 North East…’ and several variations. There were glossy trailers all focused around ‘3’ and shots of the north east and North Yorkshire, which looked far better than the main identity, and key names from the TTTV days remained on air bringing a touch of familiarity – Kathy Secker, Andrew Friend, Pam Royle, Ian Payne and Dawn Thewlis to name a few. Sadly, some stalwarts were never to be seen again including Bill Steel and Paul Frost. Programmes launched in the new era started with Channel 3 North East’s biggest success – North East Tonight with Mike Neville. Having lured Mike back to ITV from the BBC – where he’d spent 32 years as host of Look North – the new evening news show was an hour-long mix of news and magazine features. Tyne Tees News had been pulling in around 290,000 viewers prior to the change, with North East Tonight drawing around 400,000. The production also won several regional and national awards including from the Royal Television Society – ‘Best Regional News Programme’ in its first year on air and in 1998 international gong ‘World Service Medal’ – New York Film and Television Awards. The success of the news output saw a late evening half-hour documentary-style spin-off, North East Tonight Extra, a weekly long form report format, on one topic, introduced by Mike Neville. Magnetic North was the replacement for Northern Eye as the regional current affairs programme and North East on Sunday took the old Tyne Tees Weekend slot. Later the magazine format moved from Sundays to a weekday afternoon daily offering as North East Today – with an edition for the north and south of the Channel 3 area. The draw of Mike Neville also saw the launch of a chat show The Mike Neville Show which ran for several series with guests all having links to the local area. Nick Owen – of TV-am fame – was hired to oversee The Football Show a weekly late evening debate sport format which also featured Terry Christian and guests. Less successful was Channel 3 North East’s attempt at its first “soap opera” which the local newspaper declared would ‘take on EastEnders‘. It had bigwigs from EastEnders and Emmerdale behind the scenes, but unsurprisingly Quayside failed to lure viewers over from Walford. The reliance on limited location filming – with no backlot – and even more limited studio space with little budget for lots of sets at the City Road studios saw Quayside appear rather ‘cheap’ and ‘low quality’. Airing weekly from January to May 1997 – directly up against the BBC One serial on Channel 3 and YTV – only 17 episodes were made. It did get an afternoon repeat in 1998 but since then has been lost to time. When Granada Television bought-out Yorkshire-Tyne Tees in late 1997 one of the first decisions taken was to drop the Channel 3 North East branding, with Tyne Tees Television and its TTTV logo back on screen the following March. It would of course ultimately be itself a short-lived reprieve with ITV1 replacing regional names in January 2003. ITV Tyne Tees lives on as the regional news brand currently.