ARCHIVE: The TV Room
This package was produced by Lambie-Nairn.
The idents featured a prominent Carlton logo. The logo would animate and/or interact with other objects in various ways.
The first ident to air was Morning, which went out at 9.25am on Monday 25th November 1996 for the handover from GMTV.
The previous pres package lasted only a year. So why the change?
Well, the update was brought about partly by a desire to reflect the variety of programming on offer from Carlton but also by a dislike for the package introduced in September 1995.
The previous in-house job featured the Carlton logo on top of a range of coloured, animated backgrounds. It was seen as boring and uninteresting by the Presentation team, apparently.
Around forty idents were produced during the 1996 – 1999 era (not including the duration variations of each ident). They can be grouped under four headings: Generic; Genre; Programme; Christmas.
The ident durations were (in seconds) 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 40. By “duration” here we mean the point at which the main animation and soundtrack ended.
For the first time, a three-and-a-half minute ‘network breakdown’ ident was produced – Broadcasting – but it was never used on air, apparently.
The Broadcasting ident was also the only ident produced in 30 and 40 second versions.
The three-second version of London/Carlton was occasionally used as a break bumper. But other than that, there was no break bumper used during this period.
Programme-specific idents were a new thing for Carlton. The first batch of idents included animations based on several of their key prime-time shows.
They were never voiced over as a rule and died out fairly quickly as the programmes ended. It possibly proved too costly to get a special ident made each time a new show started.
The last programme-specific ident made was for Videotech.
Some programme-specific idents were hardly used at all: Home and Away and Emmerdale sequences were both deemed “too obscure”. The latter never made it on air.
The upside down Carlton logo in the Home and Away ident supposedly didn’t go down too well with the bosses!
Two new idents were produced in late-1998:
- a new version of the Carlton/ITV generic ident, to reflect ITV’s new corporate logo;
- and a new set of Locations idents, which featured the ‘O’ of ‘CARLTON’ as the centre of a radar screen, with the radar tell-tale moving around the screen, ‘picking up’ the names of towns and cities within the franchise area.
- This was used for regional programmes and replaced the original set of Locations idents which were withdrawn fairly quickly after viewers reported suffering epileptic fits.
The most frequently used idents within the package were probably Broadcasting – which was used for all news programmes – and London/Carlton – used for most of the local news output.
Christmas idents were also produced and followed the same format as the main set, with playful use of the ‘CARLTON’ lettering, albeit with a festive theme.
The idents
At-a-glance guide.
| Ident | Group | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Hours | Generic | General use. ‘If in doubt, use 24 Hours‘. The announcers liked this one because they had virtually the whole ident to talk over, as the Carlton ‘four-note stab’ was right at the beginning. |
| Bauble | Christmas | A hanging bauble replaces the ‘O’ in the ‘CARLTON’ logo, with light reflecting off the bauble on to the background as the bauble rotates. |
| The Big Story | Programme-specific | |
| Broadcasting | Generic | Mostly used for the national news. Only ident produced in 30 and 40 second versions. Also produced in a 3.5 minute version for use during breakdowns (although this apparently never happened). |
| Candles | Christmas | Candle flames pop up one-by-one across the screen, as well as above the ‘L’ and ‘N’ of the ‘CARLTON’ logo. |
| Carlton Country | Programme-specific | |
| Carlton/ITV | Generic | Used for networked programming, drama premieres, big movies. This ident was the only one in use on the day Princess Diana died and for the following week. Also common where the programme needed a warning about content. |
| Carlton/ITV 2 | Generic | Introduced in late-1998 to reflect the new ITV corporate identity. The animation was practically identical with the ‘T’ morphing into the ‘t’ of ITV. The soundtrack remained unchanged. |
| Christmas Lights | Christmas | Coloured Christmas lights flash in the background. |
| Clockwork | Genre | Children’s programming. |
| Coronation Street | Programme-specific | |
| Custard Pie | Genre | Comedy. |
| Dangling Letters | Christmas | Each of the letters of the ‘CARLTON’ logo hangs on the end of a string. The gold letters move in a light breeze. |
| Daytime | Generic | General use during daytime hours. |
| Drama on Carlton | Genre | Drama. |
| Emmerdale | Programme-specific | Never used on air. Deemed too obscure. |
| Evening | Generic | General use during early evening. |
| Fading Up | Generic | Local news, drama, documentaries. |
| Football | Genre | Sport programming. |
| Growing Letters | Generic | Drama. |
| Home and Away | Programme-specific | Withdrawn early 1997. |
| Locations | Generic | Withdrawn after reportedly causing epileptic fits. |
| Locations 2 | Generic | Introduced late-1998. Used for local programming. |
| London/Carlton | Generic | Used for local news. |
| London Bridge | Generic | We zoom in on a London Transport map, and specifically a circle marking London Bridge. The circle is replaced by the ‘O’ of the ‘CARLTON’ logo, as the full Carlton logo appears and the map imagery is faded out. |
| Materialising | Generic | General use. |
| Mistletoe | Christmas | Mistletoe is seen hanging above the position of the ‘O’ in the ‘CARLTON’ logo, with the absent ‘O’ eventually replaced by lipstick marks post-kiss. |
| Morning | Generic | Used for handover from GMTV. First of the idents in the 1996 – 1999 package to be broadcast. |
| Peak Practice | Programme-specific | |
| Pudding | Christmas | The ‘O’ of ‘CARLTON’ is a Christmas pudding which is lit and it starts snowing – the snow settling on the Carlton lettering. |
| Rudolph | Christmas | Rudolph’s head and antlers are shown, with his big red nose replacing the ‘O’ in the ‘CARLTON’ logo. His antlers and eyes are neon lighting, which alternates between two positions. |
| Rudolph and Holly | Christmas | Rudolph’s head and antlers are shown, with his big red nose replacing the ‘O’ in the ‘CARLTON’ logo. Rudolph’s head disappears with his nose now becoming the red berry in a sprig of holly, Two light-based holly leaves appear underneath the red berry. Rudolph’s head and the holly leaves are neon lighting, which then alternates between Rudolph and the holly leaves. |
| Searchlight | Genre | For movies. Black and white version also existed: used for The Shining. |
| Snowman | Christmas | The ‘O’ of ‘CARLTON’ is a snowman and bobs from left to right. |
| Snowshaker | Christmas | |
| Soldier Soldier | Programme-specific | |
| The Bill | Programme-specific | |
| Tree | Christmas | The ‘A’ is a Christmas tree which gets switched on and lights up the background. |
| Videotech | Programme-specific | Last of the programme-specific idents produced and the soundtrack didn’t feature the familiar four-note stab. |
| Word Game | Genre | Used for game shows. |
Gallery of standard idents
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Carlton idents. COPYRIGHT: ITV plc.
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