Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd rather do without the shit torrent of a channel, thanks. Has anyone seen ITV2? US talkshows and a camera following haggard plastic cow Price around 24/7 with lingering closeups of her ghastly phizzog and equally repellant husband.

The one good thing I can say about the channel is that they've successfully fucked over that Avid Merrion prick with his shit gameshow being relegated there. Hopefully they can add a tombstone to Corden's career too.

Adam Crozier is an epic cunt. He's the man who gave us Sven and fucked over the FA, he's the man who is responsible for your post arriving at 4pm and there being no second delivery or Saturday collections.

Although in the case of ITV I couldn't give a shit considering it's just a putrid stream of rubbish aimed at the mentally subnormal. When was the last "must watch" programme on ITV? Probably the Bill Bryson series about 10 fucking years ago.

Only thing I can recall watching on ITV of any flavour recently is Entourage, and I don't think they're showing the new series. So yeah, bye ITV, you won't be missed....
Who seriously would pay a sub to watch some putrid game show with Vermin Kay?

I'd drill Jordan though?

This isn't a major surprise I would have thought but how long till we have the "Coronation Street" channel.

The last thing I watched on ITV was Dancing on Ice... because.. erm... the missus likes it. Yeah, that'll do.

The only thing I'm liable to watch is Harry Hill. The rest of it appears to be reality TV made by Simon and his bezzie slimy friends.

How could I forget Harry Hill? Oh.. I feel so stupid...

Anyway, upon further thinking about this.. I'm all for it.

If it means I won't have a chance of catching that lying prick Piers Morgan or that talentless hack Amanda Holden then it can only be a good thing.

That was good, yes.

I don't think I've personally even watched anything on ITV in my recent past. Just the ITV branding is enough to dissuade me from looking at the channel listings these days. Which is a shame, as I once explained to my girlfriend that ITV used to be the BBC with adverts, more or less, i.e. it wasn't so downmarket and they actually produced half-decent problems. My favouritest kids' shows in them old days were mostly on ITV, for example.

This news makes me ponder the ultimate fate of Channel 4 too. Like ITV it has (post Big Brother) fallen a little downmarket, not as much as ITV mind, and has its own advertisement-related revenue black hole...

Celebrity Juice is, of course, brilliant.

Is that the gameshow I mentioned hosted by dirty toilet paper eater Merrion prick?

Yup. But you don't watch it for him, obviously.

Next time I see you I'm going to blank you and you're going to be dead upset and sitch.

Yep, ITV used to be capable of churning out high quality stuff across all genres. Just look at the range of output from Thames for example:

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itvlondon/tha ... smenu.html

There's nothing like The World at War being produced by them now. ITV documentaries = haggard plastic semi-human sitting on the chodbin.

I don't watch it for free, but this is interesting.

The budget for the 26 episodes was approx £11.5 million in todays money and unheard of figure at the time and still very impressive today.

I can't see someone walking into any TV commissioners office these days and asking for that kind of money for 22 hours of documentary.

The day ITV is finally put out of its misery will be a day of much rejoicing. The only things I can think of on it that aren't utterly shit are Harry Hill and Doc Martin. I haven't watched Doc Martin for years anyway, so it could be shit by now, and Harry Hill could easily move elsewhere. Chances are that elsewhere wouldn't put tv burp on at such ridiculous times, either, so.

I completely forgot about the second post!

I like American Idol, but Cowell's leaving, so that might be the end of that one.

I thought ITV's long term business plan was suing apple over their use of iTV.

He's setting up a U.S Xfactor. That's why he's left.

Yeah, I like it.

Aye, but I don't like the X Factor format. I've got used to the presentation of Idol now.

I cant remember watching anything on ITV1 in past 10 years. I tried to remember some decent programme from their past and then googled it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_in_Action


Seems ITV died sometime around 1998. Not sure when they decided to 'expand' to ITV2, 3 and 4 - which sometimes I watch if there's a decent late night (old) film on. ITV1 - not for a very long time though.

I only really watch TV online through the various catchup services now, but it's rather telling that ITV's is the only one I don't even bother checking. Even Channels 4 & 5 have some decent content here and there.

The last thing I watched on ITV was, if I recall, the TT.

We had a TV at work where the only channel we could only watch with any clarity was ITV, thanks to shit reception, so it was Jeremy Kyle in the morning break and 60 minute makeover in the afternoon, it was hell, though This Morning wasn't too bad. At home, only if Harry Hill's on will I bother tuning in to ITV, that and Primeval.

Back in the day I'd watch CITV (long hived off to its own channel), The Bill when it was just half hour episodes and gameshows like Wheel of Fortune. They did put out some shit programming then, but they normally had enough good programmes to block out all the dross.

Cue Man Oh Man.

1996 was way after the decline started. The precise moment it all went wrong was the 1/1/93 when the likes of Thames stopped broadcasting and the entire ethos became about making profit, not making programmes. It's hard to underestimate how important the likes of Thames were to the network as a whole.

31 years ago tommorrow (the 10th), ITV went off air for 10 weeks due to a technicians strike.

This is all that ITV transmitted for 10 weeks, barring the weekly engineering announcements from the IBA.



Apart from the stalwarts down at Channel TV on Jersey who stayed on-air because the finances were so tight a strike would have caused the company to go bust. With no network programming they had to fill the schedules themselves including an hour long local news show each night.

Nowadays that's considered to be too highbrow for ITV.

I dunno. They're showing total recall. That's highbrow, right?

Shazbat! I remember that. They went on strike right in the middle of a series of Sapphire and Steel and iirc when the strike was over they didn't show the end of it. For that reason alone I would not mourn their demise.

Ironically, when they came back on-air they had to use a national ITV identity on all stations run from Thames in London, which kind of foreshadows the ITV 1 identity used today. The reason was not all the regional stations were ready and everything was a mess, so they ran a national ITV service for a few days.

The "ITV"on the clock in the clip is covering over the words "Thames" and the announcer is Peter Marshall (I just know this stuff, OK?)

This is straight after ITV came back on-air

Ever wanted to be an ITV continuity announcer? In the 80's? In the South?

And now on TVS, Coast To Coast with Fred Dinenage and random female co-presenter of the week.

http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/flash/tvs_clock.asp

Leonard Parkin! That's brought back some memories.

Some good stuff there - I still watch repeats of Minder and The Sweeney. Even though they're very dated, they're classics. And Rumpole was good too, even though the books were dire. I bought the omnibus and once I put it down I couldn't pick kit up again. The style was amateurish and so repetitive as to be positively irritating.

Never was a great fan of Widows. Or Van Der Valk. Barry Foster was rubbish.

Strange , I should remember it but dont.

And I got the Sapphire and Steel boxset recently , and some bits on there are still scary even now (despite the crap special effects)

What's the story about the BBC, during (I think) WW2? Didn't they go off-air showing a cartoon or something then come back on air again years later in exactly the right place?
Or am I making that up?

That's the story. Transdiffusion suggests they showed the cartoon in its entirety before going off air. They did show it again when TV resumed in '46.

http://www.transdiffusion.org/emc/baird/tvoff.php