ITV 2003
celebrity idents - the new batch

Created Fr 19-May-06
Revised Th 6-Dec-07

In September 2003, ITV replaced its celebrity idents with a new batch. Chris Tarrant and Ant & Dec were among those invited back to represent the channel. They were joined by newcomers such as Melanie Sykes and Cat Deeley.

As well as new idents, ITV also tweaked all of the other elements of its on screen presentation and added customised idents for CITV.

The screenshots shown contain graphics that are copyright of the ITV company portrayed and/or the ITV Network.

ITV1 Refreshes Its Look


ITV1 changed its on-air branding on Monday, September 1st, 2003, less than a year after its last revamp hit the airwaves, coinciding with the new autumn programme schedule. This time around, the changes were far less dramatic. The existing identity was merely tweaked, or as the official press release would have it, "refreshed". Over 60 new versions of the idents were shot, on three new sets. Jim Hytner, Marketing and Commercial Director, ITV, said in the press release: We're delighted with how the new on-air look has been received - all the feedback we've had shows that viewers feel the channel has a more modern, fresh feel. This new work builds on the strengths of the original package and keeps our portfolio of idents up to date with ITV1's current favourite faces. Cilla Black, it transpired, no longer had one of ITV1's favourite faces. At first it appeared that Davina McCall had also been dropped, but she was soon back on the idents to promote her new show, Love on a Saturday Night. With the new look, the ITV tiles theme would now be used more extensively, tieing in all aspects of the station's visuals.		Martin Bashir, Tonight with Trevor MacDonald
		Cat Deeley, The Royal Variety Performance
	Male Stars of The Bill	Pete Waterman, Neil Fox, Nikki Chapman, Pop Idol

Regional Variations

Here are some examples of the refreshed regional versions of the idents, allowed only before regional programmes.

Katie Derham, ITV News Below is the ident Anglia used before its regional news bulletins.	Rhona Cameron, Russian Roulette
Jim Rosenthal, F1 Grand Prix Carlton Central and Carlton West Country continued to share the same regional idents.	Chris Tarrant, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire There was no change at Channel Television in September 2003. Below, is Channel's regional news ident.
Philip Schofield, This Morning	Chris Tarrant, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
Mark Durden-Smith, Junior Eurovision	Wendy Craig, The Royal
Jim Rosenthal, F1 Grand Prix Carlton's West Country region used the same idents as Carlton Central.	Julie Graham, Between The Sheets

Only three months after the regional idents above were introduced, Carlton ditched the celebrities and introduced landscapes from each region, strewn with coloured blocks, to keep with the ITV theme.

Birmingham Town Hall with Selfridges in the background In December 2003 the Carlton logo was removed from regional idents. Thus viewers in the Midlands and the Westcountry would again have separate identities. Carlton's long-winded region name was kept though, hence the caption "ITV1 for Central England".	Clifton Suspension Bridge "West of England" had appeared on regional idents together with the ITV1 logo since October 2002, so in one sense there was no huge change here. But it could be argued that this was an even bigger departure from the corporate look than when Carlton's own hearts-themed branding appeared in 1999.
After introducing production captions referring to the "West Country" in 2002, we were now back to using "Westcountry" again on the idents.	The ITV1 Wales logo already appeared on the idents before all ITV1 programmes in Wales, but now viewers had new landscape idents for their own programmes.

Two months after the Carlton logo disappeared from the beginning of regional programmes, it vanished from the end of them too, when all of the Carlton regional production captions were replaced. The new design, featuring the ITV logo, was also adopted by the Granada-owned companies, who would now have distinct captions for their regional output for the first time.

These captions began to appear on Monday, February 2nd, 2004, the day that the Granada and Carlton group companies finally merged to form ITV plc.

A generic caption was also produced for programmes shown in the regional slots across more than one franchise area. This was used, for example, for the motoring magazine Pulling Power.

As well as common production captions, a common look was imposed on regional news programmes. A new set of opening titles were made for each region as well as the for the ITV national news bulletins. This move meant the end of the HTV News brand.

Alternative Idents

As before, there were idents that didn't feature any celebrities, which were used before news and current affairs programmes. The main ident was an extended version of the new break bumper, featuring a moving background of transparent blue tiles, lit from behind. There was also a version with yellow tiles for use in the daytime.


In Scotland, the SMG companies continued to use their own celebrity idents as well as an ident featuring clouds from 2002. But Scottish and Grampian did adopt a version of the 2003 alternative/news ident.

Break Bumpers

		The 2003 refresh brought new break bumpers. The background now featured blue transparent tiles.
	The break flash (not seen in all regions) was also tweaked.
		These are the break bumpers introduced by Scottish and Grampian in November 2003.
		Another change for 2003 is the introduction of a break bumper (and idents) for the children's strand, CITV.

	CITV also has a break flash.

Rugby World Cup 2003

The Rugby World Cup tournament kicked off in October 2003. ITV promoted its coverage with idents and trailers, some of which featured The Web Ellis Cup. Others featured the England captain, Martin Johnson. (See one of these below.) A peak audience of 14.5 million watched England beat hosts Australia in the final.

Real Media 8 format. (14s, 300k)

Brits 2004

In February 2004, ITV1 once again broadcast the BRIT awards. The event was promoted with trails and idents that featured pop star lookalikes.

Who Did It

The celebrity idents were again filmed by ITV's Network Promotions Unit. This time there were two locations: the Westway Studios in West London and Granada's studios in Manchester. They were shot over the course of three weeks on Super 16 film. They were directed by Chaka Sobhani and produced by Paul Braithwaite. The director of photography was Tim Green and the sets were designed by Richard Hornsey. The film was telecined on Spirit at One Post Production by George Kyriacou.

Bruce Dunlop & Associates developed and refreshed their work on the ITV1 visual identity, being responsible for the entire on-air environment. Senior Designer, Matt Piper, created the new look, which included break bumpers and the layout of ITV1's trailers.

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