History of ITV television idents

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The ITV television network in the United Kingdom began as a group of regional stations, each with their own identities. Each station used its own idents to create an individual identity.

In 1989, a first attempt to establish a national ITV corporate identity was made, which saw regional brands combined with a new national ITV brand. The attempt had only limited success: some companies never adopted the ITV branding, while many others later diluted or abandoned the ITV component as time progressed. A second attempt in 1998 was more successful, but was still rejected or significantly modified by some companies.

In 2002, a major change of appearance occurred when all ITV regions in England adopted national continuity. Regional logos vanished and regional names were mentioned only before regional programmes. Effectively this left ITV1 in England looking like a national channel with slots for regional opt-outs – like BBC One – rather than a group of independent regional broadcasters sharing programmes. The unification was consolidated in 2004 when Granada plc acquired Carlton Communications to form ITV plc. By then, the two companies had acquired all the regional Channel 3 companies in England and Wales. ITV plc later acquired Channel Television in the Channel Islands and UTV in Northern Ireland.

This article looks at the history of presentation of the ITV brand on the main ITV network. The other digital channels owned by ITV plc also adopted logos very similar to the main ITV channel but with different colour schemes and background images; these are not covered by this article.