ITV Night Time (Northern) - 1988-2002
Overnight programming on ITV is much newer concept than the channel itself. It was phased in across various regions in the late 80s and originally aimed to show good programming for insomniacs and shift workers, but in reality the viewership is so small they've only ever been able to fill it with low quality and cheap imports and sell very little, if any, advertising space. Most of the regions, as it was still a regional decision at launch, also took one of two services provided by Granada or London to keep down costs. An idea which may not seem out of place with how the network is centralised nowadays, but which was quite unusual for the late 80s. It led to a system where the branding during the night would differ from the branding during the day, and was the first place a nationally branded ITV look surfaced. This system would last until daytime continuity was also centralised in London in October 2002 at which point the branding in use throughout both day and night remained consistent. The page below covers the Northern service, as seen on Tyne Tees.
Nighttime - 1989
Nighttime Next - 1989
Nighttime Advert - 1989
Nighttime (Promo) - 1989
Another short promotion for Granada's Night Time service. No expenses spared here - 15 seconds of movie footage is redubbed with a Night Time logo crudely overlaid. Normally trailers like this would have been used as short fillers during the overnight service itself, however here it had actually made it out into a primetime Saturday night junction on Granada. With them producing the overnight service, they were probably more inclined to trailer it during their daytime hours.
Nighttime (Sunset) - 1990
Nighttime (Sunrise) - 1990
Nighttime - 1991
Nighttime - 1991
Nighttime - 1991
Nighttime Promo - 1991
Played many times to fill space in the junctions and showing clips from much better shows than they usually tended to air comes this promo from the Night Time service in 1991 promoting them as the 'Right Time'. Continuity would regularly be thrown over the end of this promotion before jumping in to the next programme.
Nighttime Next - 1991
Nighttime (Menu) - 1991
The Hitman & Her - 1991
Produced by Granada Television and shown by most of the ITV overnight services from 1988 through to 1992, The Hitman & Her featured Pete Waterman and Michaela Strachan touring nightclubs of the UK to stick a camera in front of people there. In this edition from 1991 they return to Mr Smiths in Warrington, which had also been the location for the very first edition in 1988.
Nighttime Next - 1991
Nighttime Break - 1991
As it was no easy task finding someone to spend money advertising in the dead-of-night slots, many of the programme breaks didn't show adverts. Nowadays they tend to be filled either by PIFs or general ITV Promotions, but in days of past a slide with music would be played out. The idea was that Granada would provide the musical interlude along with cuedots, and then the regions could overlay their ads over the feed, similar to how they had done for Channel 4 during the 80s. Tyne Tees abandoned selling adspace for a period in the early nineties, letting the raw feed play out in most cases. A bit of an upbeat track for this one, just to make sure you're still all awake.
Nighttime Break - 1991
Nighttime Break - 1992
Nighttime Break - 1992
Nighttime Break - 1992
Nighttime Break Menu - 1992
From Thursday April 2nd 1992 (if you're interested), the same music continues over the next later break (Granada must have had a limited selection to hand that night). Only this time, the usual back soon slide has been replaced with a rundown of the night's programmes. Of course who decided scheduling this to play out after the break after The ITN Morning News (and thus the whole night of programmes) had just finished is best kept quiet. In true Bullseye style, "This is what you could have just watched..."
Nighttime (Coming Up) - 1992
Nighttime (Next) - 1992
Jobfinder - 1992
Night Shift - 1992
After Yorkshire took over in late 1992, Night Time disappeared from Tyne Tees screens, to be replaced by YTV's own dual region service 'Night Shift' - If nothing else, a slightly more original name, with a somewhat jollier ident than its predecessor. The Night Time service continued on Granada past this point.
Night Shift (Shorter) - 1993
A shorter version of the Night Shift ident from Yorkshire, this time with the ending 'Night Shift' logo missing and instead the name of the next programme shown. And it's in Stereo you know! The shared Night Shift service wasn't too last ultimately, with Yorkshire reverting to using the standard Tyne Tees or Yorkshire branding throughout the night in the mid nineties, a practice which continued through to 1998.
Jobfinder - 1997
ITV Nighttime - 1998
ITV Nighttime - 1998
ITV Nighttime - 2000
ITV1 Nighttime - 2001
When the ITV1 rebranding came about in August 2001, a massive change was also made to the nighttime look. Coincidentally at the time of this capture 'regional' ITV1 Granada stations had a generic ITV1 Xmas ident, whereas national ITV1 was still using the hearts; further proof that what Granada put out that year was not a network creation but a specific choice of them not to include region names as they were testing the water ahead of the full national rebrand. This was to be the last time daytime and nighttime branding would differ on the ITV plc regions. The advent of national continuity during the day from October 2002 saw the same idents being fed out from London all day.
