- Anglia Television
Infobox ITV franchisee
name = Anglia Television
based =Norwich
area =East of England
owner =ITV plc
airdate =27 October 1959
old
"Anglia logo from 1988-2002"
captionb =
closeddate = lost on-air identity on27 October 2002 (known as ITV Anglia before regional programming}
replaced =
replacedby =
website = [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia itvlocal.com/anglia]Anglia Television is the
ITV station for the East of England, which has been broadcasting since27 October 1959 . The station is based inNorwich , with regional news bureaux inIpswich ,Chelmsford ,Peterborough ,Cambridge ,Luton andNorthampton . "About Anglia ", first broadcast in 1960, was the station's flagshiptelevision news magazine for over thirty years. Programmes were transmitted across the Anglia region which comprisedNorfolk ,Suffolk ,Essex ,Cambridgeshire ,Northamptonshire ,Bedfordshire ,Hertfordshire ,Buckinghamshire ,Lincolnshire and south and eastYorkshire . FromJanuary 1 1974 , Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire and North Norfolk were transferred toYorkshire Television .In 2006 ITV Plc did a subsidiary swap, which involved renaming Anglia Television Ltd as ITV Broadcasting Limited and vice versa.
However due to ofcom licensing regulation, the new Anglia Television Limited could not take up its renewed status as Channel 3 licence holder, which means that the East Anglia franchise, has now effectively been transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited.Identity
Anglia's original ident was a short film of a rotating silver statue of a
knight on horseback. At the end, the camera zoomed in on thepennon atop the knight'slance , which showed the station's name. An arrangement, byMalcolm Sargent , ofHandel 's "Water Music" was played over the film. TheAnglia knight logo became so closely identified with the station that when, in 1999, the station produced a book to mark its fortieth anniversary, it was entitled "A Knight On The Box" (ISBN 0-906836-40-9). Before the ident, the channel's start-up music wasRalph Vaughan Williams ' "Sea Songs ", which was used from 1959 until the early 1980s.With the introduction of
colour television in the 1970s, the ident was remade with constant lighting, and the knight constantly rotating on a turntable. In 1988 the knight was replaced by theLambie-Nairn designed quasi-heraldic stylised 'A' made of triangles, which faded in and out on a fluttering flag during continuity announcements. This was used until 1999, when (along with most other ITV companies), Anglia took the Hearts idents (which featured the stylised "A", albeit in a square, rather than a flag), which were used until 2002.Its flagship news and current affairs programme was
About Anglia .In 2002, as with all companies now owned by
ITV plc , the station lost its separate identity, becoming branded as ITV Anglia.Ownership
Anglia was an independent company for much of its existence. In 1994, it was bought by
MAI (owners ofMeridian Broadcasting ), who merged with United Newspapers to formUnited News and Media . They were joined by HTV in 1996. In 2000, following United's aborted merger attempt with Carlton, Granada bought the TV assets of United (but sold the broadcasting arm of HTV). In 2004, Granada finally merged with Carlton to formITV plc , which ended Anglia's existence as a separate brand. During its period of UBM ownership, a 'youth' channel was launched to cable and satellite from Anglia's facilities,Rapture TV ; some productions for the ITV network were also shared with Rapture, which was retained by UBM after the sale to Granada, but later closed down and its assets sold.In 1993, the station took over the cartoon studio
Cosgrove Hall , when it was sold off by its original owners,Thames Television . Although the station no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally (the last major programme being "Trisha", before she defected to Five), the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand now runs a thriving international business supplying content forDiscovery Channel in the USA,Channel 4 and Five in the UK, and other broadcasters worldwide. Notable series include "Animal Precinct " and "Animal Cops " forAnimal Planet , and "Real Crime" forITV (credited as Granada Anglia). [http://www.commercialbreaks.co.uk Commercial Breaks] , the commercial production agency owned by ITV's sales division is also based in Norwich.In 2006, Anglia sold its other major studio complex (which included its newsroom and twin news studios) in Magdalen Street, Norwich to Norfolk County Council, who, with the help of the East of England Development Agency, have created EPIC - the East of England Production Innovation Centre [http://www.shapingthefuture.org.uk/images/uploads/PDFDownloads/epicNewsletterSummer2007.pdf] . Intended as an "incubator" for small creative and media enterprises, Studio E (formerly home to "Trisha") is now available for hire as an independent facility [http://www.epic-tv.org] . One of the first tenants of EPIC is Televirtual, a company formed out of
Broadsword Productions who made Anglia's legendary children's show "Knightmare " [http://www.televirtual.com] . A major education partner at EPIC in the shape of [http://www.nsad.ac.uk Norwich School of Art and Design] will be housing a new [http://www.nsad.ac.uk/courses/foundationfilmandvideo.php Foundation Degree in Film and Video] at the centre from September 2007. As a consequence of the sale, "Anglia News ", which moved to Magdalen Street in 1999, has moved back to a new state-of-the-art facility at Anglia House.Coverage areas
Anglia originally covered mainly
Norfolk ,Suffolk , the northern and more rural parts ofEssex andCambridgeshire before expanding to the less rural areas ofBedfordshire andNorthamptonshire with the opening of the Sandy Heath transmitter in 1965, covering an area which had previously been an awkward gap in ITV's coverage of the UK. Later in 1965, the Belmont transmitter opened, bringing Anglia's signals toLincolnshire and theEast Riding of Yorkshire , also being available to some viewers in cities such asNottingham ,Leicester andSheffield .The
Independent Broadcasting Authority decided that Anglia's coverage area was now too large for a "minor" company, andYorkshire Television 's was too small for a "major" company, so YTV was given the Belmont transmitter fromJanuary 1 ,1974 , even though it also covered the northern parts of Norfolk, which now found themselves watching television fromLeeds (subsequently, Anglia-only relay stations would be built, restoring the station to parts of north Norfolk). Also, with the transition from VHF to UHF signals, Anglia gained coverage of much of south Essex, includingSouthend , which had previously been considered part of theLondon region.The Anglia region is currently split into two sub-regions: East (Aldeburgh, Burnham, Creake, Felixstowe, Gorleston on Sea, Linnet Valley, Little Walsingham, Overstrand, Sudbury, Sudbury B, Tacolneston, Thetford, Wells next Sea, West Runton, Wivenhoe Park and Woodbridge transmitters) and West (Darlington Park, Kimpton, Kings Lynn, Luton, Madingley (Cambridge) and Sandy Heath transmitters).
Future
In September 2007, chief executive
Michael Grade announced proposals that would see Anglia broadcasting a single regional service rather than separate news services for the east and west of the region. [ [http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2167562,00.html Media Guardian: Unions slam ITV regional cuts] ] These are subject toOfcom consultation and are not expected to be implemented until 2009.Trivia
*Was parodied by Benny Hill as Angela Television instead of Anglia in the Women's Lib Television sketch.
Notable programmes
*
Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)
*Knightmare
*Sale of the Century (UK game show)
*Heirloom (TV series)
*Vanessa
*Trisha
*Survival
*BygonesReferences
External links
* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia/hods/?player=ANG_Hods_15&void=220011 Take a virtual tour of ITV Anglia] on ITV Local
* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia ITV Anglia] at itvlocal.com
* [http://www.itvlocal.com/anglia/allangles/?player=ANG_AllAngles_15&void=195073 ITV Local Anglia's entertainment show All Angles on Aldeburgh Festival June 2008]
* [http://www.angliafactual.com Anglia Factual]
* [http://www.commercialbreaks.co.uk Commercial Breaks] ITV's commercial production agency based at Anglia
* Some screen captures: [http://www.penelope.demon.co.uk/atw/atw-ang.html later years]
* [http://www.transdiffusion.org/ident/album/anglia/ Video of Anglia idents]
* [http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/info/anglia_knight.html The story of the knight logo]
* [http://www.itw.org.uk/Anglia/ A history of Anglia]
* [http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itveastofengland/index.html Anglia Television at TV Ark]
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