Last Updated: April 08, 2018
One of the most controversial television companies entered ITV on New Year's Day 1993, displacing Thames Television. The company itself does have impeccable business sense. Carlton needed to be able to establish itself quickly and cost effectively in order to be a major player in the television market. Carlton's best move was to use other independent television companies to produce their programmes (Celador, Watchmaker and others), thus saving money for the company, and giving more to the ITC.
Nowadays the company is mostly critisised for its major takeovers, and for its "tabloid" style of programming. However, this cannot disguise the fact that Carlton are the major player in ITV and that in 7 years it has established itself into people's memories quicker than what ATV did.
The first Carlton ident shows a unique style to television presentation ... the use of people. It worked for a couple of years, but like most things they tend to look outdated and worn out after a period of time. This video download is taken from the launch of Carlton at 12.00am on New Year's Day 1993.
The "presentation" end-cap from this era, mostly seen with a floral arrangement in the background. The second one was standard for 1994.
 © ITV plc  41Kb (TV World) 192Kb (No Audio)Carlton's next attempt was more subtle and looked smoother. Also this is a relatively un-talked about ident, mainly because of what is about to follow!
The end cap for this era. Central had the same background; but their own logo when Carlton bought them during this period.
In an attempt to use similar idents between itself and it's sister company "Central", Carlton decided to use a generic style branding to its two companies, but the "generics" didn't stop there...
Cross branding of "Carlton" was now across its three franchises now with the introduction of this ident (and to a certain degree on its newly acquired fourth). The only downside for London viewers is that Carlton is now Carlton (London)!
August 11th saw ITV re-brand to ITV1, and with it, this remake. Carlton super-imposed the new ITV1 logo onto its existing idents, a slightly shoddy job compared to GMG's set.
With the dawn of National ITV1, what to do with the regional franchises? Well Carlton still exists, in a smaller form of course. It just gets smaller and smaller!
A highly short lived ident, after all you never used to see the "Network" feed refer to itself as coming from "London". This was dropped in favour for the "Network" ITV1 ident soon after, however the "blocks" style continued for over a year. Other CARLTON sites All images and video material used with permission from James Edwards (TV World), Mike McGonagle (The TV Room), Steve Hackett & Mark Steele (TV Ark), James Hadfield. |
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("Strawberry") (until 10th Aug. '01)
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