Last Updated: February 11, 2020

Nearly the end of the 20th Century, and the ITV network pull another trick out of the sleeve; another attempt to unify the ITV network. The previous attempt in all circumstances failed it the sense that it wasn't used as a major logo for all 14 regional companies. This time round however, corporate takeovers had become the norm on a gradually nationalised channel. So what better time to introduce a new unified voice than in the middle of the merger between Carlton Comm. and United News & Media.

However, as the story goes, the dominators of the ITV network Carlton already have their own expression of the heart (the current schema to ITV's marketing plan). So it was left to the rest of the network to go to English Pockett for them to develop the ITV network as a "brand".

The agency came up with the idea of having an short introductory sequence of daily life ending up with the ITV "heart" being formed at the end. There are many interesting variants of this including moving house, washing lines, on the beach, in the office, on a football pitch. . . loads of them!

As with the 1989 introduction, not all regional companies took to the generic idents, with Ulster, Scottish, and Grampian (who used the last ITV ident to its very last day) excluding themselves from the introduction of the "heart" idents. This seems more political than anything else. So the rest of the network (obviously excluding Carlton's three regions) took gladly to the new idents, and here they are in pictures and Real Video...