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Television channel in Northern Ireland From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UTV (formerly Ulster Television, branded on air as ITV1 since 2020) is the ITV region covering Northern Ireland, ITV subsidiary and the former on-air name of the free-to-air public broadcast television channel serving the area. It is run by ITV plc and is responsible for the regional news service and programmes made principally for the area by the UTV production team. It currently uses the network ITV1 channel with an opt-out service for local advertising and on-air promos for local programming.
Logo used since 2016 | |
 | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Northern Ireland |
| Network | ITV |
| Headquarters | City Quays 2, Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Programming | |
| Language(s) | English |
| Picture format | |
| Timeshift service |
|
| Ownership | |
| Owner | ITV plc |
| Sister channels | |
| History | |
| Launched | 31 October 1959 (as Ulster Television) |
| Former names |
|
| Links | |
| Website | itv |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Freeview (Northern Ireland only) |
|
| Streaming media | |
| UTV Player until 2016 | u.tv |
| ITV Hub (2016–2022) | www.itv.com |
| ITVX (2022–present) | www.itv.com (Must be logged in to select correct region) |
The present day TV service, ITV1, is directly descended from the ITV network, which originally consisted of independent regional companies which were once the only commercial TV broadcasters in their area. UTV held the licence for Northern Ireland and first went on the air on 31 October 1959.[1]
The company itself was formed in November 1958 to apply for the licence – advertised by the Independent Television Authority – and became the first indigenous broadcaster in Northern Ireland.[1] The company later diversified and the UTV television operation was sold by parent UTV Media plc (now known as Wireless Group and part of News UK) to ITV plc in February 2016.
In 1953, the BBC began its first television broadcasts in Northern Ireland, from a temporary relay transmitter in Glencairn that was hastily set up in time for the coronation of Elizabeth II.[2] The following year, the UK Parliament passed the Television Act of 1954, which led to the launch of the country's first commercial television broadcaster, ITV (and subsequently, the beginning of commercial television broadcasts in the United Kingdom).[3] On 2 September 1958, the ITA began searching for companies and entities interested in operating an ITV franchise for Northern Ireland. Among the candidates for the franchise are Associated-Rediffusion and Granada,[4] as well as two consortia - one led by the Duke of Abercorn[a] and the other led by the Earl of Antrim.[b] The ITA eventually awarded the franchise to the Antrim consortium on 4 November by having the Whig and Telegraph among the franchise shareholders, while also having sufficient Roman Catholic representation.[7]
With a reluctant MacQuitty as the franchise's founding managing director,[8] the newly-formed group, Ulster Television Limited, set out to launch the new station on Halloween 1959, giving them less than a year to construct facilities and hire needed personnel within a tight budget.[9] The group would purchase Havelock House, then an abandoned linen factory on the Ormeau Road, for £17,000 and convert it into a television studio complex.[10] Instead of providing six hours a week of local programming (inclucing a full news service) within year one (as stipulated in the franchise contract), UTV would do so in stages, with the twenty-minute weekday magazine programme Roundabout being the first local programme to be produced.[11] Ulster Television would sign an affiliation agreement with another broadcaster, Associated British Corporation (also known as ABC Television Limited), to supply the former with programmes and advertising.[12]
Ulster Television went on air at 4:45pm on 31 October 1959, with Laurence Olivier (then of Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III fame) being the first person to appear.[13] During its first minutes on air, it featured children engaging in Halloween festivities, an introduction to Northern Ireland "in words and music" by Richard Hayward, and prerecorded messages from ITV talent. The first programmes to air on Ulster Television are (in order) an episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood, an ITN bulletin, an episode of African Patrol, an episode of Boy Meets Girls (a music programme now wiped), an episode of 77 Sunset Strip, an episode of The Jewel and Warriss Show, another ITN bulletin, a wrestling programme, the 1949 American war film Task Force, and an episode of The Florian Zabach Show.[14][15] Olivier would then close Ulster Television's inaugural broadcast with an excerpt from Joseph Addison's "The Spacious Firmament".[14] On that night, some residents from Dublin (which falls outside the station's intended broadcast area) called the station to report poor picture reception.[16]
The following evening, UTV aired Rich and Rare, a film consisting of thirty images from across Northern Ireland produced by John Loder (then-Governor of Northern Ireland and Lord Wakehurst), followed by A Shilling for the Evil Day (a play by Irish writer Joseph Tomelty, as part of Armchair Theatre).[17][15]
At launch, Ulster Television employed a staff of 100 people including six presenters: Ivor Mills and Anne Gregg were chosen as the presenters of local magazine programme Roundabout, Adrienne McGuill, James Greene and Brian Durkin were the first continuity announcers, and former rugby union international Ernest Strathdee was recruited as the station's sports presenter.[18]
Coverage of UTV spread to Western areas of Northern Ireland when the Strabane transmitter opened in February 1963.[19]
Ulster Television's UHF PAL colour service was launched with the opening of the UHF transmitter Divis in September 1970.[20] This was followed by two additional transmitters at Limavady (opened in 1975[20]) and Brougher Mountain (in 1978[20]). In the early 1980s it broadcast reduced hours when no schools programmes were being broadcast coming on air at 12 noon during the week, and closing down every evening at 23:30 – this remained in place until 1982.[citation needed] In October 1988, the station began 24-hour broadcasting – the last station in the ITV network to do so.[21] UTV was originally scheduled to take a service provided by Central in Birmingham, but a late minute decision to switch to Granada Television's sustaining feed, Night Time, led to a month-long delay.[citation needed]
At the company's annual general meeting in Belfast on 26 May 2006, the registered company name was changed from 'Ulster Television plc' to 'UTV plc'. The company believed that the existing name no longer reflected the full scope of the company's business.[22] In a further change in October 2007, UTV underwent a corporate reorganisation which saw UTV shareholders swap their shares for shares in a new holding company, UTV Media plc, which took over UTV plc's shareholdings in the new media and radio subsidiaries. UTV Ltd. – the original Ulster Television Limited, now a wholly owned subsidiary of UTV Media – returned to being solely the operating company for the ITV franchise.[23]
On 19 October 2015, UTV Media announced that it would sell its ITV franchise and the UTV brand to ITV plc for £100 million, subject to regulatory approval. ITV plc CEO Adam Crozier welcomed the news by saying: "UTV Television's strategic objectives are closely aligned with our own and we are very pleased that they are joining the ITV family."[This quote needs a citation]
The acquisition was finalised the following February. ITV stated that they intended to retain the UTV brand in Northern Ireland.[citation needed]
The former UTV Media group was restructured and rebranded as the Wireless Group, retaining its radio assets until June 2016, when the company was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.[24] On 11 July 2016, ITV plc announced that was selling the UTV Ireland service to Virgin Media Ireland for €10 million. Virgin Media Ireland was a subsidiary of Liberty Media and had already bought Ireland's TV3 in 2015).[25][26]
In October 2016, ITV announced plans to close UTV's Havelock House studios.[27] UTV began broadcasting from a new broadcast centre at City Quays 2 in the Belfast Harbour Estate from 1 July 2018.
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Local continuity announcements ended in April 2020, effectively rebranding the channel as ITV in line with all other ITV plc regions. This change was made permanent in November 2020. The ITV channel (including UTV) rebranded as ITV1 in November 2022.[28] The UTV name continues to be used for local programming, notably the news service UTV Live, and in on-air promotions for local non-news programmes.[citation needed]
UTV's focus has always been on programmes made explicitly for viewers in Northern Ireland. But until the 1990s it also made a number of contributions to the ITV network and Channel 4 – many of which were in some way about the province.
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2024) |
Before ITV branding was introduced in 2020, UTV/Ulster Television used a number of different logos, or idents on-screen over the years.
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Until April 2020, UTV was one of two stations in the ITV network – and the only one owned by ITV plc – to have its own continuity announcers.[citation needed]
UTV was also the last company in the network to retain in-vision continuity links, where the duty announcer appeared on-camera to introduce the evening's programmes. In later years, local continuity was generally restricted to evenings with in-vision links presented at weekends by senior announcer Julian Simmons. In 2009, the practice was restored to weekday evenings and presented by the entire announcing team.
Following the sale of UTV, ITV plc transferred most of the station's presentation operations from the Havelock House studios in Belfast to Red Bee Media in Chiswick, which provides playout services for most of ITV's channels.
The last live in-vision announcement was made by Simmons at 11.15 pm on Sunday 16 October 2016, marking the end of 57 years of local transmission.
Two of UTV's longest-serving announcers, Julian Simmons and Gillian Porter, were retained to pre-record out-of-vision continuity – with Aidan Browne providing relief cover – until 2 April 2020, when the channel began taking ITV-branded network presentation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.[citation needed]
In November 2020, it was reported the announcing team had left UTV following a decision to switch permanently to network continuity.[92] The last known announcement, voiced by Porter, aired at 5.59 am on Thursday 2 April 2020.
In April 2021, a local voice-over started to be used over the ident before some local programmes.[citation needed] A new bumper with the UTV logo and the tagline "Part of ITV" was also shown for a short time before some – but not all – commercial breaks.[93]
In common with the rest of the ITV Network, the station aired specially composed signature tunes as part of its daily start-up routine. From launch until 1971, the opening theme was Seamus by the American musician, composer and bandleader Van Phillips, who had earlier written the theme tune of the popular 1950s BBC radio science fiction drama Journey into Space. UTV's best-known theme was The Antrim Road, a classical symphony composed by Wayne Hill and Earl Ward, which was used between 1971 and 1983. It originally featured on The British Isles, an LP of orchestral arrangements of traditional and characteristic national tunes of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The album was released on the De Wolf label in 1971.
ITV's service for the UTV region is available in HD – like most other ITV regions – but UTV was one of the first stations in the ITV network to offer a full HD simulcast in its days as an independent company.
UTV HD, a simulcast of UTV in high-definition, was launched on Virgin Media on 5 October 2010.[94] It became available on Freeview when the digital switchover took place on 24 October 2012 and on Sky and Freesat on 4 November 2013.[95][96]
For the first few months, the only true HD content came from the ITV network but after an upgrade local material including adverts started to be played out in HD.
In May 2011, the presentation infrastructure was upgraded to become fully HD-capable in readiness for the digital switchover in 2012.
A delayed version of the full ITV1 service for the UTV region is available on Freeview and Virgin Media.
The timeshift service – branded UTV+1 before the station adopted ITV branding in 2020 – launched at 8pm on 11 January 2011 on Freeview and Virgin Media. UTV +1 however didn't launch on Sky and Freesat until 21 May 2018.
On 13 April 2021, ITV stopped broadcasting UTV +1 on satellite. ITV +1 Granada was added to Sky in Northern Ireland to replace UTV +1.[97]
The channel was launched on June 28, 1999, originally named TV You. In 2000, it was rebranded as UTV2. Its programming mainly featured simulcasts with ITV2, which was broadcast in England, Wales, and the Scottish Borders.
Additionally, the channel aired archive programs from UTV. It was free from advertising and eventually closed following a deal with ITV Digital.
UTV Ireland was a short-lived sister station to UTV's Northern Ireland service, broadcasting to the Republic of Ireland.
The new channel launched on New Year's Day 2015, following approval by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.[98]
UTV Ireland was broadcast from the company's Dublin base at Macken House and carried a large amount of ITV's networked programming (including Emmerdale and Coronation Street, previously broadcast by TV3) alongside some bespoke programming, including Ireland Live, a twice nightly national news programme airing at 5.30 pm and 10 pm.[99][100][101]
Ratings and advertising revenue were disappointing which meant the costs of the new station were greater than UTV Media had expected. This played a part in the company's decision to sell the whole television business to ITV plc.
In July 2016, the channel was sold on by ITV to TV3 Group (now known as Virgin Media Television) which then, effectively, closed it.
It was replaced by a substantially new channel called Be3 on 9 January 2017. This new channel was rebranded as Virgin Media Three in August 2018. It focuses on children's and female-orientated programming.
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