ITV Anglia

ITV Anglia (2002-)
Anglia Television (1959-2002)

Based in	Norwich
Broadcast area	East Anglia
Launched	27 October 1959
The first Anglia Television logo, used from 1959 - 1988. The ident featured a statue of a knight on a horse rotating on a turntable. Anglia logo from 1988-2004 Generic ident used from 1999-2002. ITV was changed to ITV1 in 2001.
Closed	lost on-air identity on 27 October 2002 (now known as ITV1 at all times)
Website	itv.com/anglia
Owned by	ITV plc

ITV Anglia, previously known as Anglia Television, is the ITV franchise holder for the East of England. The station is based at Anglia House in Norwich, with regional news bureaux in Ipswich, Cambridge, and Northampton. ITV Anglia is owned and operated by ITV plc under the license name of ITV Broadcasting Limited.

ITV Anglia broadcasts to Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, North Essex, southern Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, a small part of southern Leicestershire, south Rutland, Bedfordshire, northern Buckinghamshire, and northern Hertfordshire.

History

Anglia Television launched on 27 October 1959 as an independent company serving the East of England. At launch, Anglia broadcast from the Mendlesham Transmitter. It was soon joined by Sandy Heath and then Belmont. By 1973 it was available on UHF from Sandy Heath, Sudbury, Tacolneston and Belmont transmitters of the ITA and later IBA. This lasted until the 1 January 1974, when the Belmont transmitter was transferred to Yorkshire Television.

In early 1994, Anglia was bought by MAI (owners of Meridian Broadcasting), who merged with United Newspapers to form United 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 form ITV 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. Many early programmes for the newly launched Channel 5 were made at Anglia, as UBM also owned a stake in the channel (later sold to RTL Group).

In 1993, the station took over the cartoon studio Cosgrove Hall, when it was sold off by its original owners, Thames Television. The station no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally (the last major programme being Trisha, before she defected to Five), and the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand ran a thriving international business, supplying content for Discovery Channel in the USA, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the UK and other broadcasters worldwide, until ITV plc decided in January 2012 to close it, re-allocating any returning series to either the London or Manchester factual departments. Notable series included Animal Precinct and Animal Cops for Animal Planet, Monkey Kingdom for Channel 5 and Real Crime and Survival with Ray Mears for ITV (credited as ITV Studios). Commercial Breaks, the now-defunct commercial production agency owned by ITV's sales division, was 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. 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. 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. A major education partner at EPIC in the shape of Norwich School of Art and Design will be housing a new 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.

In 2006, ITV plc swapped subsidiaries, 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 the franchise, which means that the East Anglia franchise was effectively transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited. All other ITV plc-owned franchises were transferred to ITV Broadcasting Limited in December 2008, meaning that technically, the former Anglia Television Limited now holds all ten licenses in England, Wales and Southern Scotland.

Studios

Anglia House, Anglia Television's headquarters on Agricultural Hall Plain in Norwich

Throughout Anglia's existence, the company has retained its headquarters at the historic Anglia House building in Norwich, which contains four studios and offices for the company. As Anglia's production expanded, the company also expanded, buying land in Magdalen street in the 1990s and creating a new studio complex. Production moved here, as did the news service, however some productions continued at Anglia House. However, in recent years, and especially since the formation of ITV plc, the need for studio space has become unnecessary. As a result, the news service, along with any remaining productions, moved back into Anglia House in 2006, now big enough to house the few productions left, and the studios on Magdalen road were sold to Norfolk County Council, who now run the centre as EPIC, the East of England Production Innovation Centre.

Sub Regions

In June 1990, Anglia began providing separate news services for the east and west of the Anglia region. Both editions of 'Anglia News' were broadcast from Norwich (long before this became standard practice in other ITV regions) with journalists also based at seven district newsrooms and a Westminster bureau.

The two services were replaced with a single pan-regional service in February 2009 as part of major cutbacks to ITV's regional news output, although shorter opts for the two sub-regions continue to air each weeknight on Anglia Tonight and after News at Ten.

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 the pennon atop the knight's lance, which showed the station's name. An arrangement, by Malcolm Sargent, of Handel's Water Music was played over the film. The Anglia knight logo became so closely identified with the station that when, in 1999, the station produced a book to mark its fortieth anniversary, entitled A Knight On The Box. Before the ident, the channel's start-up music was Ralph 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 the Lambie-Nairn designed quasi-heraldic stylised 'A' made of triangles, which faded in and out on a fluttering flag during continuity announcements. In the early 1990s, this was replaced with a black background and the flag fading in slowly to deep sombre music with a lighter end to it. 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, and which were used until 2002.

On 28 October 2002, Anglia lost on screen identity, in favour of the ITV1 brand, with regional idents only before regional programming. This regional ident featured the Anglia name below the ITV1 logo against a blue background covering half of the screen, with a celebrity covering the other half. The Anglia logo could still be seen on screen as part of the news service and on the purple end boards used by the Granada companies introduced in 2001. In 2004, with all English and Welsh-based companies now owned by ITV plc, the station lost its separate identity. The station was officially branded as ITV Anglia, and the stylised 'A' logo was dropped as the company logo, with the on screen name used less and less, and dropped entirely by 2006.

Programmes

Much of Anglia's back catalogue is now held and preserved at the East Anglian Film Archive. A number of Anglia's Television productions including The Way We Were, Bygones and Anglia At War have been released on DVD. A compilation of the first years of Anglia TV's local news, Here Was the News was also released in 2009.

Some of Anglia's best known programmes were:

• Gambit
• Sale of the Century
• Knightmare
• Trisha

See also

• Survival (TV series)
• Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)
• Sale of the Century (UK game show)

Further information

• A Knight On The Box, ISBN 0-906836-40-9

External links

• ITV Anglia at itv.com
• Anglia Factual
• The story of the knight logo
• A history of Anglia
• Anglia Television at TV Ark
• Lord Buxton of Alsa - Daily Telegraph obituary