ITV Anglia - Identity

Identity

Anglia's original ident was a short film of a 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.

By the mid 1980s, Anglia required action to change the image that the station perceived to both the audience and advertisers; a 1986 marketing campaign declared that "Not all Anglia viewers are yokels". The solution came from Lambie-Nairn, who realised that three options existed for the company: using the existing knight, using a new knight image or dropping the knight all together. The first option would work in print, but a new approach on screen couldn't be found; the second had a similar problem in that it could be made to work on screen with difficulty, but in print the knight didn't work. The solution was the last option and when Lambie-Nairn implemented the redesigned identity in 1988, it replaced the knight with a quasi-heraldic stylised 'A' made of triangles on a fluttering flag against a slate background. The logo was inspired from the 'A' for Anglia but also the chevron used on heraldry and associated with knights. Despite some initial opposition from the public 'Save Our Knight' campaign and from some of Anglia's non-executive directors, and some debate on the colours of the logo, the change occurred seamlessly and efficiently with the entire company rebranded within a weekend, including stationary, vehicles and signage and the on-screen identity itself. The sequences involved the various elements of the flag fluttering into position and entering a continuous stage of elements fading in and out during continuity announcements. Other elements included a new clock design using the triangles and a co-ordinated trailer design. The music was by Lord David Dundas and featured a soft fanfare and, from the early 1990s, alternative versions were used which had started deep and sombre before turning lighter at the end. 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.