Anglia Television

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Anglia Television

Based in	Norwich
Broadcast area	East Anglia
Launched	27 October 1959
"The Anglia Knight"
Closed	lost on-air identity on 27 October 2002 (known as ITV1 Anglia before regional programming and as the company trading name}
Website	itvregions.com/anglia
Owned by	ITV plc

Anglia Television is the ITV station for East Anglia, which has been broadcasting since 27 October 1959. The station is based in Norwich, with regional news bureaux in Ipswich, Chelmsford, Peterborough, Cambridge, Luton, Milton Keynes and Northampton. About Anglia, first broadcast in 1960, was the station's flagship television news magazine for over thirty years.

Programmes were transmitted across the Anglia region which comprised Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire and south and east Yorkshire. From January 1, 1974, Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire and North Norfolk were transferred to Yorkshire Television.

[edit] 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, it was entitled A Knight On The Box (ISBN 0-906836-40-9).

With the introduction of colour television in the 1970s, the ident was remade with constant lighting, and the knight constantly rotating as though on a turntable(actually it was on a turntable - that's how rotating idents were recorded in the 1980s). 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 2002, as with all companies now owned by ITV plc, the station lost its separate identity, becoming branded as ITV Anglia.

Anglia House, Anglia Television's headquarters on Prince of Wales Road in Norwich.

[edit] Ownership

Anglia was an independent company for much of its existence. In 1994, it was bought by MAI, who were themselves later acquired by United News and Media, and then in 2000 by Granada. In 2004, Granada 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.

In 1993, the station took over the cartoon studio Cosgrove Hall, when it was sold off by its original owners, Thames Television.

Anglia Television Ident used between 1988 and 1999 with the flag logo that was used 1988 - 2002

Although the station no longer makes a significant content contribution to ITV nationally, the semi-independent Anglia Factual brand now runs a thriving international business supplying content for Discovery Channel in the USA, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the UK, and other broadcasters worldwide. Notable series include Animal Precinct and Animal Cops.

[edit] Coverage areas

Anglia originally covered mainly Norfolk, Suffolk, the northern and more rural parts of Essex and Cambridgeshire before expanding to the less rural areas of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire with the opening of the Sandy Heath transmitter in 1965, covering an area which had previously been an awkward gap in ITV's coverage of the UK. Later in 1965, the Belmont transmitter opened, bringing Anglia's signals to Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, also being available to some viewers in cities such as Nottingham, Leicester and Sheffield.

The Independent Broadcasting Authority decided that Anglia's coverage area was now too large for a "minor" company, and Yorkshire Television's was too small for a "major" company, so YTV was given the Belmont transmitter from January 1, 1974, even though it also covered the northern parts of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, which now found themselves watching television from Leeds (subsequently, Anglia-only relay stations would be built, restoring the station to parts of north Norfolk). Also, with the transition from VHF to UHF signals, Anglia gained coverage of much of south Essex, including Southend, which had previously been considered part of the London region.

The Anglia region is currently split into two sub-regions^[1]: East (Aldeburgh, Burnham, Creake, Felixstowe, Gorleston on Sea, Linnet Valley, Little Walsingham, Overstrand, Sudbury, Sudbury B, Tacolneston, Thetford, Wells next Sea, West Runton, Wivenhoe Park and Woodbridge transmitters) and West (Darlington Park, Kimpton, Kings Lynn, Luton, Madingley (Cambridge) and Sandy Heath transmitters).

[edit] External links

• ITV Anglia at itv.com
• ITV Anglia at itvlocal.com
• Some screen captures: later years
• Video of Anglia idents
• The story of the knight logo
• A history of Anglia
• The design of the triangle ident
• Anglia Television at TV Ark