The final day of LWT, 27th October 2002 - BETTER QUALITY 

And live from the continuity room in 2002, they have a final word from the team at LWT.

A sad sad day in the history of regional broadcasting 😢

I go back to when Peter Lewis was the voice at 5.15 pm on a Friday night. In vision continuity and the visible junction between Euston Road (Thames), and the South Bank Studios (LWT). Miss them both,

They were brilliant. The best in the business. Together with Peter Lewis, these were the voices of LWT.

And it looks like they’re not done with phasing out regional IDs. UTV ditched its own branding when it was sold to ITV in 2016. Today however, not even the ITV-ised UTV logo is shown as the channel branding aside from, iirc, local news programming, resorting to the standard ITV logo instead. Local announcement is also gone, as it was the fact with the ITV consolidation of 2002. STV today remains the only station to be still independent from ITV plc, having its own full-on branding and services.

it was going to happen one way or another. sorry.

That's EXCEPT for viewers in Scotland.

@@seprishere Who get to watch a quiz about hills. Hosted by Paul Coia.

@@sillygoose635 It didn't have to happen, it is just the powers that be let it happen, and ITV as a broadcasting entity of the grand stature it was back then, has never recovered.

Life has never been the same since

(from 1993) Carlton

So true.....

Did LWT start their weekend at 7pm Fridays in the 60s&70s? When did they move to 5.15?

@@mikemartin2957 January 1982

I couldn't agree more. I can't stand ITV nowadays. It's a shadow of what it used to be and what it stood for.

Just regional news, nothing else

thats how you end something, i hate it when they just say bye or something rubbish

I wished Yorkshire Television would have done the same, but it was too much Granada's bitch by then, so wouldn't have allowed/got away with it!!

oh hey tv stealer

​@@williamg209two Check out Southern's last seconds for the Rolls Royce bow-out. A real classy spine tingler.

I think CITV should do something like this when it closes

I couldn’t agree more with this!

Nice to see you, to see you...

​@@randommanyeynice

Me too, can't beat nostalgia!

I can’t believe the very final appearance of LWT. It’s actually THAT retro.

It only went retro three times, all on the final day. First time was 5:30am, second was just before the South Bank Show, and the final time was after the SBS.

I recall dunebasher stating elsewhere that ITV didn’t want a big deal made of the final days of the regionals so these had to be prepared on the qt and were ‘sneaked’ into the computer system.

@@rotonda4068 I can believe it ! What bastards the new corporation were . I suppose they had to sacrifice some of there overnight programming time to sneak that in. Granada (my region), although one of one of the "hostile takeover " companies, did absolutely *nothing* to acknowledge the end of regional identity. Sad.

id think theyd have a wall with some info about the building in a uni

@@williamg209two Hopefully someone corrects my earlier comment who has access to the entire complex (which I didn't). There is still one of the large studios setup with all the roof lighting and I believe ATV/Centrals video library is still stored somewhere in one of the buildings. What my comment above was saying that there were no obvious clues of the building's past from some of the areas I saw. I guess it's possible a lot of evidence was removed when Central TV "became" part of Carlton TV and then when Carlton TV left and Nottingham Uni took the building they probably took a lot of interesting items away. I kind of expected some form of display / recognition of the building's past, to inspire visitors/students etc.

The central studios in Birmingham are no more there knocked it down sad 😔

Rory Clark also had essential input, adding the film weave, grain and dirt. BTW, the B&W and orange "From London Weekend" idents were originals, not recreations.

TehMondasianSpartan The first two idents were original not repro but the music has definitely been digitally enhanced particularly on the 1971 L W River ident as the original Harry Rabinowitz theme was very reverberated compared to the 1978 version.

Also the studio slide is an original, owned by Transdiffusion.

ITV in the face

@Group JW Productions Yes my yt icon is the Rede Manchete logo but I don't see how that's relevant

it always was.

@@sillygoose635 No, it wasn't. It was a network of stations. Each independent and local to their region but co-dependent on all the others. Granada for example was very different to Thames, but Granada would transmit The Bill (made by Thames) and Thames Coronation Street (made by Granada) and both would transmit Survival (made by Anglia) and Crossroads (made by ATV/Central). All of them (except Yorkshire) had in vision continuity at some point meaning you could put a face to the voice.

​@@sillygoose635I don't agree, they were unique in their own ways until a certain point but I respect this opinion

Of them all, LWT at least wqas allowed to go out with a bang and a reminder to all about what regional ITV used to be. Thames was killed off unnecessarily, then all the others lost thier identity (Central and Westcountry rebranded to Carlton for example) before complete homogenisation into ITV. You would've though Granada would also have been allowed their celebration as one of the ITV PLC parents and also the oldest channel on the network, but no, one day they just disappeared like the rest. STV are really the only independent company left, although they killed off Grampian.

@@cjmillsnun Yes you are so right there really of course so then too for sure!

@@cjmillsnunonce we get rid of our corrupt far right government and get in a suitable replacement, I want the whole ITV network shut down completely! It’s clear we need a new channel 3 with region-specific providers and on-air looks and actual quality programming, including a wide range of kids programming! Even a few new school-specific shows would be nice, and I hated my time in juniors and secondary school!

@@adultmoshifan87 You do realise that we had a Tory government when the dual ownership of Yorkshire and Tyne Tees under Trident Television was forcibly ended in the early 80's? Also that at the time the last Labour government came to power, no one company was able to own more than 3 ITV stations? Ownership had consolidated, but it was still very fragmented and certainly could have been kept in that state or even reversed if that was desired. You do also realise that the actual rationalisation of almost the entire network being owned by ITV plc happened before Blair's second term had ended? It may have been started by the Tories, but Labour did nothing to stop it. Moaning about 'the corrupt far right government' has diddly squat to do with the end of regional ITV. And if the government switches to the other side, precisely nothing will happen to reverse it.

Granada had just as much to do with it.

Then you clearly weren't actually there (or I suspect even born) in October 2002 for you were certainly not 'walking out of those doors for the last time' on that day unless you were a continuity announcer. It was sad when the regional identities went but apart from the rationalisation of branding around continuity, nothing else immediately changed. It took until 2003 to fully rationalise the schedule between Carlton/Granada owned regions, then 2004 for Carlton & Granada to merge which was only the point at which regional brand names disappeared from programmes made by Granada-owned stations ('An LWT Production' was still a thing until early 2004), then 2006 to stop claiming copyright in the name of regional stations ((c) LWT 2006 was a thing that existed) and then many more years for actual production to be wound down followed finally by closure of Kent House.

You are not the only one feeling that there.

Same Feelings over here

uh, no. not emotionless.

Stevie, They killed Thames, Granada among others too. They are emotionless.

@@metromodernism no they didn't and tbey aren't

Yes, I don't know *why* this was the night we lost LWT. Even if I'm now living in Northern Ireland, I still *remember* LWT not existing anymore, not too long before I left South East London.

I love red white and blue here in the USA! (so i'm from a different country than you british people)

@@AW336Lab I love Green / white & red...Im proudly Irish..We hate Brits due to their past & present corrupt colonial / slavery history! Long live a United Ireland in the EU !

@@timthompson6194 cool!

Don't they still run the franchise auctions, only nobody else is allowed to bid?

Thames TV still make programmes don't they?

As of 2020, the only ITV1 region that isn’t using current ITV1 branding is STV.

​@@earthluma Yeah,Scotland got lucky with that one.

@@red-trinity7390 Yeah but they could really do with a rebrand, as they haven't had one since June 2014, 10 years ago.

At least the name remains. Alas, "Central" is still a shell of its former self though with ITV plc not producing anything from the Gas Street studios in Birmingham for the rest of the network and the old Lenton Lane studios in Nottingham sadly shuttered too. Together, the Midlands were a powerhouse of ITV programming going all the way back to the days of Lord Lew Grade's ATV. I had heard that the ITV plc merger was more of a takeover of Carlton by Granada, and based on how everything set into place it seems that Granada ended up the big winners in the deal. Local presentation for ITV Central is sent out of Leeds now, and ITV's main center of production is at MediaCity UK in Manchester aka "Granadaland."

ITV didn't even want any region to make a big deal for.... Some reason.

Being a Londoner I also liked some other idents. My favourites were Central Eclipse, Anglia Knight, ATV and Tyne Tees early 80s and HTV

@@rajnirvan3336 the meridian was very iconic I grew up with tvs then it meridian. My mate up the road so to speak for London tv and we loved the LWT cos that was weekend! Lol

@@toddhunter3137 In Kent it was like that at my cousin house was LWT and another bit further was TVS

@@rajnirvan3336 Yes I remember seeing all the idents you mention, Central had some real funky ones! The Anglia Knight was that some silver majestic looking thing am racking my memory, it was a rather obscure one I think. ATV I remember from the old Crossroads drama series, Tyne Tees?? not familiar with, HTV was the blue screen and white lines forming the name i think.

@@rajnirvan3336 For me it was just a great memory seeing LWT come up on RU-vid, I grew up in Kent and had a mate who lived in Brixton. Whenever I was there i'd remember seeing LWT on the tv... you knew you was in London and it was the weekend! Something different! was great... :)

yup, the London Studios which were the home for London Today/Tonight, GMTV, This Morning and many other shows, however the souless ITV gave up useful studios and instead went for the old BBC ones

;-;.

Also a future Scrooge McDuck from the Disney's Ducktales 2017.

Omg I kind of remember this advert

What the name of the program?

@@yoviealamsyah4843 Ultimate Questions.

So did I. LWT was part of our childhood

Carlton gave them no chance to.

Me too. I used to love LWT. Always watched the handover from Thames on Friday at 5.15

total garbage was television back then, not now.

@@sillygoose635 Bullshit, garbage now

@grahamf19 TV isn't garbage, too much drama crap was on back then. lwt, thames, and carlton, have produced shitty rubbish programs that isnt worth the licence fee.

@grahamf19 no but you HAVE to have it to watch programming.

Well, the US would stretch east-west between Portugal and Armenia. That's how big it really is. They'd need an awful lot of transmitters.

ITV's regional TV cycle died on October 28th, 2002 in England and Wales. Scotland's regional ITV cycle died on May 30th, 2006, when Scottish and Grampian were unified as STV Central and North, respectively. We wouldn't say that it died in Northern Ireland on October 17th, 2016 because UTV, despite being acquired by ITV plc, still kept its name.

Rusty Ralston same here

@@redtekki I think the regional ITV cycle for the Channel Islands started to die on October 18th 2011, and finally did on January 14th 2013.

TV nowadays are just reality shows and some crappy stuff. Even though I am a millenial who doesn’t live in the UK, I still have to say that ITV in the 70s-80s are better than ITV nowadays.

@@MondySpartan and thanks to our dead bitch Maggie "Milksnatcher" Thatcher, the 1990 broadcasting act to remove regulation and privatise itv was the beginning of the end for the channel, and marked a huge downturn...,...

one reason why itv lost millions of pounds and viewers. and decided to pay £100,000,000 for Friends Reunited, just as everyone moved to facebook!

LWT

LWT

LWT

LWT

As someone intimately involved, I can assure you that ITV had no idea we were even doing it.

Exactly the day tv died.

Wasn’t she the VO announcer of BSB Galaxy too before it shutdown (idk I’m American and don’t know much about UK TV)

I did remember hearing Trish Bertram announcing on ITV1 on a Sunday afternoon, IIRC this was Autumn 2004. I had sat down to watch The Railway Children (the Carlton version in case you're wondering), and Trish announced it had been postponed due to a train accident earlier that day.

Same :( such powerful memories!

Carlton and Granada did kinda deserve it after they swallowed franchises

Thames was on 31st December 1992...

I got my first 16:9 TV in early 2001. It was a 32" Sony Wega, and it cost just over £1000.

I miss Thames as well. Carlton was shite.

@@cjmillsnun definitely.

I recorded this on my Thomson TiVo (the first PVR to hit the UK, it predated Sky+) and then dubbed it off to MiniDV tape, which I suspect I've since junked. That original TiVo did not record the raw bitstream, it did a real-time MPEG-2 encode.

@@dunebasher1971 Fantastic stuff, thanks for having the foresight to capture these rarities and for sharing them with the world.

@@dunebasher1971 how did you get this video from your TiVo to your computer?

Dubbed it to MiniDV tape using the analogue AV outputs.

@@dunebasher1971 do you still have the original video file of this recording on your TiVo?

A well swung fanfare from 1969-01-01