is a
Television company, the
ITV contractor of
Wales and the West of
England , owned by
ITV Plc . It took over from
TWW in
1968 . Initially the station was known as '''Harlech Television''' (after the head of the company,
Lord Harlech ), but from the introduction of colour in
1970 became HTV.
HTV operates two separate services - "ITV1 Wales" (formerly HTV Wales) in Wales, and "ITV1 West" (previously "ITV1 West of England", and formerly HTV West) in the West of England area. Since
28 October 2002 , on ITV1 West, the full name is seen only before local programmes - at all other times the station is simply called ITV1. The ITV1 Wales name is seen before all programmes (except overnights) on that service however. While ITV1 West has shared a team of announcers with the other ITV1 regions in England since 28 October 2002, ITV1 Wales continued to have its own team of announcers until
16 January 2006 , when its announcements too became handled by the English ITV1 announcer team (the channel continues to be visually identified as "ITV1 Wales" however).
The HTV name has not disappeared completely. It continues to be seen on programmes made for
S4C . Some off-air branding also remains HTV. Initially, the HTV name was also kept for news programming, but this was dropped in favour of ITV on
2 February 2004 .
Main programmes include "
Wales Tonight" , "
The West Tonight , "
The Ferret ", and "
Nuts And Bolts ". HTV does not now produce much in the way of regular network programming, although it did continue commission "
Movies, Games And Videos " for some time. Previously, there have been some major HTV commissions including "
Robin Of Sherwood ",
Wycliffe (TV Series) and much children's programming including
Rubbish, King Of The Jumble , The Slow Norris, Captain Starr, and Dog & Duck.
Since
1982 , HTV has provided
Welsh Language programming to
S4C , although this is now commissioned rather than produced in-house. Prior to S4C's introduction, HTV's evening news had to be split into two fifteen-minute bulletins presented from the same studio and separated by an advertising break, one in Welsh, called ''Y Dydd'' ('The Day') and the other in English, called ''Report Wales'' .
In
1996 , HTV was taken over by
United News And Media plc (now United Business Media plc). In
2001 ,
Granada Media Plc bought United's television interests, but were forced to sell off HTV by the regulator. They sold it to
Carlton Communications plc, owners of
Carlton Television , though the HTV name was retained on-air until
27 October 2002 .
ITV Wales can be received across the
British Isles and further afield via
Satellite on
Sky Digital . Its terrestrial signal can also can be received in southeastern parts of
Ireland , where it is retransmitted on
UHF by so-called 'deflectors', although this is because
Cable or
MMDS (which carries
UTV from
Northern Ireland ) is often not available in those areas.
- Jonathon Hill
- Lucy Owen (nee Cohen)
- Andrew Jones (special newsreader)
- Steve Taylor
- Huw Weekes
- Nicola Heywood-Thomas
- Bruce Hockin
- Richard Wyatt
- Graham Purches
- Annie St John
- Sue King
- Bob Crampton
- Peter Rowell
- Jane Solomons
- Richard Lyddon
- Jenny Hull
- Liza Aziz
