Mercator Television 1956-2001 Part 1

Here's the idea: What if the history of the UK's independent television (ITV) companies had been different? (In this particular case, what if Granada Television had not been awarded the franchise for the north of England?) On this premise, those of us with an interest in television presentation, idents, test cards and so on (like myself) can have a bash at inventing our own! Thus, FML now presents for your viewing pleasure...

	Mercator's first identification caption, used right from its very first day, May 3rd 1956. "This is Mercator Independent Television, across the North, Monday to Friday." The symbol is a stylisation of how a Mercator projection map works, incorporating a TV screen shape and a fan of lines "across the north" which also create a capital "M". Very clever! Mercator served North-West England and Yorkshire during the week. Weekend viewing was originally provided by ABC in the former and Yorkshire Television in the latter...
	...until the 1968 shake-up. Then, Mercator took over weekends in the North West, but lost weekdays to Yorkshire TV across the Pennines. This ident is from 1969. This had an animated version, the fondly remembered "From the North West... Mercator!" ident. Here, the 'TV screen' part was initially blank, then the circle expanded from its centre, then the fan and grid lines were drawn in, starting from the north-west corner. This "form-up" was used only on the "frontcaps" of Mercator-made programmes and in the start-up routine.
	Mercator actually bid for both of the new Northern England regions in 1968, although they would only have been allowed to take one of them. There was an alternative "Yorkshire" version of this ident prepared just in case. The decision to leave the region name in place seems odd, because it implies that Mercator were broadcasting in more than one region! However, it was actually retained to satisfy the ITA, who insisted that the identification should be in some way regional.
	While Mercator, like other ITV regions, showed Test Card C outside programme hours, they also had their own test card, shown here. This test card was, remarkably, transmitted from film, which had a continuous tone on its soundtrack. Engineers had to fade across from gramophone records to the film soundtrack to fulfil 'tone time' requirements. This was a familiar sight and sound (at least from Winter Hill - there wasn't an Emley Moor version!), with the picture and tone gradually acquiring grains and spots over the years, until 1964...
	...beacuse Mercator then adopted the new Test Card D across the board. The 'own-brand' card still got a very occasional airing until 1969, as a standby if there was some problem with the flying-spot scanner used to show Test Card D. Shown here is the original Test Card D from 1964 with transmitter identification. Click here for a description of Mercator's evening start-up sequence from August 1968 (now including animated form-up ident!)
	Colour only came to Mercator in 1971, owing to what their then chairman, Capt. H. H. Mercator, later described as "oh, you know; one thing and another." Here's a "production" caption from 1973 - a simple step away from the previous ident, using the classic blue-and-yellow scheme. The new ident itself was like this but without the small text. The old "North West" text was also dropped, to be replaced with 'In Colour' until 1974.
	This clock came in with colour. It's a mechanical analogue clock with the colour added electronically (like the BBC globe and many other presentation devices of the time). It lasted until the hot summer of 1976, when the heat must have got to it - on July 2nd it broke down on air! With a few seconds to go 'til the early evening news, the second hand juddered and then slipped backward to 30 seconds, where it stuck. The rest of the mechanism still worked, so the second hand was simply removed in time for the clock's next airing, but it was decided that the clock would be replaced anyway...
	...and July 5th 1976 saw the first use of the brand-new, hi-tech digital clock.
	Here's the IBA start-up caption from this period. The background is more of a standard IBA shade of blue - or it was, but the colour has faded with the years! To stop this from clashing, the switch from this caption to the standard Mercator ident was performed by a quick fade-out-fade-in, rather than a cross-fade or jump-cut. This style of ident survived into the early 1980s...
	...January 1st 1982 in fact, when a new look was brought in after Mercator retained its franchise. This ident retained the 'M' and circle from the original, but in a bold new style: classic simplicity, yet 'ahead of its time' with hindsight. An animated version was also used during start-up and for programme "frontcaps" - first the circle expands into place, then the 'M' is drawn in (starting from the middle), then the name appears with the 'O' expanding from a dot as per the circle. Unusually for frontcaps, this had no soundtrack at all.
	While other companies gradually over-egged their ident puddings with more fancy computer-generated effects, Mercator stuck with distinctive simplicity through the 1980s. Here is the clock version of the ident, still in use on Thursday May 8th 1986. By this time the clock itself was ten years old, and had become a bit tatty as the gas tubes faded (if you look closely you can see some 'blank' tubes unavoidably CSO'd onto the picture)...
	...and thus, the following day, a new (computer-generated) clock was introduced. "And with the time on our brand new clock just coming up to 5.45, we go over to the studios of ITN for the early evening news, with Alistair Stewart." At this time, the main ident, which had been colour-keyed from a three-tone optical slide, was also replaced with a computer-generated version. This was pretty well identical to its predecessor, but its appearance was perfectly matched to that of the clock by using the same production method for both images.
	An unexpected change of ident from 1984. Somewhere in the transmission chain, a hand darts out to pick up a phone, presses a button accidentally, and we're treated to 17 seconds of Mercator's distinctive "animated" colour bars while the announcer carries on oblivious. And of course, nobody watching has any idea what "MFG / RLY 11&38" means. All part of the magic of television!

I got the idea for this page from the excellent Java TV site, which appears defunct at the moment, but try the link anyway, you never know.
Another site with plenty of What Ifs: Afternoon Programmes Follow Shortly

Test cards and tuning signals were created with the aid of FML's Test Card Maker.