Westcountry 1993 – 1999 Branding

Westcountry begin broadcasting on the stroke of Midnight on the 1st January 1993 as a publisher broadcaster, from its new premises at Langage Science Park in Plympton. Due to the legal challenged from TSW over how the ITC handled the new franchises, most of the TSW staff never offered a chance transferred over, expect for Ian Stirling, Ruth Langsford and Ron Bendall.

Westcountry Launch – 1st January 1993

Westcountry Continuity

“Westcountry Life” promos filled airtime between programmes. These inserts showed people at work and play throughout the South West region.

As part of the new branding, Graphic Designer, Peter Leonard, developed the ‘W’ as an icon to communicate in a clear and straightforward way to viewers. Ortman’s Young were given the task of applying the new logo to the idents, which consisted of non-iconic landmarks. The fresh look was lambasted by the public for its sudden change from live friendly in-vision announcers to the drab and cold idents. The Local press were equally scathing and even the Managing Director of Westcountry Television Thomas, J. Prescott admitted it’s got it wrong by saying “Some of our early learning curve has been painfully in-vision. We’re getting some stick for dropping in-vision continuity announcers – but we would, wouldn’t we?” The idents never set the heather on fire and would continual to disappoint due to the continuing “stale offering”.

In Autumn 1997, Westcountry in-house team took over responsibility for creating addition idents. The main difference being the addition of an opening animation. A series of diagonal lines drew the “W”.

Westcountry – Final Ident Set

Westcountry Children’s Birthdays In-Vision Continuity

Despite impassioned pleas by Gus fans, Westcountry ditched Mr Honeybun in favour of “Birthday People”. A number of formats were tried; originally the birthday cards were read out by Peter Griffin, Emma Hallit and Tris Payne.

Westcountry Promotions

Westcountry Holding Slides

TSW and Westward never made use of the corporate programme slide, opting instead to use unbranded stills from the originating companies most of the time. However, Westcountry fully embraced the concept from the word go, with many different styles used between 1993 and 1999.

A New Design appeared in 1996

The Design changed again in 1997

Westcountry Miscellaneous Items