What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

They were shown with static front cap on original showing - at least they were up north. The ident was static but on film.

A fair few other shows had the static ident as well, Dick Barton for one, although the one on YouTube has the full ident. Freewheelers was another.

Freewheelers, that takes me back!
I'd have thought it would have been too much of a faff to have different front caps locally and network, perhaps they were static locally, there was obviously extensive use of the animation locally anyway . Need that time machine to be sure (and I'll set the return date to 2022 I think)

I believe a lot of the Southern material that was shot on film (eg Worzel, the Famous Five) did not have any frontcap on the film, and it was played in live by Southern (from a cart or similar). Anyone taking the Southern feed would get that frontcap - regions who timeshifted the show may have had a copy of the film or had it pre-fed to them, so may not have got the frontcap and improvised with a still. Just an idea.

Didn't channel 4 show Worzel Gummage for a while? If so, I'd have then expected no front cap on the show.

Did any ITV company have a film version of their ident, for programmes made on celluloid? TVS did have a film version of their 1982 ident, and I think Granada was another.

Pre 1989 most of the idents were native film anyway ? The ones that were native video/CGI were TSW, TVS, that monstrosity from UTV up thread, YTV's and that's about it I think ? What about HTV's newer one, (not the blue and white TV aerial one ?)

I guess there's a difference between an ident being originally shot on film, and that ident being TX-ed from film or spliced onto the beginning of a film programme telecined live? I'd have been surprised if there were a TK dedicated to separately playing the idents?

Did Southern change to running their film-idents through a video 'synthesiser' (i.e. a keyer with two matte generators - like the BBC One Blue and Yellow globe?) to make it cleaner - or was it always native film?

I wonder what the split was between shows shot, edited AND TX-ed from film and those either edited on VT, or transferred to VT prior to TX and played out from VT?

LWT, Scottish, Central and Grampian had CGI videotaped idents too. And Granada's was mostly an electronic still by the mid-80s.

The Anglia Knight was film, but the replacement Anglia Flags were electronically composited (though the original flag shots were film I think)

I think some of Southern's animated idents were played off TK live, and colourised 'live' as you describe, notably going into ITN bulletins, if only to avoid the use of VT while the station's master SPG was being phased in to genlock with ITN.

Others seemed to be a paler shade of blue,

Example of former
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i560HsDxOVA

Static front cap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-V6qZP7RRQ

Possibly native film 'blue' ident ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IwWBy_B8DI

Yes, you're right, I really should have said pre 1982 !

I don't think there were any CGI ITV idents before 1982. There were some videotaped stills of slides and captions though (Yorkshire and Granada most notably- though both had film variants on some shows- including Coronation Street, even the CGI version was put on film on there).

I have seen filmed transfers of the CGI Scottish and Yorkshire frontcaps (the latter on a schools programme), and the "cake" had a filmed version on the end of some shows during the 88-89 period they were using it as an endcap. I've seen it on Boon (most episodes have the video one, but some have the filmed), Press Gang, Woof and some ITV Schools programmes.

Yes. I think the first CGI ident was probably C4's blocks ? Not sure how TSW's was produced, one part of it looks like paper mache green hills !