HTV

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For other uses, see HTV (disambiguation).

HTV Group plc is a television company, the ITV contractor of Wales and the West of England, owned by ITV plc. It took over from Television Wales and West Limited 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. Image:HTV Logo.jpg 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. In addition, ITV1 Wales has its own team of announcers, while ITV1 West shares a team with the other ITV1 regions in England.

The HTV name has not disappeared completely however. 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 "ITV Wales News", "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" and much children's programming.

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 Television bought United, 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.

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