[RegularCapital]

It's the same with some podcasts, even those that aren't from a big UK producer. I think they're done by aCast, there's a distinctive 2 note jingle before and after the breaks. I remember hearing adverts for a University near me on the American podcast Skeptoid. The clever thing is it seems to do it even if it is downloaded, the ad is inserted into the file on the fly

Global use it a lot for podcasts in Global Player and via third party apps. I was listening to one at work and got ads for TfL despite not being in London as the company Internet connection is there. Rewound the podcast and listened via 4G and advert for a local car showroom. It's all very clever stuff

It's all done by IP Geolocation detection, it looks up the IP range in a database (GeoIP for example) to see what internet provider has that IP block and the location of where that ISP has assigned it to, however the database has to be updated on a regular basis to maintain its accuracy.

I had to code something similar on the website for the company I work for, as we have clients in different countries, and therefore different pricing.

As for Sky AdSmart, I've noticed it on both Challenge and Discovery (I have Virgin Media), on Discovery it is more noticeable as the DOG disappears when an AdSmart advert appears. I live in the West Midlands and I've seen local adverts for the Telford Centre, University of Wolverhampton, and a local Volvo dealership. It's called "Addressable TV Advertising", a newish type of TV advertising that uses demographics, customer behavior, and geographical location data.

www.adsmartfromsky.co.uk 

Targeting your Audience - from Sky
The beauty of AdSmart from Sky is that you can select the exact audience you wan…
  Source: www.adsmartfromsky.co.uk

I listen to The Media Podcast with Matt Deegan, which is hosted by ACast and noticed the ad jingle on there too.

[lookoutwales]

With the discussion in mind about how Granada saw off other regions to produce This Morning, I was recently told that HTV West were apparently one of the contenders for the CITV contract.

Considering it was put out to tender a few times down the years - and we did see Stonewall take over from Central at the turn of the 90s - do we know which other companies attempted to run the service?

[Neil Jones]

i don't think it was put out "a few times", far as I'm aware it was only done in 1989 which Stonewall won, but Central won it back in 1991 (though ironically it still "came" from Central, as Stonewall was owned by somebody who worked at Central at the time)

Not entirely sure why they thought it needed to be farmed out in 1989 but...

[agemame]

Probably to show willing in the face of the next franchise round - sort of a piloting of franchising out networked programming blocks. Had it been more succesful, a common through the night may have followed?

[Neil Jones]

There was tootings or rumours that overnight was going to be farmed out TV-am style which ultimately never happened, so I suppose the Children's ITV was probably something else to push out and was probably seen as less of a problem to "lose" as it were.

Of course the franchises were extended from the original end dates, I think they were originally to run for eight years from 1982, but were later extended to the end of 1992.

[radio listener]

I thought they were more than rumours and it horrified the itv companies as to what the government wanted to do with THEIR airspace.

[Neil Jones]

I thought they were more than rumours and it horrified the itv companies as to what the government wanted to do with THEIR airspace.

Actually the IBA owned the transmitters and the airspace. The ITV companies were just effectively contractors on that system. It could be argued they learned from Breakfast/TV-am - if they're not going to use it the regulator will create a way to get it used.

[Blubatt]

During the 80s/90s, why did all of the BBC News Bulletins all have vastly different titles and branding? Why did they not have consistency for their news department?

[Rdd]

It was the same on ITN. It was the way back then, the brand of “BBC News” was less important than the brands of “The One O’Clock News”, “The Six O’Clock News” etc.

And while consistency and a single BBC News brand is brillant, it was sad to say goodbye to those fantastic orchestral themes that were in use during the 1980s and 1990s.

[Mike]

And while consistency and a single BBC News brand is brillant, it was sad to say goodbye to those fantastic orchestral themes that were in use during the 1980s and 1990s.

To be fair, the BBC did sort of have a brand from 1993 onwards with that, George Fenton's orchestral arrangements, although they were different, followed the same structure and instrumentation and the sets were fundamentally the same with different colours and the titles were broadly the same.

This does bring me on to a question/statement though: the regions can often end up in a mess, and it's somewhat ironic that ITV have had, for a longer time than the BBC, the most consistent looking regional news branding (which is to be expected as they've centralised their design unit at Gas Street who produce nearly all graphics for every region) - despite its origins of being multiple companies. Meanwhile at the BBC it's a cycle of every region being identical for a year or two, then one of them gets brave and does something different, and so on

By the end of 2000 every BBC region looked similar, then LDN came about. 2002 everywhere else got a similar people in places title sequence, by 2005 all but one had dropped the 'official' corporate standard, some had different music (the strange non-David Lowe 'Points West' theme, or Newcastle using the closing titles as the opening titles spring to mind).

By the time 2008 came around there were at least 11 different title sequences and 6 different pieces of music being used to open the regional programmes on the BBC - Scotland were still using the 1999 titles (or a close approximation of).

So 2008 happened and everywhere would be dragged back on brand. By 2019 they were back to a similar picture to pre-2008.

So given we've had the 2019 titles and music for 5 years now - with some changes - and standardised sets, do we think regions will start trying to do their own thing soon, and what mechanisms are in place to stop a region deciding to 'go rogue' if they wanted to? I don't particularly want them to as it would ruin celebrity squares and probably wouldn't be a solid investment of our tax money, but it seems that these imposed corporate styles can only last so long before someone breaks away from it, and once one goes more follow.