[JMT1985]

It's not exactly a mystery why 1st Jan was chosen, it's the first day of the year, legally its just neater and easier. Lots of stuff ends at midnight on NYE, that night there was a lot of change happing to broadcasting Channel 4's independence, Oracle/Teletext, the Marcopolo satellite closed. It would have been odd to have some of the changes not happen then

It actually worked out quite well for the new regional companies - they got their big bang launch at midnight and then 6 hours of nighttime and then a bank holiday weekend to find their feet and show themselves off before launching their new evening regional news programmes on the Monday which was the first proper weekday of the year.

Though it didn't work out that well for Carlton of course, they came on air for 6 hours, then off again then on for another 8 and weren't seen again till Monday. It was a even softer launch than the others, but without the weekend to introduce themselves to the viewers

"A Carlton New Year" was the programme provided by Carlton to celebrate the new year. I remember the ITN News bulletin leading into the chimes of Big Ben at midnight. There was a problem with the connection from ITN to Carlton if I remember right, and we missed out on a smooth transition at the stroke of midnight, where Big Ben chimes got out of sync for a second. 

And then we had a greeting from the new Carlton presentation, which was a shock, compared to what we had been used to from Thames Television, followed by Chris Tarrant live at Trafalgar Square for a few moments, before what I read was a recorded show, taped earlier sometime to see in the night.