ITV\'s decision to make local continuity announcers redundant and replace them with national, centralised announcers for the whole network, with just pre-recorded announcements from London before local programmes, is a betrayal of 50 years of heritage, and will lead to continuity and presentation that is bland and disconnected from viewers. Rumours that ITV, as part of a re-branding exercise, is getting rid of local station names in favour of \'ITV1\' across the whole network is in effect the total destruction of a regionally-based system. There is still tremendous loyalty to the local ITV stations, and as ITV is the only network that can provide this effectively, we call on them to keep it. We, the undersigned, deplore this move towards one, homogenised ITV1 brand, and call for the re-instatement of local continuity announcers and an assurance that regional ITV station names will be retained in the forthcoming re-brand exercise. This petition will be sent by e-mail and snail-mail to the chief executives, heads of marketing, and heads of presentation of ITV, Carlton and Granada Media Group by 1 October 2002.

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