That’s according to ITV’s marketing people, who have decided that ITV1 needs a name that reflects its programming better. Not really.

Sorry for my third media post in a row (doh), but I’ve just read this article on ITV’s upcoming rebrand, and it is such a pile of absolute minge.

Welcome to the world of marketing, where the BBC is Daddy and Channel 4 is brother. And there was me thinking they were television stations! ITV, incidentally, is nobody — well, at least I agree with that.

…some groups (upmarket men, affluent culture vultures), are so prejudiced against ITV1 that it stops them trying newer services.

This makes it sound like only hoity-toity people dislike ITV1. This isn’t the case — you only need a modicum of brain to hate ITV1 with a burning passion.

You don’t need to be a member of a made-up section of the population in order to like or dislike a channel. *BIG CLUE FOR ITV*: The reason people trust the BBC and Channel 4 is because, occasionally, they make some good programmes. ITV, on the other hand, throw loads of money at some music industry big-wig who has reinvented himself as a pantomime villain and ask him to hold a singing contest where the best singer doesn’t win.

And channels aren’t personified by celebrities either.

As for ITV1, “for me the best aspirational figure would be Robbie Williams, iconic, British, supremely entertaining with the common touch and ability to bring flair, glamour and pathos to his work … in contrast to the BBC and Daddy”.

This just sums it all up. For a second, run along with the idea that the BBC is Daddy (yes, I can see that) and that Channel 4 is brother (yup). ITV1 has decided that, instead of being a cozy close family member, it wants to be some overblown egotistical celebrity that nobody really knows and is well past his best anyway. Good work guys!

Believe it or not, the article just gets worse from there. How tragic. Greg Dyke is much more sensible about it all.

As it happens, ITV1′s new idents sound like they might actually be alright. Just a shame that SMG probably won’t treat us to them. We’ll probably be left with those five-year-old idents where the camera, in slow motion, goes right up the nostrils of somebody who you might have seen reading the news on Scotland Today once or twice but probably left the station a few years ago, but they don’t have any presentation department to make any new idents, or even adapt to ITV plc’s ones, so they’ve just got to make do with it.

Update: More examples of ITV’s new idents here. I think they look quite good from these stills.