History of Emoa Television


 * ''For detailed histories, see also: Neptune Television; Emoa Group

Emoa Television was formed when Neptune Television Plc sold its interests, (which at the time was advertising, minor programme commission, archive footage and productions for Internet TV channels) to Emoa Group Plc (then Emoa Networks Plc), which previously ran a variety of websites and a couple of Internet TV channels with Neptune. Neptune Television Plc was absorbed by Emoa Group Plc, and therefore re-named Neptune Television Ltd. Emoa Group Plc then set up Emoa Television Ltd to proceed into television interests, however Emoa Group later sold 40% of their shares in Emoa Television to other broadcasters.



The "Emoa" name was retained over Neptune as it offered an original, unique and simple brand. Emoa inherited all of Neptune Television's former duties, and began to make its bid in early 2006. By the end of February, Emoa had made a few episodes of various programmes, and put down strong plans for other programming. A staff re-organisation was put in order, and the company confirmed it would try to make an offer on the Borders franchise. A presentation was made to the network shortly after, and a fixed sum was offered to the Network for the contract. It was confirmed later that Emoa had won the contract, and could begin broadcasting to the Borders region from 1 April 2006.



Borders
The run up to the launch of the Borders franchise was very rushed. There was merely a week between the signing of the contract and the franchise launch, and Emoa had no on-screen design. Neptune was hired to create some quick, simple and querky graphics for the channels' first look. A light purple and white scheme was chosen, which incorporated stars and circles. It was put together 22 hours before the channel went on air. The channel launched on 2 April, 2006 at 5am. There was no big celebration, and the announcer merely welcomed viewers to the new company before introducing its first programme, a preview of what you would be able to watch on Emoa Television. At 6am, Emoa handed over to breakfast contractor, 6:AM, and Emoa's first "real" programme was a regional news bulletin at 9:25am. However, over the next few days, CoastPark Plc became interested in the revival of the Borders franchise. Two days after launch, Emoa controversially sold the Borders franchise to CoastPark Plc, which had plans to revive TVB. In the threat of being pushed out of the network, Emoa was offered a full time franchise in the North East, which had been in lack of an operator since Television North. Because of network restrictions of the time, CoastPark Plc were forced to vacate Mercia Weekend Television in return to operate two full-time franchises. The broadcast arm of Mercia was subsequently sold to Emoa Television, while CoastPark continued to produce for the franchise. Emoa Borders closed on 15 April, 2006. Archived regional programmes produced by Emoa Borders is now credited to EMB and copyrighted to Emoa Television Limited.

Midland Weekend

 * See: Mercia Weekend Television

When CoastPark was forced to cease broadcasting Mercia Weekend Television, Emoa offered to broadcast it under "Emoa" in the contract, while the original Mercia continued to produce for the franchise. As part of Emoa's package design, the franchise was re-named "Emoa Mercia" on-screen, but officially was still Mercia Weekend Television. Mercia continued to broadcast sucessfully until 22 May, 2006 when it was confirmed all non-London weekend franchises were to close. Its airspace was sold to weekday broadcaster, Spectrum Television. As a result of loss of franchise, Emoa was offered the North West Scotland & Highlands franchise. Archived regional programmes produced by Emoa Mercia is now credited to EMB and copyrighted to Emoa Television Limited, although Emoa did not make significant productions to the Midlands region.

Rebrands
Emoa Television was originally criticised for its approach of "dual-branding" throughout 2006, whereby both its North East station and its Highlands equivalent, were branded under a variety of names depending on the programmes being introduced. In daytime hours prior to networked programming, both stations used simply "emoa" and used pre-recorded continuity announcements produced by the North East. Evening programmes had primarily live announcments, and used the "emoa" brand plus the regional name, in the form "Emoa - tvne" or "Emoa - tvgael". Even more confusingly, regional programmes that were specific to each region had entirely different idents featuring local landscapes, and were branded in the opposite format with either "tvne" or "tvgael" taking on-screen prominence, sometimes with the "emoa" brand displayed below.

Throughout late 2006, the recorded announcements began to be phased out throughout the day, however the odd branding scheme remained fully in place until around October, when tvne completely removed the "tvne" brand from all its idents with exception for regional programmes, and seldom made reference to the tvne brand in announcments. Conversely, tvgael began to use its regional ident prior to peaktime programmes and made very little reference to the "emoa" name, leading a very confusing branding crisis in both regions.

However all these problems were solved by backbone shareholder, Emoa Networks, who decided the branding scheme was "tarnishing" the Emoa brands and leading viewers to be confused whether they were watching Six, Emoa or tvne/tvgael, and why there were differing names. In response, the company enforced subsidiary Emoa Television to drop its name for on-screen identity, and to create "innovative, new and identifiable" brands. In this process, tvne was reversed to become NETV, and tvgael was re-named GTV. Both now had complete broadcasting autonomy in both branding and announcements in the daytime, although both received the same initial branding package. GTV dropped the original package in February 2007, and NETV amended its slightly in March and continued to use it until October 2007, where since both stations have had very different on-air identities and logotypes.

Emoa again refreshed its identity in April 2007, produced by Emoa Neptune. It features a modern stylised star, constructed of six purple spots, with a simple gradient font. It was first seen in monochrome on GTV's new regional endcaps, which were refreshed with the rest of GTV's presentation, a couple of weeks before the total Emoa relaunch.

Emoa Television's 60% owner, Emoa Group Plc, had previously used a separate logo to differentiate itself from Emoa Television Ltd, however since almost all non-television interests of Emoa Group have since been disposed of, it adopted the same logo as its television subsidiary in April 2007.

Other Interests

 * On 1 May 2006, Emoa launched the digital channel Spiral with AVault in a 50:50 joint venture. The channel was re-named Six Mix in July 2006. Emoa sold its shares to CoastPark Plc in June 2007, however still continues to contribute to the channel. See: Six Mix.
 * On 1 June 2006, Emoa launched a new import and commission arm, Solar, with Dreamer's TV, later part of a larger union named DETV Group. It absorbed all of Neptune TV's former commission responsibilities, and made its first network debut with the LWT classic "End of Part One" in Autumn 2006. Due to funding insufficiencies and focusing on its regional assets, Emoa Television sold all of its DETV Group interests in early 2007.