History of BBC television idents
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Television idents have been used by the BBC since the early 1950s, to differentiate each of their channels and create separate identites for them. The most famous of these symbols used by the BBC to date have been the BBC One "Globe" (1963-2002) and the BBC Two sans-serif "2" (1991-present). Through the years, new technology has meant these idents have been able to evolve, from simple still black and white images to sophisticated full colour short films as seen today. In the United Kingdom, branding has become much more important with the arrival of digital services and many more new channels, meaning each need to have identities that stand out from the competition.
This article deals with the development of each of the BBC's main television channels identities.
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[edit] BBC One
The original BBC Television Service launched in November 1936, was taken off the air at the outbreak of war in September 1939, returning in June 1946. As the only public television service in Britain, and initially in the world, there was no need for a station ident in the early days. However, with the imminent arrival of commercial television in Britain, 2 December, 1953, saw the arrival of the first ident, nicknamed the "Bat's Wings". This was an elaborate mechanical contraption constructed by Abram Games, which featured a tiny spinning globe in the centre, surrounded by two spinning "eyes", with lightning flashes to either side. Unlike later idents, this was filmed, rather than live. The model was temperamental, and broke down shortly after it was filmed.[1]
By the early 1960s the 'Bat's Wings' had been superseded by the BBC tv logo within a circle, beneath which would appear a map of Britain split into the BBC's broadcast regions.
The channel's most famous emblem, the globe, appeared in its first guise on 30 September 1963. The first such ident featured the continuity announcer speaking over a rotating globe while a 'BBC tv' caption would appear with the announcement, "This is BBC Television" was made.
The launch of sister channel BBC2 saw the channel renamed BBC1 on 20 April 1964, although the name was not changed on-screen until the introduction of the "watch-strap" globe in 1966. The reason the change was delayed was due to coverage of BBC2 being limited; BBC1 remained BBC tv in the meantime.
On 15 November 1969, BBC1 began transmitting in colour, and introduced the first version of the "mirror globe" ident (this style was often used within Monty Python's Flying Circus). The inclusion of the word "colour" in the station ident could be viewed as a subtle reminder to the vast majority of viewers, still watching in black and white, to buy a colour tv set and the much more expensive colour television licence which financed the BBC. The "mirror globe" ident was revised in 1972 to use a more ornate font; a widescreen recreation of this ident was specially produced in 2007 for the second series of Life on Mars. From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s the BBC1 ident comprised various fonts reading BBC1 below variations on the mirror globe, with a deep blue background.
By 1985, computer graphics technology had progressed sufficiently that on 18 February the mechanical mirror globe was retired in favour of the "Computer Originated World" or COW which showed a semi-transparent blue globe with golden continents and gold "BBC1". Between 16 February 1991 and 3 October 1997 an ident nicknamed the "Smoky Globe" developed by the Lambie-Nairn design agency who had first made an impact with Channel 4's original 1982 ident. The "Smoky Globe" prominently incorporated a stylised figure "1" within the globe for the first time, above the BBC's corporate logo – the bold italic letters B B C within three rhomboids, above blue red and green flashes.
On 4 October 1997 the globe was dramatically updated when it left the computer to take the form of a hot-air balloon filmed over various landmarks throughout the UK (and occasionally in other countries e.g. over Sydney Harbour during the 2000 Summer Olympics). The idents featured the new name of the channel: BBC One, renaming which continued across the rest of the BBC's channels. Over the next two and a half years, no fewer than 59 different variations of the BBC One balloon ident were produced. From June 2000, the URL of BBC Online, later bbc.co.uk was included in all BBC One and BBC Two idents. A change in controller at BBC One however resulted in the "balloon" idents being the shortest-lived of the colour TV era. On 29 March 2002 the BBC One globe was ditched after 39 years. Within the same year, BBC Three and BBC Four launched as successors of BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge respectively and all four channels, One, Two, Three and Four adopted a common style of channel logo, an individually coloured box with the BBC logo stacked above the channel's name in words. This presentation later began to spread across other BBC channels including BBC News 24 and BBC World. All BBC television channels adopted a common style of ident logo - the channel's name in words, i.e. ONE, beneath the BBC corporate logo, in a coloured box individual to each channel– red in the case of BBC One.
The new BBC One idents introduced were collaboratively called the 'Rhythm and Movement' idents and featured dancers at various locations dancing to different musical styles. These proved to be hugely unpopular, some accused the BBC of being politically correct regarding some of the dancers involved: disabled dancers in wheelchairs on a basketball court, while fans of the globe and traditionalists were dismayed that the longstanding motif had left the BBC after 39 years. This was also the first new presentation package not to include a clock though one had been designed - it had become difficult to transmit the time accurately, given the delay introduced by satellites and digital transmission.
On 26 September 2006 it was announced that the idents for BBC One would be changed once more, launching on 7 October. The new set, abandoned the overtly red colour scheme yet kept the colour as a more subtle main colour. A larger change was the BBC One logo itself, with the red box replaced by a new lower case for the channel number making it effectively "BBC one". The circle motif now features as the main theme of the idents, while the content is much more diverse than previous: swimming hippos, motorcycle stunt riders, children playing "ring a roses", lit windows, surfers, football players, the moon as well as kites [2]. The first of the new idents shown was 'Kites', appearing at 10:00 BST on 7 October. According to channel controller Peter Fincham, the new circle motif is both a 'nod' to the channel's heritage as well as a symbol of people coming together, in the way BBC One brings people together.
[edit] BBC Two
BBC2's planned opening on 20 April 1964 was famously disrupted by a massive power failure in west London, which resulted in the opening extravaganza having to be broadcast the following evening. The channel's first logo was a static "2" over the BBC corporate logo, but for the introduction of colour broadcasting in 1967 it became a rotating "2" with each face a different colour – blue, red, green, and white. This ident changed to being just blue in the early 1970s. A facelift occurred in time for the channels' tenth anniversary in 1974, with the "2" being formed of blue and white raster lines, the different colours entering from opposite sides of the screen. In 1979, BBC2 adopted the world's first computer-generated ident, with the logo being drawn live every time it was played.
In an effort to make the channel more "high-brow"[citation needed] in 1986, the ident changed to the coloured letters T W O emerging from and disappearing back into the white background. In 1991 this ident was replaced by the start of the highly successful[citation needed] series of idents involving the number "2", some of which were animated, especially for special events such as Christmas. These survived the 1997 rebrand and simply displayed the new logo, while more idents were added to the batch, including many for theme nights, weeks or seasons.
After nearly eleven years, the channel received a new look in 2001 with a set of new figure 2s which have a personality of their own. At the same time, the channel was the first[citation needed] to receive the new style of channel logo, with a purple box displaying the BBC logo stacked above 'TWO'. At the time, the channel stuck out as being different,[citation needed] because all the other channels still had their 1997 branding. Also, rather than a variety of backgrounds seen in the previous presentation package, idents now had a universal yellow background while the figure 2 became 3D and white.
In recent times, the general style of white 2 and yellow background has been replaced by previously withdrawn idents or specially produced versions which feature the 2 in a different guise.[citation needed] Examples have included an updated dog 2 to advertise "pedigree comedy" on the channel while previously withdrawn idents have included "Venus fly-trap" and the Christmas 2000 ident.[citation needed]
The most recent relaunch of the channel's presentation package came on 18 February 2007, with the introduction of idents designed by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and produced by Red Bee Media, costing £700,000 in total. Controller of BBC Two Roly Keating said, "These new idents embody all of BBC Two's distinctive humour, creativity, playfulness and surprise – and they're also beautifully-executed pieces of film-making in their own right."[2]
[edit] BBC Three
The young-adult oriented BBC Three was launched on 9 February 2003, as the successor to BBC Choice. The final weeks of BBC Choice included a 'demolition' of the channel's ident, becoming a building site where a huge "THREE" was under construction. Once the channel officially became BBC Three, the towering three-dimensional figure was revealed, populated by computer generated "blobs" designed and created by Stefan Marjoram at Aardman Animations.
The idents featuring the blobs were designed by Lambie-Nairn as with much of the BBC's channels around that time. Sound clips from the BBC's vast archive are used to give many of the blobs voices while the music "Three Is The Magic Number", based (only the lyrics are copied) upon Schoolhouse Rock! plays in the background.
[edit] BBC Four
The BBC's "cultural" channel BBC Four was launched on 2 March 2002 as a successor to BBC Knowledge. The initial series of idents were generated "on the fly" reflecting the frequencies of the continuity announcers' voice or of backing music and were designed by Lambie-Nairn. As a result, no two idents were ever the same.
Red Bee Media designed a new set of idents introduced in September 2005 that appear to be one image but eventually break into four quarters.
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[edit] BBC News 24
BBC News 24 launched on 9 November 1997 as the BBC's domestic 24 hour news channel and sister to BBC World. Between 1997 and 1999, the channel used the same fictional flag idents designed by Lambie-Nairn as BBC World with only the channel's name as a difference.
The major relaunch of all BBC News output in 1999 saw the channel adopt a common theme with the rest of the BBC's main news bulletins. A new cream and red colour-scheme designed by Lambie-Nairn was introduced together with a variation on the "drums and beeps" musical composition by David Lowe.
A third relaunch came in 2003 with a refresh of the common BBC News style and a departure from Lambie-Nairn in favour of in-house productions for news titles.
A fourth relaunch on 24 January 2007 coincided with a new look for all the main bulletins on BBC One, which saw titles not wholly dissimilar to the previous set being introduced. A new set of on-screen graphics was also introduced.
[edit] BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament took over from the cable-only Parliamentary Channel in September 1998. BBC Parliament transmits sessions of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Scottish Parliament, Welsh National Assembly, and the Northern Ireland Assembly (when not suspended), together with various other programmes of political interest during Parliamentary recesses. BBC Parliament is a somewhat unusual channel in that for several years after it was founded the digital terrestrial television platform had insufficient bandwidth to allow the channel to transmit pictures, and it was restricted to sound-only transmissions with a fixed caption.
The channel took on a variation of the corporate BBC News theme in 2002 with a new ident designed by Lambie-Nairn and accompanied by music by David Lowe. The model was designed to be a motor, an interpretation of the inner workings of Parliament.
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[edit] BBC World
BBC World is a 24 hour news channel broadcast to the world outside the UK.
The channel launched in 1995 and has shared a common look with domestic news channel BBC News 24 since 1997 with a fictional flags ident used by both with only the channel name at the bottom as a difference. The channels, based within the News Centre at BBC Television Centre in West London, swapped studios in 1999 and have remained there ever since.
BBC World has had an association with branding agency Lambie-Nairn for a long time as has much of the rest of the BBC. While the same style was shared with News 24 between 1997 and 1999, it was in 1999 that the largest rebranding of BBC News took place. All BBC News outlets including BBC World, News 24, BBC News Online and bulletins on BBC One all shared a common theme in ident, music and set designs with a new composition of 'drums and beeps' by David Lowe introduced.
The commonality between all BBC News bulletins has continued to this day with slight changes made to the theme in 2003 and 2004.
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[edit] CBBC
CBBC, originally Children's BBC can trace its roots back to the "Children's Hour" of the original BBC Television Service. As a strand of programming for children aged 6-13 with distinctive programme presentation on BBC1, "Children's BBC" first appeared in September 1985. These idents were generated live on air by a BBC Micro computer.
"Children's BBC" was officially renamed "CBBC" in October 1997, with the production of appropriate idents. The idents all had a yellow background, with the black outlines of the various cartoons. Many idents were created up to 2002 - 'Snail', 'Cat and Mouse', 'Octopus', 'Dragon', 'Fish' and 'Mouse', to name a few.
When CBBC was given its own channel of the digital terrestrial platform on 11 February 2002, the CBBC "blob" ident was created. These animated 'bugs' were designed by Lambie-Nairn, and were always green in colour. Idents included 'Karate', 'Multiply', 'Dance' and 'Splat'. The blob was later refreshed and given a 3D appearance in 2005.
In December 2006, CBBC moved from Studio TC9, its home since 1997, to TC12 within BBC Television Centre. The use of a set was replaced by a new virtual set consisting of presenter standing in front of a Bluescreen while only a fixed camera is used.[3] CBBC is due to relaunch again in the Autumn of 2007.
[edit] CBeebies
CBeebies launched on the same day as the CBBC Channel-11 February 2002. The channel's age range was altered slightly in 2005 as part of plans to change the Children's section at the BBC. Originally aimed at pre-school children only, the catchment has been extended to the age of 8, while CBBC has a target audience of 8 to 12 year olds. As with CBBC, Lambie-Nairn designed and created the idents using yellow blobs rather than green.
[edit] See also
- BBC One "COW" idents
- BBC One 'Smoky Globe' idents
- BBC One 'Balloon' idents
- BBC One 'Rhythm & Movement' idents
- BBC One 'Circle' idents
- BBC Two 1991-2001 idents
- ITV television presentation
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- bbc.co.uk
- TV Ark - The Television Museum
- idents.tv the new BBC Two idents
- The Ident Zone
- The TV Room
- The TV Room Plus
- TV & Radio Bits
Categories: All pages needing to be wikified | Wikify from March 2007 | Wikipedia articles needing style editing | Articles lacking sources from March 2007 | All articles lacking sources | Articles with unsourced statements since March 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | BBC television | Television presentation
