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Inconsistencies with re-branding?

(August 2017)

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IS
Inspector Sands
Actually, for a while, BBC North covered the North east and Cumbria, North west, and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire areas, with separate regions still in existence. The idea for creating BBC North at the time, in 1991, was to save on management and administration. In effect, it was one region, with three sub regions.

I'm not sure of the chronology but it was the way they split up England. BBC North was the 3 Northern regions, BBC South was everything from Cornwall to Kent and I think there was a BBC Midlands that included the East region. There were management for the Nations and Regions, and English regions under that in Birmingham


The regions were still full regions but the backend functions were centralised. It lasted a while too, in the mid 2000s you'd log onto a BBC desktop with a domain such as South, North, Midlands or National. There were some oddities, for example those working on the services for London were a short walk from Broadcasting House but they were being managed from Birmingham and their IT and HR departments were in Bristol!

As I say I'm not sure of what happened when but at one point there were administrative areas called 'BBC South & East' and 'BBC South & West' at one point. I think that was early 90's


The current BBC North is the name given to the BBC's operation in Salford. There is a Head of BBC North which was originally created to be in charge of the setting up of Salford.

AIUI its all changed now with the hierarchy flattened, the regions come under News although I think there is a still some sort of management in Birmingham
WH
Whataday Founding member
Eagle eyed viewers may notice a slight inconsistency of branding here.

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IS
Inspector Sands

Radio Merseyside is the only station in the north still using the old jingles (and they've had them since late 2009!)

From my last listen round on iPlayer, the other stations yet to update are: Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Guernsey, Hereford & Worcester, Jersey, Kent, Nottingham, Shropshire, Stoke, Surrey, Sussex.

Surrey and Sussex even had a mini-refresh based around the old imaging earlier this year, but I think the old three note jingle has really been done to death now, the change to the new jingles can't come a moment too soon.

I like the new ones but I think it's a bit of a shame that they don't have the station names in the tunes like most of them did - there were 3 notes for B-B-C and then for example 5 notes for ra-di-o shrop-shire. The new ones are more dramatic but a bit anonymous.

I think some of the new jingles have been rolled out as part of the refurb of each station to virtualise them
RW
Robert Williams Founding member
Actually, for a while, BBC North covered the North east and Cumbria, North west, and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire areas, with separate regions still in existence. The idea for creating BBC North at the time, in 1991, was to save on management and administration. In effect, it was one region, with three sub regions.

I'm not sure of the chronology but it was the way they split up England. BBC North was the 3 Northern regions, BBC South was everything from Cornwall to Kent and I think there was a BBC Midlands that included the East region. There were management for the Nations and Regions, and English regions under that in Birmingham


The regions were still full regions but the backend functions were centralised. It lasted a while too, in the mid 2000s you'd log onto a BBC desktop with a domain such as South, North, Midlands or National. There were some oddities, for example those working on the services for London were a short walk from Broadcasting House but they were being managed from Birmingham and their IT and HR departments were in Bristol!

As I say I'm not sure of what happened when but at one point there were administrative areas called 'BBC South & East' and 'BBC South & West' at one point. I think that was early 90's


The current BBC North is the name given to the BBC's operation in Salford. There is a Head of BBC North which was originally created to be in charge of the setting up of Salford.

AIUI its all changed now with the hierarchy flattened, the regions come under News although I think there is a still some sort of management in Birmingham

I have a Radio Times from November 1986 which announces the creation of five new English regions. The North was divided into two - North East, which included Yorks and Lincs, and North West, which included Cumbria. The other regions were Midlands, South & East, and South & West.


The two North regions were then merged, which, as previously stated, would have been in 1991, and shortly afterwards the number of regions was reduced again when the South & East region was split up, with the East portion joined onto the Midlands to form Midlands & East, and the South East portion joining the South & West region to form the South region.

And then, eventually, they did away with those big regions altogether, though not exactly sure when.
IS
Inspector Sands

And then, eventually, they did away with those big regions altogether, though not exactly sure when.

As I say they were still going in some form until at least the middle of last decade
SW
Steve Williams
I have a Radio Times from November 1986 which announces the creation of five new English regions. The North was divided into two - North East, which included Yorks and Lincs, and North West, which included Cumbria. The other regions were Midlands, South & East, and South & West.


I have the North West Radio Times from November 1986 when Cumbria became part of the region - there's an interview with Bob Whittaker, their new Cumbria correspondent, who I remember was one of my favourite North West Tonight reporters. He had a very quirky style, I remember him doing a report of some community radio station and as a running gag he asked everyone if they could play Little White Bull by Tommy Steele. Funny the things, eh?

Anyway, Cumbria didn't stay part of the North West for long, and in One Day In The Life Of Television there's a bit about how the contributors from Cumbria all wanted to get North East again, because they felt they had more in common with Newcastle than Manchester (as the book points out, Border doing news from Cumbria alone didn't seem to matter) and also they missed Mike Neville. So they were moved back in the end, I can't remember when but it wasn't very long after that.
RW
Robert Williams Founding member
I have a Radio Times from November 1986 which announces the creation of five new English regions. The North was divided into two - North East, which included Yorks and Lincs, and North West, which included Cumbria. The other regions were Midlands, South & East, and South & West.


I have the North West Radio Times from November 1986 when Cumbria became part of the region - there's an interview with Bob Whittaker, their new Cumbria correspondent, who I remember was one of my favourite North West Tonight reporters. He had a very quirky style, I remember him doing a report of some community radio station and as a running gag he asked everyone if they could play Little White Bull by Tommy Steele. Funny the things, eh?

I have the South East edition, so I'm probably looking at a different version of the same feature. Here it focuses on the South & East region, and discusses how the idea is to "strengthen non-metropolitan broadcasting" to the extent that the new region was to be based in Elstree, rather than in London, and about how the South East part of the region was to get regional programming specially made for it for the first time (outside of the nightly news), since the BBC had not considered the South East of England to be a region before.
RW
Robert Williams Founding member
Anyway, Cumbria didn't stay part of the North West for long, and in One Day In The Life Of Television there's a bit about how the contributors from Cumbria all wanted to get North East again, because they felt they had more in common with Newcastle than Manchester (as the book points out, Border doing news from Cumbria alone didn't seem to matter) and also they missed Mike Neville. So they were moved back in the end, I can't remember when but it wasn't very long after that.

The 1991/92 BBC Annual Report reckons there was apparently 'widespread satisfaction' with the improved service Cumbria received from BBC North West, but that viewers felt more of an affinity with the North East, and with the merger of the two northern regions in 1990 having removed the original administrative rationale for the decision, Cumbria reverted to BBC North East's output in September 1991.


It also states that the South & East region ceased to be on 31st March 1992.
IS
Inspector Sands

I have the South East edition, so I'm probably looking at a different version of the same feature. Here it focuses on the South & East region, and discusses how the idea is to "strengthen non-metropolitan broadcasting" to the extent that the new region was to be based in Elstree, rather than in London, and about how the South East part of the region was to get regional programming specially made for it for the first time (outside of the nightly news), since the BBC had not considered the South East of England to be a region before.

Though the their first south east news bulletin, London Plus was still fairly new by that point and it was another 3 years before Newsroom South East was to launch from Elstree
RI
Richard
I read somewhere (possible on this forum) that BBC World didn't change to the new BBC logo until 2 weeks after the UK channels did.

When BBC News 24 changed to the generic news look a couple of years later, the overnight 1-6 service kept the flags look for a few weeks due to it being a shared service with BBC World.
WH
Whataday Founding member
Well it wouldn't be the first time BBC World had one foot in the past.

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MK
Mr Kite
For a time, Yorkshire seemed to have promos in the 'Channel 3' style complete with spinning chevron and the swirling 3s on the blue background but were still using the previous ident. I suppose considering that the branding was supposed to unify Yorkshire & Tyne Tees, the fact they were implemented on different dates and in a different manor in each region meant it pretty much achieved none of its objectives other than to annoy Tyne Tees viewers.

Then there's when Tyne Tees' logo was redesigned but the old one remained on the hearts idents. Tyne Tees' mini rebrand also looked totally different to the network look of the time. A shame because it was quite a good look too,

The still non-corporate BBC regional news sets in 1999/2000 clashed with the national news during the embedded headlines. It was pretty weird seeing the pink North West Today/Tonight studio with the Lowe-style headline bed. There's also a video out there of North Westminster coming from the new corporate set but with the previous 95-style titles.
Last edited by Mr Kite on 8 August 2017 10:56pm - 4 times in total

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