Thinker's posts, page 12

International Presentation

Sweden and Norway were both very reluctant to allow private commercial television. The two countries had similar cable TV regulations that allowed the retransmission of foreign channels with advertising as long as they didn't specifically target Sweden or Norway in particular. The decision to allow "foreign" advertising allowed the retransmission of the likes of Sky Channel and Music Box and other European channels from the early satellites.

TV3 saw a loophole and argued that they would target Scandinavia in general and that they wouldn't air advertising specifically targeting a particular country. Sky Channel did the same thing and started airing some commercials and even programmes in Swedish and Norwegian.

Obviously, the rules couldn't be enforced. Politicians in a nominally Western democracies couldn't be seen shutting down television stations and a more pragmatic approach to commercial broadcasting appeared quickly.



To be fair to the Norwegians, TV 2 launched in 1992. It is not completely straight-forward to define what constitutes "the first private channel", but there were other countries who were almost as late.

International Presentation

I've also found the creation of MTV to be a bit of a mystery. There doesn't seem to be any good English language sources that explain how it came about. Finnish Wikipedia says that MTV offered to rent space on YLE's television service and that they reluctantly accepted as they needed the income. This was in 1957 when television was still a trial service and few people could watch it. Perhaps it was grandfathered in and couldn't be stopped after the fact as it was already broadcasting and had proven to be popular.

If by video adverts you mean adverts shown at the beginning of video cassettes, I doubt authorities were bothered. Cinema advertising was commonplace in much of Europe long before commercial television arrived.

Radio advertising was also illegal until the rules were relaxed in the 80s and 90s, when private radio stations were licensed. Much like in the UK, the radio monopolies were plagued by competition from Radio Luxembourg and pirate radio stations transmitting from boats in international water in the 60s. And they responded by eventually launching new radio networks for light music.

International Presentation

Kestääkö Kantti was Finland's version of Krypton Factor, an episode can be seen below. The Channel 4 logo is a mystery though.

Sir David Frost has died

Frost's involvement with TV in general and ITV in particular is simply amazing. As an entertainer, a journalist and a business man.

He was involved in bids all three times the ITV franchise system was altered. Could that be said about any other individual or company (excluding incumbents)?

Sky's Branding

When the Sky1 channels were relaunched in 2008 they said Sky2 would skew towards younger men and Sky3 would be more female, which was reflected in the idents at the time.



If they tried to do a U-turn and reposition Sky2 towards women, it shows how halfhearted this strategy was originally. As mentioned, the Living purchase was an attempt by Sky to establish the strong female-leaning brand that Sky3 and Sky Real Lives had failed to become.

Graphic Design Department at Yorkshire Television

Network promotion was shared between the big five, which meant some of the ITV-branded graphics in the montage above were made to be seen across the network.

The ITV logo below was part of a graphics package designed by Graham Smith, who can be seen on the left in the image on the top of my original post.

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/itv1/itv1_images/1980s/itv_promo1980s1.jpg



http://memoriesofytv.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/9/13298379/6758959_orig.jpg

Thanks for that one! They must have moved at some point, the 70s office looks a lot more spacious.

Graphic Design Department at Yorkshire Television

I stumbled upon a bunch of images taken inside the graphics department at Yorkshire Television around 1987/1988. Fun to see all that old technology and how messy design studios were back then.


0128-001 Graham Smith & Paul Felgate at Yorkshire Television by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-002 Documentaries Graphic Design Office at Yorkshire Television by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-004 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Dave Hartley & Pat McCarthy) by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-008 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Paul Peppiate & Joyce Wilson) by Andy Davy, on Flickr


0128-010 Graphic Designers at Yorkshire Television (Ed Bailey) by Andy Davy, on Flickr

International Presentation

http://www.findesign.nl/portfolio/223/

ERT Greece - BREAKING: Greek court has overturns closure

Here's what appears to be the first few minutes of the first news broadcast on the new broadcaster DT this morning. Apparently they are forced to use an older studio as the headquarters are still occupied by ex-ERT staff.

Al Jazeera English & Al Jazeera America

The distribution situation in the US is completely different from the UK. In the US, you are very much dependent on the cable companies to get distribution. And they a) really don't like to add any new channels, and b) really don't like it if you are streaming your channel for free on the Internet.

In the UK, you can get a technical penetration for the vast majority of the population simply by getting a slot of Freeview and purchasing some satellite space. The platforms are open and there's really no pressure to suppress free Internet distribution. (Sky may have something to say if they were to go encrypted on satellite, but that seems unlikely.)

ABC logo from 1959

Not that many, there is an old logo for Rogers Broadcasting in Canada, the Screens Gems logo from the US and two more from Italy and Romania that I hadn't heard of.

The ABC triangle is the only British TV logo in the book, and it was arguably the best and boldest in that category at the time.

ABC logo from 1959

"Trademarks, a handbook of international designs" by Peter Wildbur, 1966.