Thinker's posts, page 33

Comedy Central New Logo

It is always risky to throw away almost two decades of logo equity, and I'm not really sure about this one. It is way too similar to the copyright symbol and perhaps not unique enough. Its okay to keep it simple, but people should be able to distinguish it fairly quickly an realise who it comes from.

In the video, you can see another version of the logo which is two Cs next to each other and a colon. It works just as well as a logo, but is perhaps not as fun to animate.

Here are more images of the logo for those interested:

http://www.comedycentral.com/press/series/comedycentrallogos.jhtml?gallery=true

Here's the website of the agency Comedy Central cooperated with:

http://www.thelabnyc.com/

A direct link to the rebrand video:

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=367919&title=comedy-central-refreshed-and

BBC to lose 2012 rights

When it comes to events such as the Olympics and the World Cup the content owners generally require the broadcasts to be made available to the vast majority of the population. They aren't too bothered about the channels being free-to-air on satellite or not, they just want to make it available to a large possible audience. In most countries the channels that show the Olympics and the World Cup are encrypted on satellite and you usually only need an encryption card to view it.

There is a possibility that the content owners don't care about the minority who cannot see Sky 3, which are mostly people with only "Freeview Lite" or Freesat (analogue terrestrial viewers will be extinct by the time this becomes relevant).

ITV1+1

There are many signs that says that assumption is true.

The viewing share of Channel 4 +1 is close to that of ITV4. If we assume ITV1 +1 gets more viewers than Channel 4 +1, you may bet that ITV1 +1 will outperform ITV4 within a year, and it will absolutely outperform whatever "ITV5" would have been.

Sky's Branding

Hate. It.

Also I don't really understand the point. It weakens both the logo and overall elegance of the branding to add that awful rectangle with all its gradients.

Perhaps they want to be more consistent and use the same logo in the idents as they already do online and in ads.

A shot from that Youtube video:
http://i55.tinypic.com/98ccw9.jpg

Sky's Branding

There shouldn't be any great technical obstacles in replacing SD channels with their HD equivalents, that is already done on Sky Italia and on US satellite platforms.

The obstacles appear to be mostly commercial. As long as Sky sells HD as an add-on, the channels will not want to loose out on costumers who have an HD box, but no HD subscription. Hopefully that will be sorted out soon, at least for the non-terrestrial versions. It getting increasingly ridiculous to have one bad version at the top of the EPG, and one good way down.

...

It would be a shame to see Sky1's identity go so early. It looks great and is only two years old. But perhaps they feel that it wont fit the channel after the reshuffling. Many of the idents seem to focus on US drama, and if they all go to Sky Atlantic, they may have to rebrand.

As for the Living idents, I don't really care. Its not really something worth remembering. Just another ident package from the Red Bee factory.

Has anyone found any information about what is happening to Sky2 and Sky3? Are they closing them, or simply moving them to 112 and 113?

Universal Channel

Does the UK version use the same idents as the other versions of Universal Channel? By that clip, it appears they just use shots of characters from their shows.

The presentation package and idents for Universal Channel is perhaps a bit generic and too colourful, but very well executed. Especially the audio (by Radium Audio) is superb.

You can see a montage of the idents with the audio here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcOyESv3CK4

And here's a long excerpt of the pause music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnNR3o1Myd4

BBC HD

The idents that are currently used by BBC HD in the UK will launch on the European versions this friday, according to this Polish article:

http://media2.pl/media/69374-nadchodza-zmiany-w-bbc-hd.html

The early days of Sky Television

Google News Archive have started publishing old British newspapers in the Internet, some containing schedules from the earliest days of Sky Television.

The oldest one I've found is dated February 6, 1989, the second day that Sky Television was in operation.

http://i51.tinypic.com/k6ek2.png

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-y01AAAAIBAJ&sjid=8aULAAAAIBAJ&pg=5380%2C1625066

Virgin Media's UKTV stake up for sale

Here is an old article which deals with the launch the new digital BBC channels and how half of UKTV ended up in Flextech's hands.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/flextech-to-inject-pounds-20m-into-bbc-deal-1270994.html

Virgin 1 becomes Channel One

Its weird how the two existing Virgin-branded television channels will be replaced within just a few days.

The owners of the French Virgin channel, Virgin 17, have announced that it will be renamed on September 1. An now it has been announced that the British Virgin channel will be renamed on September 3, just two days later.

Coincidence?

ITV Discussion Thread

This makes complete sense. Commercial broadcasters all over Europe are finding it difficult to justify free-to-air high-definition, so they scramble their HD channels, while the SD versions remain free-to-air.

We've also seen this in Germany, were Astra have launched HD+ which offers the most important commercial channels in HD for a small fee. We can't rule out that the same thing happens in the UK.

Perhaps we will see a subscription HD offer based on the Freesat platform which brings basic channels (ITV2-4, C4, E4, Film4, Five) in HD for a small fee.

We can however not rule out that this will transfer to the terrestrial platform. If Ofcom decides to convert a second PSB mux to DVB-T2, it is possible that ITV and Channel 4 will have another channel for free in HD. However, I can't see that happen this half of the decade.

The early days of Sky Television

They will probably start broadcasting digital channels. Astra 19 is the home of several of the major broadcasting platforms in Europe, including Sky Germany, CanalSat France and Digital+ Spain, so there is always pressure for more capacity, especially for HD.

The German broadcasters will probably want to hold on to some of the transponders for themselves. The public broadcasters offer almost two dozen different TV channels, and I expect that they want to broadcast some of them in HD.