I'm sure many TV Forumers will already have seen this, but I recently found a video on YouTube with some pretty decent quality video of a couple of BBC Arabic presentation elements (many of the other BBC Arabic videos on YouTube suffer from appalling pixellation).
I'm not certain, but I don't think that the audio in the first half of the video was actually broadcast; it doesn't sound like any of the audio that I heard from the television service - there's a much more 'Arabic' sound to the music used in that video. Almost all of the music that I heard from the actual branding used on the BBC Arabic TV service (prior to the December brand update) had a much more generic beat, punctuated with 'Arabic' sounding stabs here and there, like the last few seconds of the countdown, or stab into the headline bed.
The music in the YouTube video (the first half at least) sounds much richer and more unique throughout. Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not exactly a regularly BBC Arabic viewer, so I'm willing to accept that I'm completely wrong about this, but I just don't recall hearing that audio used on the TV broadcasts.
Either way, I hope that those users who haven't yet seen the video will enjoy it. You can find it
here.
I'd also like to add that I'm a huge fan of this era of BBC Arabic presentation; I of course understand the reasons for bringing it into the Lambie-Nairn/David Lowe branding fold, but I think it's a shame that more elements were not preserved when the new audio package was rolled out.
The 'An La' music for news on the BBC Alba service has a unique sound which allows for some very recognisable cultural distinction while preserving the essence of the underlying brand; although both BBC Persian and the new BBC Arabic have vague hints of this approach in their respective audio packages, it would have been nice to have a sound as rich and distinctive for each of these packages as that used for An La, rather than just some half-hearted tweaks of existing audio used on English-language services.
Last edited by BBC LDN on 5 March 2010 5:25am