Ministerial broadcasts

The BBC family ident, which was the DVD/Video ident of the time (ribbons is how Martin Lambie-Nairn referred to it), was produced for BBC Worldwide media like DVDs and VHS releases, but was used for this purpose albeit in stills and for royal/OBIT use.

I think that's the wrong way round.


The ribbons logo was for uses where it was representing the corporation as a whole and not just one service, brand or department. It was used on the flags outside buildings like TV Centre, as the desktop wallpaper on the BBCs PCs, and as the design for the staff ID cards amongst other uses

It was also used by presentation as the 'family symbol' - the presentation elements used when/if they bring the BBC 'family' of channels together. The previous 'family' symbol was of course used on the day of Diana's death

Just because the only place most people saw it was on the front of a VHS (or later, DVD) release doesn't mean that's what it was primarily created for. Although the version with that particular animation and music probably was unique to that use (the one pres had ready was animated, but didn't form up like the VHS ident)

A good question, as I mentioned above, there was a new logo'vs equivalent of the BBC 'family' branding seen that day, but once the networks had split back up again it wouldn't have been used for BBC One. There were more serious balloon idents, but the colours used were hardly sombre


Of course the next royal obit they had the opposite problem, that was a few days after the new BBC One branding came in and by then the plan was not to join the networks together as the 'family' (presumably because News 24 existed and that made things a lot easier) so they used stills of their idents, in BBC Ones case the ballet dancers

I don't think they needed one. Most of the balloon idents were perfectly suitable for introducing serious programmes, and the News was always introduced by the clock.

Of course they may have come unstuck of there had been some disaster involving a hot air balloon...

This is beautiful mind, isn't it.



It took me many years to work out that the circle around the one was actually a globe of similar proportions to the COW and everything else was based around that single globe.

I understand it would be difficult to go back to a single silent ident now, but I feel it commanded terrific authority, and allowed BBC 2 to be the wilder sibling.

You didn't notice the outlines of countries moving around behind the 1 at all?

I’m basing that off an email exchange with Martin Lambie-Nairn. I am willing to say he may not fully remember why it was produced

Looked around to see if there was any footage of this, there isn't online though I did find this page of someone who kept record of every music TV show shown each day in 1997(!) with the following entry. I wonder how the messages of grief were sourced. During the show, via phone, if it was live?


http://www.tvpopdiaries.co.uk/1997.html

The only thing I remember about it was that the first song they played was Halo by Texas, which stuck in my mind because it was such an apt choice.

I think the messages from viewers were on captions, but you make a good point about how they were obtained. In the absense of texts and the Internet (for the vast majority, obviously a few people had one or the other). Maybe just an ansaphone ?

E-mail could possibly have been an option by 1997, though as you say far less had access to it at the time. I can only think phone or fax would have been the other options. But I wonder if it would have been advertised earlier in the week to call in and leave a message to be shown during the programe, rather than calling in while the programme was on air.

Yes, they certainly wouldn't have done it live. Pretty sure it was just captions and it would have been a pre recorded programme

Not quite a ministerial broadcast, but a small piece of national crisis/TV history. Ian McDonald, the MoD spokesman whose lengthy briefings on the Falklands War were carried live and uninterrupted by BBC and ITN, and became quite a cult figure in the early 1980s, has died: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/ian-mcdonald-obituary-ftd28t77l (paywall)

Here he is announcing the sinking of HMS Sheffield.