BBC2: 1970s Idents, Presentation & Programmes

Brilliant - a 'closedown' message followed by a PIF!

A superb closing announcement from David to round off the retrospective evening; that is how it should be done. If only end-of-night continuity could regularly be this good!

In all, a thoroughly enjoyable night; the only downside is that it has now come to an end.

I must say, well done to all who made it happen.

Video here

Jonny, did you briefly post a video? In any event, seems you were on a bit of a roll with the caps this evening as well, good stuff!

I set my own recording for this too, and I'm very glad I did; well worth keeping, without a doubt

I did but I had inadvertently cocked up the audio track and then noticed Andrew had beaten me to it anyway.

But yes, to complete the set, junctions 5, 6 and the sign off are also now up on the TV Live YouTube channel. Hat doffed to everyone involved tonight.

Tonight was absolutely fantastic! I see next week has a few more 70s programmes. I hope the 70s continuity continues with it too!

The only way this could have been improved was by showing the trailers in 4:3 or at least simulated 4:3 like the idents, either by just cropping them or even doing a bit of pan and scan if someone could be bothered and had the time. There were only about 3 or 4 different trailers all night anyway, wasn't there? A bit of cross promotion of BBC One complete with slides might have been nice too.

Was the continuity done live last night? What would have happened in the event of a breakdown?

Really great effort from everyone concerned - the only criticism I have is that the programme slides (and probably the menus although I don't think these were as standardised) weren't quite right and should have had a sans-serif font, as can be seen in the examples at
http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/bbctwo/1967_continuity.html

Unless anybody who was actually around in the 70s knows differently and they did use slides in that style?

I think that a sans serif font was used, rather than the one used last night on the slides and programme menus.
However, this was the time that we only had a 405 line set, so didn't get BBC2. How envious I was of those people who could watch Play Away instead of Grandstand or World of Sport.

I believe the menu was based on the one at the very beginning of this clip.



The slide font was most likely chosen to match.

Too bad they didn't put "Details in Radio Times" for the full effect, haha.