Still baffles me how the globe was dropped as not being inclusive enough in order to bring in those bloody dancers. That clip shows they're as effective today as they were 15 years ago and were sadly killed off before their time.
I was a bit underwhelmed by Nick Higham's report - apparently they couldn't make the models work, and didn't know that Wales and Northern Ireland have working globes that they have recent (widescreen) footage of. The descriptions of how they used to work seemed a bit half-baked, particularly of the cylinder 2 which is in regular use on Afternoon Classics so getting some footage of that shouldn't have been difficult.
I've done a quick re-edit of some simple improvements that shouldn't have been difficult to get the source material for
Did the BBC ever use the Greenwich Time Signal (aka the pips) on TV?
I do have an ancient Realplayer clip of a BBC TV junction which I downloaded over 10 years ago (can't remember where from) showing the Bat Wings symbol with the harp music fading to the Bat Wings clock (the one with the stupidly oversized second hand) and Greenwich pips counting up to the top of the hour followed by opening titles to a programme called 'Farming'. Whether or not it's a genuine junction I don't know but if it is then yes they did.
Brekkie posted:
Still baffles me how the globe was dropped as not being inclusive enough in order to bring in those bloody dancers. That clip shows they're as effective today as they were 15 years ago and were sadly killed off before their time.
Yep, I never really got how having the fricking world is a motif could be accused of being 'not inclusive' - the dancers reeked of a nasty kind of mid-90's PC which I thought had died out by then (remember 'coloured people' and 'chalkboards' for fear of being called 'racist' for using the word 'black' in any context whatsoever?). Frankly I think the beeb just got a bit too caught up in the 'people ident' craze of the time, and needed to come up with some deeper meaning to justify the existence of the dancers, sadly being about 10 years out of date with what they were trying to peddle as 'inclusive'.
I think the irony is that of all the 'post globe' ident packages, the balloons had the most variations, undoubtedly had the most money spent on them and almost certainly would have aged the least through prolonged use, yet they had the shortest lifespan - in the end the dancers lasted slightly longer, and the circles are now in their 8th year of use. Whilst better then the dancers (although it was hard to imagine
how
you'd go downhill from there), the circles are now looking tired and crying out for a replacement which probably won't come any time soon with initiatives like DQF - yet if the balloons had been in use all this time they'd probably now be viewed as 'iconic' rather than 'tired'.
VMPhil posted:
I still think they ruined them by adding the unnecessary BBC website address in 2000.
In fairness this was de rigueur at the time - for 3 years between mid-1999 and mid-2002 every man and his dog felt the need to splash about their URL at every opportunity to remind everyone that they had a website - remember at the time Iceland were actually branding new shopfits as 'Iceland.co.uk' on the main sign. Pretty much all branding (including TV idents) of the time included a URL, the BBC was only doing what was considered the done thing at the time.
:-(
A former member
It would only be a brave controller to bring back the Balloons/or the world., and spend the money on doing it.
I understand why we have the circles since there represent the "O" in BBC one, and maybe it just the fact BBC one is like a dog chasing its tail....
Mind you its strange to see how some people complain about the BBC people idents YET ITV are still using this concept.
Last edited by A former member on 2 December 2013 9:34pm
It would only be a brave controller to bring back the Balloons/or the world., and spend the money on doing it.
I understand why we have the circles since there represent the "O" in BBC one, and maybe it just the fact BBC one is like a dog chasing its tail....
Mind you its strange to see how some people complain about the BBC people idents YET ITV are still using this concept.
I have to say from the clips on breakfast this morning the balloon still looked fresh, indeed it looked higher quality than the versions of dancers they were using.
Interesting seeing the source quality differences in that story this morning - Tapdogs from just the previous era looked like a bit of a rough composite capture, while the Balloon over the Needles looked vibrant and as good as it gets, and stood up perfectly well to the HD broadcast... No doubt an actual HD transfer of the Balloon symbols could look great on-screen.
Nick Higham spinning the mirror globe - with hand in shot on the closeup really reminded me of Fred Harris on Micro Live in the late 80s. Same globe design - albeit back then the model was fully working... Is this the first time the 'raw' mechanical symbols have been on show for an HD broadcast?
After the VT first aired on Breakfast, Bill mentioned BBC Four's Library ident as a current favourite of his and tried to describe it... Louise had absolutely no clue what he was talking about!
Odd how in the site montage of BBC 1, a number of R&M idents are included, but there's just one of the Balloon... Whatever happened to due impartiality?
A montage of old BBC 2 is included in the excellent interview with Celia Chapman, who worked alongside Lambie-Nairn, on the subject of devising the '2'. Some ITV regional idents and the original Channel 4 makes an appearance as well.
Odd how in the site montage of BBC 1, a number of R&M idents are included, but there's just one of the Balloon... Whatever happened to due impartiality?
I assumed it was because the balloon was a single item which was used in many idents whereas the dance ones were all different.
Incidentally after seeing them for the first time in years I'd forgotten that I liked a few of them, tapdogs in particular. Mind you I think the music in that one is probably the best of the lot
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 2 December 2013 11:22pm
