BBC Credits

I'm sure I remember reading a while back on the BBC's Commissioning Website that only BBC URL's should be shown on programme end boards or programme credits and that if a show didn't have a website, then you could credit a correlation of sites e.g. www.bbc.co.uk/comedy

I even remember them telling Grundy Television to send them another Grundy endboard for the end of "Neighbours" a few years ago because the one they'd sent had the official website address on and they'd have to blur it out because it wasn't a BBC URL.

Is this still the case? I noticed Kath and Kim were allowed their own official website on the endboard. What's going on?

Neighbours is an exceptional case, and I'm not sure what you say there is completely right. Even though Neighbours is and imported programme not specially made for the BBC, the BBC does have a major influence - and increasingly so - on the way it is made and presented. To this extent, the end credits music we hear was specifically produced for the UK edit, and the BBC address has been bolted on to the endcap (the BBC website actually is an official Neighbours site now). Even Pudsey Bear made an appearance in many scenes around the time of Children in Need.

The BBC's credit guidelines still largely stand as far as I am aware. URLs should always be BBC sites (and rightly so, surely). BBC Three shows mainly point to the BBC Three site, many shows will point to the genre website if the programme website itself is not signposted.

With regards to Kath and Kim, I'm not too hot on this show but I think I'm right in saying that it's Australian. In which case, is it a non-BBC import? If so, there would be no BBC guidelines to follow.

Thanks for your reply Das.

The story of Programme Acquisition asking Grundy for an endboard without the www.neigbours.com URL at the end was told to me by a friend who used to work in Programme Acquisition. When I asked him about it, he told me that they couldn't show a non BBC URL, so had asked Grundy for another endboard to use so they didn't have to blur out the address.

At that time (around early 2001-earty 2002), there wasn't really a proper BBC Neighbours site. They had a bit of one and the story updates on the Pure Soap site, but the official one the BBC put together didn't launch until February 2003. FremantleMedia and Grundy weren't interested in maintaining a decent official site, so the BBC offered to set one up.

The shorter edit of the theme tune for use on the BBC came into force in 1995. Since then, Grundy have always supplied them with a trimmed version.

I don't know whether the BBC still do have as much of an input in the show as they used to. They've edited a huge amount of scenes recently because they consider them unsuitable. If they still had a say in the way the show is made,surely there wouldn't be a need to edit as Grundy would be aware of the restrictions on them. I don't know whether the BBC asked for Pudsey Bear to appear, or whether Grundy put him there as a quiet nod to the UK.

I agree that the credits should be directing viewers to BBC sites. I was just wondering how come Kath and Kim were allowed to keep their official website address on their endboard when other shows aren't.

If I remember correctly, the urls on BBC programmes must always point to a top-level address...

eg...

bbc.co.uk/lifestyle/diysos shouldn't ever be used - instead only bbc.co.uk/lifestyle should be onscreen

yes, but by putting in the programme after the bbc.co.uk url, you would generally be redirected to that lifestyle/diysos page anyway. e.g bbc.co.uk/news would direct you to news.bbc.co.uk or bbc.co.uk/simpsons ould take you to bbc.co.uk/cult/simpsons