BBC DOGs move to 16:9 area

Ah ER, used to love that theme

Looking back, I do think the yellow & black CBBC idents were a tad too corporate looking. The programme promotion endboards were even more corporate in that, they were identical to a normal programme.

They should really have let CBBC have a bit more freedom, similarly to how they eventually evolved.

The CBBC trails did eventually get their own look didn't they, possibly after the switch to 16:9 in 2001?

http://www.tv-live.org.uk/wb/media/cbbc/inthepast/cbbc9713.jpg ...or was that style only used during the strand?

Whilst it was a very strong, cohesive look with plenty of wit and charm, it seemed to tire quickly, largely due to its restrictiveness I guess. That said, I don't think opening up the colour scheme would have helped, as the Christmas ident showed. Had definitely outstayed its welcome by 2002, though I did like the studio design from that era.

That original CBBC Christmas ident when it was just black and yellow was possibly the worst example. It wasn't fun at all.

Going a bit off topic, does anyone know why CBBC Choice didn't last very long. After a short time it was rebranded to 'CBBC on Choice' using generic CBBC branded idents rather than the specially made Choice ones?

Is there any coverage of the CBBC Choice (before CBBC on Choice) idents? Was the logo similar to 'CBBC ONE' and 'CBBC TWO' but for BBC Choice?

I've never seen any footage of the CBBC Choice idents anywhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDFs6S-ruAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG_N8TF9nbE

That's CBBC on Choice, which was essentially spun off in to Cbeebies in February 2002. CBBC Choice, as I understand, was more in line with the post-2002 CBBC, but was canned along with most of the original BBC Choice daily line up c.2000.

As has been said, that's CBBC on Choice, not the original CBBC Choice, which apparently had special idents related to the 'lots of 3' theme like the Choice idents from 1998-2000.

The CBBC Choice strand ended when the channel (and BBC Knowledge) relaunched in 2000. Choice turned form a general channel to being aimed at the same sort of age range as it is now. It also moved to start at 7pm and CBBC Choice was on weekend afternoons.

CBBC on Choice started around the same time and became the forerunner to Cbeebies (which of course still exists on BBC3's airtime). I remember the launch being extremely low-key, both on screen and within the BBC. It was only piloted for a few days and might even have gone out unbilled for a bit, I'm not sure that even Radio Times even listed the individual programmes (3 hours worth a day).

The generic 'CBBC' idents were I assume because it was run separately from Choice, unlike the original BBC Choice strand which was part of their schedule - you never saw any promos for non-CBBC programmes during it for example. There were also CBBC Prime idents, but I think that they were the same as the ones used on 1 and 2

Yes, there were at least 2. I'm pretty sure one was 3 different types of Jelly.

I remember one for "web" - which was a computer (world wide web), a spider's web and webbed feet. All in the yellow and black style and variation on the CBBC theme tune of the time.

Yeah, the only exception to the CBeebies-esque line-up was Chucklevision, which transferred to the CBBC channel. (there were also a few bits from the arhive like Bitsa which had they continued being repeated would probably have gone to CBBC).

I think another element to the seperation was that BBC Choice was an adult channel, and over time they started adding an ident at 1859 at the changeover to basically tell the kids to clear off! Equally the Choice web address which was in the DOG at the time was removed during CBBC airtime as it wasn't very kiddy.

(going even further off topic - soon after CBBC and CBeebies launched, Sky were apparently having issues switching the channels in the space of 30 seconds at 1858, so for a while both the kids' channels shut down at 1845ish to avoid adult-orientated programming appearing in the kids' section of the EPG)