BBC One

Wow seeing that box logo reminded me how great those 'Dancer' idents were. It was one of the best most well thought out packages they ever had. Why? Because it was all tied together with one theme - red. I know they sort of have that theme now but it is lost on many idents.

Daydreaming over... I'll order my plane ticket and head to Terminal 5 ASAP!

The main theme of the current package is obviously the circle. but they kept the red because it suited the channel. The dancers were not that bad.

The other good thing about the dancers was the music - it all had the same theme making them alike, but not identical. The current "jingle" is too weak to be recognised throughout.

Actually, no need to get out of here so quickly! Because it's true about what you say with regards to visual identification; it would be wrong to suggest the current circles are any more identifiable without the logo than the dancers were due to the current set's disparity of colours and scenes.

When the R&M symbols were done well, they were great. An important part of this - and another aid to identification IMO despite its subtletly - is direction and movement of the camera; look at every single dancer ident and count how many 'cuts' straight from one angle to another there are: zero. Rather, they panned around the artists (Ballet, Capoeira) or away and out as in most idents. And that approach helped define the style at that time for the better, I would say.

Funny how people now miss the dancers yet when they were on-screen people were bored and fed up with them.

And the weakness? The current tune is far too short. Three notes is simply not enough (take note BBC Two!); it is a running theme but it barely qualifies as a jingle (four notes would be, two notes definitely would not) - but with the dancers, without a doubt you had a full, distinctive jingle there, and only in Acrobat was it taken out of the foreground - for the rest it was always leading the music and the first thing you heard.

As an aside, not only is BBC2's (similarly three-note) signature a bit too subtle in cases - it's only one note short in the middle of being the S4C Dragon idents jingle!

Anyone watching the BBC1 London feed last night notice how we got stuck on a BBC London promo endboard and crashed into Holby Blue?
http://watelevision.com/members/andyb/BBCOneLDN-HolbyBlue-crash.mp4

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/2871/cap00002kq6.png

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8370/cap00003ki4.png

Yes I noticed this, before the BBC London promo it looked like it was going into a BBC Three Promo

Good point. The cuts between cameras doesn't really work for me, I much preferred the single camera of the dancer idents.

Admittedly the idents weren't the best (Music Video for example) but still they were identifiable to the channel and people recognised BBC One through the red and the dancers. The music was also distinct in each one, with every ident following the same and recognisable jingle.

The current set are good and are well produced but I do feel the lack of a memorable jingle and good soundtrack (think Mission Control that doesn't even have music after the form-up) let them down.

In response to the poster's question about the edited Penguins - a good chance to see it is ahead of CBeebies/CBBC along with other light-hearted programmes (I think it was used for One Foot in the Grave last week).

I didnt know that they had started the 8pm news update on BBC One (but i rarely watch it anyway)

They did a terrible job in the Wales region. the presenter popped up, then a caption used at the end of BBC Newyddion (on S4C) came up. it wasnt great

It seems: on this day 2002 (6 years ago) BBC1's Balloon idents are replaced by new 'lifestyle' ones.

new 'Rhythm & Movement' ones.