BBC One

The big question is do you think it's any good and more interesting than last year's?

The giant snowball was very dull to me.

The only reason the giant snowball was so boring was because it was used at every junction for two weeks . It was better when the Christmas ident appeared at around 5pm on Christmas Eve, and disappeared at closedown on Boxing Day.

I stand by my opinion that there should be separate Christmas and New Year idents.

Those were the dark days of about 1989 & 1990 when the Christnas idents were on for a really short time. I think that was how they used ti do it in the 70's & 80's but not having the ident on until the evening of Christmas Eve used to drive me mad. The whole fun of idents was waking up on Christmas Eve to see what the ident would look like. Please tell me I'm not the only one that felt that way?

Seeing the same ident over and over again can be boring I remember staring at various forms of this for 9 of its 15/16 years.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/BBC1.jpg

The thing is last year's ident got boring very quickly because it was boring.

Whereas I had no problem with these ones being on air for so long because they were interesting animations to look at. The more interesting the ident the less bored you will be with it.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1999.jpghttp://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas2000.jpg

A great way for the idents to not bore people is to have slight variations.

Like here in 1992 when they had daytime and night time versions

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1993day.jpg http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1993night.jpg

Or here from one of my absolute favourite Christmas idents from 1994 where there were different ones for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day showing the unwrapping of the present.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1994v1.jpg http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1994v2.jpg http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas1994v3.jpg

And on another side note here is my obligatory regualar rant of 'they should have made the '1' the ident!!' Oh well!

is it any good, What is in it?

The best idents of the Balloon era imo with the Window on the Toys in close third.

Could argue that snowflake kids was the best for the dance ident era but they used that two years in a row so spoilt it really.

Ah yes these ones were rather good
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas2001c.jpghttp://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas2001b.jpghttp://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas2001a.jpg



The best one from that awful era was this Willy Wonka type one with slightly sinister music. As it had a bit of effort put into it rather than just filming a bunch of kids messing about.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n211/cylon1_2006/bbc1xmas2005a.jpg

That's why Snowball doesn't work for me it's an ident with no real invention, nothing happens...it's just there!

Forgot the Willy Wonka type one - yeah thats the best of that bad era.

I thought last year what would make a good ident is a family returning home in the snow to a lit house and the front door shuts revealing the holly wreath with BBC One logo in view. May do a mock up later.

I really like the sound of that., like BBC1 is for the whole family.

I'd personally love to see a Christmas ident with Santa on his sleigh going up in the air from the houses and circling around. It would have a top down view so you'd see Santa's sleigh and then the town at night lit up underneath him.

Absolutely not!

Dark days they certainly were in that the Christmas idents were only aired for the most part on the three Christmas days. In the mechanical days there was at least a plausible explanation for this in that the symbols would tie up Pres B, a studio which was needed for other purposes, for three whole days and of course it was often all the technicians could do to make sure the models kept working for even this short space of time. The 1978 Santa Head (look out for it on the Ark shortly) famously broke down live on air and the speed of the 1984 snowmen (sorry, snowpeople) varied enormously from almost 33 1/3 rpm to a virtual stop on Christmas Day. Even the famous robins suffered mechanical failure on the big day, hence why the robins weren't moving in the same way as they did at the start.

Unfortunately, thinking did not move on once mechanical Christmas idents were abandoned after 1985. With a move to pre-recorded Christmas idents played either off film, tape or laserdisc, there was no longer a Pres studio being tied up and theoretically this could have meant an extension of the airtime for festive idents. Sadly this did not happen - in fact, come 1989 the exact opposite was the case, whereby the Christmas idents were not revealed on either channel until 7pm on Christmas Eve. Two years later they once again appeared at start of play on the 24th.

What the BBC are doing now - running Christmas idents up to and including 01 January (BBC1, please keep yours running on that date this year!) is what I wanted them to do during the mechanical age. However, to unveil the Christmas idents so far in advance of the big day negates their appeal by the 25th so I would welcome a return to a Christmas Eve unveiling.


On the other hand, some of us want to be surprised!

In regard to that earlier comment about Snowball returning this year perhaps it was suggesting we're having two idents - the new ident and Snowball like BBC Two did a few years ago.

At least it would bring some sort of variety other than having the same ident for every junction.

Shall we also start speculation as to which day they will air? I'd say the evening of Saturday 22nd December.

Where was that suggested?