BBC One

Something weird happening on bbc one scotland tonight, network taking over.
Thought we were getting the programme on the network then as soon as the titles passed up came River City

No later than 31 December by the looks of things

last year i thought it was 2nd january

...which is a Monday, so there is (still) some flexibility in the system.

There's no reason why the first showing of an ident has to be on a Saturday- it's just the mindset of a particular group of people.

On BBC2, but not BBC1. It was the first time the Christmas idents did not have simultaneous air dates on both channels.

Definately. The Outdoor Rinks are more synomonous with Christmas because they need the winter chill in the air to exist so I would think that Hampton Court Outdoor Ice Rink would be a much better setting than Romford Ice Rink.

Kind of Baffles me as to why the BBC would think that would be Christmassy.

In order to give more prominence to this year's effort, I've split the thread discussing the new Christmas ident into here

And getting back to BBC1 generally, an amazing photo find:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/img/bbc1_clock.png

From a BBC blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/step_back_in_time_1.html

Not sure what's happened to the centre though...

The mechanical version did have an empty dot in the middle, it was only the electronic one which filled it in.

Correct, but on this version there looks like hole in the middle.

As I understand the middle "ring" screwed on (BBC1 West's clock famously lost its own and the result was a solid circle with a blue dot (ie. screw thread) in the middle); assuming this is not a hole the paint has mysteriously come off somehow.

And what's with what looks like sellotape residue around the logo?

Now if someone has a similar photo of the Schools dots, that will REALLY make my day

the sellotape stuff will be where the previous BBC1 logo was - right through from the watchstrap era.

But they didn't use this clock in the watch strap era!

And interestingly, the tape marks stop just around the logo. Perhaps they did something to it after decomissioning.