I feel a lengthy post coming on...
I'll start by saying this - I can't help but feel it's a sorry state of affairs that we're probably roughly in the middle of the 'Circles' campaign, after an initial 2 ½ years - and it's only now, mid-way through that things are suddenly being changed...
When the rebrand happened in '06, my reaction was that long intros didn't feel right for BBC idents. If this revision is anything to go by, other folks must agree - albeit a couple years late to act. So now, the announcer no longer has to wait - symbols in junctions can be more 'punchy' and traditional in their timing, and this was well illustrated in the 20:05 junction on Saturday before
1 vs 100
. In that respect alone, it's a great deal better.
However, as much as it may suit the BBC, that's the only major positive I have about this - the change has created issues within the set itself. The concept has now been severely butchered. It should be considered, the idents weren't meant to be hacked-back in this way - but I can understand the move to display the logo sooner, considering how the lengthy intros slowed the pace, and caused problems for some directors in the Nations; symbols got cut short to the point the 'BBC One' logo was being omitted - that defeats a crucial, core purpose of an ident, moreso than any edits to an intro would.
This was a case of whether having the BBC One logo *always* appear, as it should, and making it prominent within the ident's duration, was more important than keeping the intros for context. They made their choice that showing 'BBC One' should take precedence. It was never a win-win situation. But it is true that without the logo, the whole thing becomes utterly useless - if this prevents that from ever occurring again, it's not entirely bad.
There is however, another aspect they really didn't need to change. The decision to completely re-jig almost all the audio tracks has been poorly judged. What used to be my favourite of the symbols, Helicopter, has evidently been the worst casualty of this revision to the identity.
It
was
the only truly sombre ident they had in the set - a powerful and moving soundtrack, it finally gave the most serious of programme introductions (and particularly news) the tone it sorely needed. But by changing the music in this way, we're
again
returning to a set with a complete lack of idents for these specific instances - both the new Capes and the new Kites just did not work leading in to news bulletins; the music is unsuitably upbeat and lively - rather jarring to cut straight from it to the headlines. It sounds utterly inappropriate and needs be addressed promptly.
This isn't the first time the Beeb have started altering things part-way through an existing era - look at what happened with BBC Two in October, albeit they flip-flopped and eventually (in my view, rightly) did a U-turn.
But that indecisiveness really illustrated the apparent confusion at the BBC regarding their own branding these days. Do they
really
strongly know what they want their channels to look like anymore? It's as if they lack direction (or arguably, adequate foresight). They roll-out the identity and wait
two years
before they suddenly decide that actually, they don't quite like how it was done - even though they obviously had no concerns when they commissioned the original idea!
If they knew what they wanted from the start, it would have been done right in 2006 and there'd be no need for these half-way changes now. Quite honestly, it should never have had to come to this. Just another example of the erosion of standards and conviction in BBC branding, which in recent years has worryingly become more widespread. They've got to do something about it before the next rebrand.
