BBC Reviewing Trailer Policy

If I see that Subtitles promo one more time I am going to fire off a complaint.

I've been saying that for a long time; just recently it seems to have got worse. Time was when trails had to be planned for in advance, now they can be summoned instantly so you cannot escape them even if there's a sudden schedule change.

What the BBC should be doing is moving trail placement from Marketing to Pres - Marketing by definition is a more aggressive, advertising-led practice and this shows between BBC programmes. Sadly the opposite is happening - in the Nations at least, where trail placement is shifting from Pres to Marketing.

The BBC is still spending too much on self-promotion, possibly at the expense of the programmes themselves. Tell me, how much did Jenson Button get for promoting BBCi? How much does Angela Griffin get every time that subtitles ad comes on? Two examples of promotional activity which could be more cost-effective.



With any luck we have seen the last of them; there were a large number of complaints and the experiment was abandoned. But don't drop your guard - a certain 2W DOG came back from the dead...

I don't mind the the BBC running 2 or 3 trailers between programmes - it's still quicker than waiting for a ad break on a commercial channel. And it must be remember that just because trailers in the sense of edited packages of sound and video might have seen greater use in recent years, that doesn't mean they didn't trail in the past - go back 15 years and you'll find a lot of continuity announcements that go on for half of forever - usually largely composed of trailing another programme.

What does need to change though is their choice of trailering. It's always the same handful of trailers again and again at every junction. If they are going to have a 'big push' campaign where an impending new programme is trailed relentlessly, then they need to be properly equipped with enough material to do that. But frequently they aren't. A case in point is the new series of Doctor Who. For a week (was it even more than a week?) before it started, very few junctions went by without the new series being trailed - but there was only a single trailer for it run over and over again (granted there were two different cuts of it with different lengths). If they were going to trail it so much they should have put together a much greater range of promotional material than that.

And then onto ECPs. Their use should be more sensitively considered, and I do agree that the decision to insert them or not should be a creative one made by presentation, not a money spinning one by marketing. And there are too many of them, plain and simple. The commercial reasons which other broadcasters use to justify prolific use of ECPs with little consideration for their suitability either in terms of number of them or their placement do not exist for the BBC.

"Life's Not All Ha Ha Hee Hee" gets trailed at nearly every junction at the moment. It's really quite annoying.

I have no objection to the quantity of trails, but I think they should spread the promotions around.

The one thing that I would very much appreciate is if they would not use an ECP where it might spoil the end of a programme - like the final episode of Casannova. The very tender moment and great music (clearly designed to be *part* of the programme) was shattered by an announcer and trail being slapped over the top.

I'm not a luddite, or even a Luxxite. I do realise the need to hold viewers in the multichannel age. But just occassionally a programme should be allowed to finish gently before the promos begin again.

Well as many have said the number of trails between programmes isn't really a problem, it is just the limited number of programmes being trailed. Change which IIRC goes back to the introduction of the dancers, where the ranges of programmes trailed was cut down to just a few big pushes. This combined with the lack of a good coming up next trail (think of the adpated trails from the moving of the news and the revised ones being shown until the rebrand) means more of the same trails and too much repetition.

I'd also like to argue against ECPs generally, I think the BBC being so uniquely funded should be able to forgoe such agressive techniques. IMO ECPs and OSNs look messy and don't actually help at all.

I do remember the old HTV intermissions with a lovely picture of a windmill. How peaceful.

The problem began when LWT/LNN started to push the idea that programme trailers should become productions in their own right, and with little else to do to either justify their budget or keep their staff busy, they spent the latter part of the 90s literally making each trailer into something costing so much money they had to cut down the number of programmes they could trail (despite the fact the individual regions collectively had produced trailers much more cost effectively between them for all the years previously). Great for quality, terrible for quantity. OK, previously trailers were sometimes dull (á la Granada until the mid 90s) but some were fantastic (such as Central of the same era), and they had a balance between quality and quantity, which kept that all important essence of variety - the one essence that breeds viewer loyalty.

Around this time the BBC realised that these trails were being transmitted nationwide, and they made their own trails seem rather pedestrian by comparison. Looking back, they needn't have worried, because if you look back to the mid 90s, the BBC had actually made quite a good job of modernising their typical 'evening run-down' type trail to an essence, using the wonderful panoply of different '1' and '2' symbols and stings to punctuate/wrap them.

Until then, you would see trails for many different types of programme. A typical junction in primetime could contain either three short trailers for regular shows, or a slower, longer single trailer, either for a 'serious' show or a 'one-off', 'special' or 'big occasion'.

The trouble is, perhaps with the shift of attitudes that running 24-hour news channels has brought to broadcasters, they are looking for every programme that they want to promote to become the next 'big occasion'. In the past, the 'big occasion' trailer would only be brought out for REAL special occasions, like the Olympics, or the death of a politician/royal etc. Now however, both the BBC and ITV are guilty of referring to their programmes as 'brands' and as such should be 'marketed' in the same way as a packet of cornflakes or the latest mobile phone or ringtone.

The other word I dislike is 'content'. That is, that the collection of programmes broadcast on a channel are not thought of as a balanced variety, or mixture of different types of programming - the whole lot is just referred to as 'content'. This attitude may work for a niche broadcaster, but for BBC and even ITV, programmes should be seen as just that - they are shows, pure and simple - or films. They are not brands, they are not 'content'. That's what you get on the internet and in the supermarket.

ISTR Central were a bit more exotic with some rather colourful stills of parrots - often to be seen before the lunchtime showing of Rainbow.

Two trailers between programmes - you must be kidding. On BBC1 especially you often get five or six!

I don't watch much BBC at all nowadays, but one thing that infuriates me are the trailers just for a brand such as 6 Music or 1 Xtra - I'd much rather they promoted the content of the channels, not just it's name!


I've said elsewhere that I think the main BBC channels could learn alot from CBeebies.

They let their credits play out with no interuption - then have a simple "Next / Then" sequence, a couple of trailers and then the ident into the next programme.

Part of the problem with today's situation is the CA only talks for the bare minimum of time possible, when he/she could inject more live input into junctions and make the whole thing seem less impersonal. They're just not given the chance.

I agree with Brekkie Boy. The CBeebies/BBC4 approach with a next trail after is far more effective.

If it were only 2 trails I'd be fine but there are often three or four. And it's the monotony of them and crapness of them. The original BBC3 trail for cassanova actually put me off watching it. Only when my friend ordered me to watch it did I see how good it was. The BBC1 trail by comparrison was far better.

But it's not only the monotony of trails it the lack of real cross promoting.

BBC3 only gets the big things trailed. BBC4 is virtually a radio staiton it's trailed so poorly.

Why not have something like the old policy where you had two BBC1 trails and a BBC2 trail on BBC1 and 2 2s and 1 1 on 2. Yes.

If BBC3/4 were actually seen as "channels" instead of "digital services" they'd be more popular.

They need to sort News 24 out too. It never shows any variety, it's the subtitles ones over and over.

Also too many trails are too posh. They should be simpler and just have a montage of clips. The expensive trails used to really catch your eye. Think of the good old BBC propaganda trails like the Whoopi Goldberg comedy one and Perfect Day. You never get them anymore.

Even when they do come up with one (the election cartoons) they are ruined by not having enough variety (I only see the pensions one) and by Scotland ruining them by simply putting a filter over real footage before the endcap.

I don't mind trailers on BBC 1,2,3 + 4 but the ones on News 24 after the weather are pointless, why don't they just go straight into the countdown