BBC Two 2015 with 90s idents

Disclosing such activity to average public facing PR types, doesn't necessarily attract the right reaction or attention

Would love to chat, but need to scan latest recorded junctions. Priorities

A long playout of Optics was used before a film last Saturday and it struck me again how surreal it is to witness these idents, that once lived only as muddied memories from a cack CRT (or blocky RealMedia files!), alive and for real on a big screen TV.

Indeed, if it wasn't for the teal box I'd have sworn I'd fallen down some kind of time hole.

It's testament to their design and direction they've been resurrected. I for one love the fact they've been brought back from retirement. It really is as though we've gone into a TV timewarp back to the glory days. All we need now is the balloon flying over the UK again and we're sorted.

I know it's terrible we can't have a new idea or concept, but at least by bringing solid design and direction back there's a quality image representing the channel's personality. Remember, it could be twoness.

I think you mean this playout, shown Sunday evening, leading into the film Half of a Yellow Sun.

Enjoy it again (though I recommend trying as best you can to ignore the teal box logo. It's a bit like trying to ignore a skip placed in the foreground of a picturesque landscape photograph):

I was expecting the likes of Zapper, Kebab or Fluffy Dog to introduce White Gold, but I was heavily surprised to be taken back to the 80s of BBC TWO presentation:


A nice touch from the guys at the good ship TWO.

The striped =2= ident appears to be actually part of the programme itself (at the very beginning).

Scotland also got one, BUT there was a black screen for 35 sec which mist out the striped =2= and the main in the red pants dancing.

The White Gold intro stills, as broadcast.

via Network:


via Northern Ireland:


...is that Eddie Shoestring of the left?

Mmmm...lacking in authenticity in various ways:

- The '2' logo itself is a poor recreation - too tall and some of the corners aren't rounded enough. Uneven spacing between the lines - a particularly poor example highlighted below:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-001.png

Spacing between the two lines generally too wide.

And an authentic '2' for comparison:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-002.png


- This type of slide would not have been used to introduce a programme.


- I can only assume the Northern Ireland branding is an attempt to satisfy today's need for Northern Ireland branding. We would never have seen Northern Ireland branding on one of these slides. For much of the 1979 - 1986 period, BBC NI didn't have a slide scanner. Even when one did arrive on the scene - think it was 1985 - BBC NI never attempted a slide-based version of the network programme holding slide design. From autumn 1984, they used electronically-generated captions like this one:

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-ex/ex-001/main-26.jpg

Between 1979 and 1985, you would've seen something like this:

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-ex/ex-001/main-42.jpg

...which was produced by pointing a camera at a monochrome, printed caption, with colour added electronically. The NI version of the "==2==" symbol was produced in precisely the same way between 1979 and 1985 (and the colouring was the same as shown on this caption - orange on blue) - and there was no Northern Ireland branding. A slide version of the "==2==" symbol came along in 1985 - and looked almost identical to this version (and yes, there was no Northern Ireland branding on it):

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-ex/ex-003/main-65.jpg

I, too, am a perfectionist and a purist just like you, but someone on TVF once said to me something along the lines of: just enjoy it more and try not to look too cloesly for errors in authenticity otherwise you'll miss out on the enjoyment a pres fan will get from such efforts. Sound words. Hope you take that in the spirit it was meant.

That's not to say your post isn't interesting.

Oh I'm sure there are plenty of people rolling their eyes at my post. I don't mind things like the 'Northern Ireland' branding. As long as it looks the part and blends in nicely. It's fine to play about a bit to suit today's needs. My only issue with it is that some pres fans will see that and think that it was a recreation of an actual format from the time - I just wanted to clarify that it was not. However, when a fundamental element of a recreation is botched, I find that a little more difficult to forgive. If you're going to go to the trouble to do it, do it right. That '2' logo is just wrong and I wouldn't like to think it'll get used again and again, for archive programming/anniversaries etc. It's already been used before I think:

http://ident.gallery/bbc2-2013-special-2.php (bottom of page)