BBC Two 2015 with 90s idents

I do wonder if the presentation departments indulge in this nostalgia stuff a little too often sometimes. Maybe it's just my perception but it does seem to be a little too often for it to still be so effective. I don't know - maybe others disagree.

It's more of an admission that the current stuff isn't great.

I suspect on the Wales closedown Al realised he would be opting back to the test card part of the Barker and saw an opportunity for a bit of fun, which having used that ident already that evening wasn't out of place and I'm glad he did it.

EDIT: scratch that, just seen the video description and Wales seem to have finished early and had to play 25 minutes of the Barker locally. Still glad that Al could have some fun with it.

Is there a reason that the test card was broadcast?

As Steve says, it's part of the overnight 'barker' otherwise known as 'this is BBC Two'. It's broadcast every night

Ah. Thank you.
I clearly go to bed very early these days.

Not that you'd stay up to watch a loop of clips of programmes that BBC2 stopped showing 6 months ago!

It's kept up to date then?
Does the test card lead in to clips of programmes?

But I didn't have to wait too long before the logo with the Gill Sans 'Scotland' popped up again - the trail for the new Frankie Boyle political show features the offending item. However, I did note that this trail had a tailored voiceover by Mr Boyle for BBC Two Scotland.

Indeed - well, up to a point.

There are flaws with the various playouts last night. In the 80s, the fanfare soundtrack accompanying the ident was only played at start of day or when the channel came back on air after a lengthy break during the day. The soundtrack was discontinued in 1983, if memory serves me right.

And BBC NI used the Daytime on 2 version of the ident last night. Tut tut. The font used by Northern Ireland for its 'Northern Ireland' text was reasonably accurate - this was the font used on the BBC Two regional idents at the time - but of course, NI had no 'Northern Ireland' text on its ident in the 80s. I would also suggest that the font used here should've been the font used on their 80s slide recreation - rather than the font that was used on the BBC One NI ident of the time.

Scotland - who DID have 'Scotland' text on their ident back in the 80s - well, they used the Network ident last night.

Here's the actual 80s BBC Two Scotland ident:

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-1/152/main-03.jpg

Re the font used last night on the BBC Two Wales ident - I have no recollection of this font being used on a Wales ident in the 80s.

I think it's right on the line at the moment, it hasn't made me think 'this is over the top' yet. I still get a kick out of seeing Silk and Optics before BBC Two programmes again.


With regards to the authenticity of recreated slides, idents, etc. - I don't think it needs to be 100% historically correct. As long as the average person thinks 'hey, I remember when TV used to look like that!', it's done its job. I don't think this means we can't dissect them on TV Forum though, and compare them to what actually went out when those idents were contemporary, that's what we do! I love reading posts like that.

I would disagree about these things not needing to be 100% correct. That always has to be the goal - in my book anyhow. The danger with some of this stuff is that it'll be used again and again - and some of these templates suddenly become the only representations of the past that appear on TV and they end up plastered all over the net, being passed off as the real mccoy.

One interesting little element that I noticed on the recreation airing at the moment - which often seems to have been overlooked by other recreations that I've seen - is the angle highlighted in the image below:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-007.png

The example shown here is a 2012 Dave Jeffery recreation and the highlighted section here looks like a right angle. It's very difficult to draw any conclusions from any footage of the real symbol that I've ever seen - the angle always seemed to look like a perfect right angle:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-005.png

However, here's an image of a BBC print template of the 2 logo from the early 1980s, which shows a slight curve there:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-006.png

The curve is also apparent on this 1985 Christmas promo:

http://thetvroom.com/tvf/bbc2-004.png

Also notice the slight curve on the outer line as well, on the print template and the 1985 promo '2'. Yet on the ident of the time, this definitely looked like a perfect right angle.

On the recreation of the 80s ident, Some of you may also have noticed a little white line - bottom left of screen - which is present during the animation of the "==2==" symbol. This was also present on the original. I know that some sources on the web have suggested this was a fault. My understanding is that this was deliberate - and was used as an indicator for the continuity director/announcer that they had faded up/cut up the correct fader, prior to kicking off the animation. What the recreations don't show is that, on the original, when the white line disappears, an extra vertical line of the orange stripy lines appears (on the far left).

A similar indicator was used on the "TWO" symbol. If you look carefully - on the left border of the screen, there's a little black line, prior to the "TWO" animating on. And for the animating off of the "TWO" - when that animation completed, a little black bar would appear on the right border of the screen. For both symbols, these indicators would not be visible on the screen of the average TV set. They were at the extreme border of the picture on the left and right.

If we're being pedantic, did BBC Scotland ever have an animated BBC 2 symbol? That looks very much like the same kind of static slide the regions had.



I suspect a bit of artistic license from Dave Jeffrey there, based on this perhaps?
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/corporate2/images/width/live/p0/1r/wr/p01rwr9b.jpg/624