BBC Two 2015 with 90s idents

What about the variants of Kebab? What about the likes of Wave Day/Night? I can't imagine Paint Pot really looks that much better than Paint.

There are actually 9 in use on BBC Two England. And other, 1991 broadcast idents have appeared on occasion in the past year (Paint, Neon, Copper Cut Out).

I think there are a variety of reasons why the network roster is comparatively limited, most of which have probably been discussed ad nauseam. Aesthetically, some have aged better than others and archival issues may indeed be a factor. Apparently, there was also a directive issued to "only include idents where the '2' is active in some way", ruling out the majority of the set (particularly the earlier ones).

Perhaps more than anything though, 9 might simply be deemed as adequate - especially as the Window set had been reduced to 5 (6 if you count the Tent variations separately) by the end.

NI have shown 36 idents to date, since New Year’s Day.



Other idents from the 1991-2001 era, which I would place in the category of idents with an active 2:

- both Balloon idents (that is, if they can use NI’s superb 16:9 versions)
- The other versions of Kebab
- Optics
- Firecracker
- both Dr Who idents
- Powder
- Blade
- Excalibur
- I'd also include Shadow, but I cannot imagine Network would go to the trouble of making a 16:9 version

I would say that the 2 in all of the above idents is active for more of the time than Predator is, which Network decided would be permissible to use.

Network wanted 'fun' idents, hence Dog, Car etc. Most of the early ones are rather melancholic. I shame really, as my favourites are still the likes of Silk, Paint, Water etc.

A percentage of BBC2's output is, essentially, quite serious in nature, and so I think it would be entirely appropriate for Network to have a small number of the more melancholic/ethereal ones also available to use.

edit:
NI showed Seeing Stars sting before Open All Hours, and Network showed Paint ident.

There was a rather nice Duck ('Sub') Graphic on NI for the AC programme menu. As is the case with the Water graphic, though, the brightness increases, but, in this case, the light background of this graphic along with the increased brightness made it hard to read the white text on the screen, before it looped and dropped in brightness again.

As much as I love Northern Ireland's menus, I think they really need to keep the brightness consistent throughout its run time, especially on the Sub variant.



My eyes!

They seem content with just Paint Pot for those occasions.

Precisely. Relying on one of the more sombre idents alone, to use each time strikes me as a bit lazy, if I'm honest.

Paint Pot and Swan are the two sombre ones.

I also wish there were more...

I still wonder why the Aerial was not used by the network. It falls into the requirements as colourful and moves around. Optic ident is the only other one which could have been used as Sombre and yet moves.

Yes, I accept I forgot to include Swan. I'd love to see others added though, such as Optics, Blade, Powder, Excalibur etc, to cater for the amount of serious programming output by BBC2, rather than just using those two.

The BBC did speak to Lambie-Nairn, which is effectively a different company from the one which produced the idents. Martin Lambie-Nairn is no longer associated with the company; and the materials they have are the best ones available from their archive. All this activity comes at a cost (including reversioning for Scotland, Wales, NI; uploading into playout systems etc) and in the light of this the BBC needed the most efficient plan they could deliver at the lowest possible cost – which is why they have only 6 idents on air.