I'm not sure if I'm thinking with my 2016 head on, but those designs (Roman numerals, the plain looking globe) look dated even for 1990/91. If you ignore the technical wizardry used to produce them, and some of the slickness, the finished product wouldn't look out of place in the 70s, in my opinion. It almost seems like a step backwards from the COW and TWO.
Yeah, those idents definitely look dated. 1's looks like it could've been from 1984 (i.e. before the COW), and 2's was no improvement over the TWO ident - it wouldn't have changed the channel's reputation as the 2s we eventually got did. They needed something that could compare well to the 1982 Channel 4 and 1989 ITV idents, and these don't.
I want to believe! Isn't The TV Museum in fact Ed Stradling, who was responsible for the BFI Christmas continuity presentation (as well as a huge amount of Doctor Who DVD extras)? There's no way he'd put something up if it wasn't kosher.
Assuming it is, let's not forget the reason it didn't go to air is because it was an early test, hence why it appears like a mock. It is clearly very much of the time (1989 looking back to the 80s) rather than what we ended up with (1991 looking ahead to the 90s). You've got the principle of the 1 and 2 figures that we ended up with, although they haven't really worked out much to do with the BBC2 ident at this point and it certainly doesn't reinvent the channel in the way the final product did. I find it interesting that the BBC1 globe has a fanfare, which clearly they decided wasn't necessary ultimately. Perhaps we can credit Lambie Nairn with putting the gloss on the original ideas?
Definitely agree that they're very much stuck in the 80s compared to what eventually followed, particularly with the design of the slides, and that Roman numeral really wouldn't have helped BBC Two's stuffy image at the time. And that fanfare on BBC One - well, it's a bit ITV, isn't it?
Wonderful to finally see these unearthed, great to have a look at the sort of thing that I never expected we'd get a chance to see. I wonder if one day we might get to see the original 90s "family" symbol (which was later replaced with the one used when Diana died), which I'm told by someone who was in Pres at the time "made it look like you were watching BBC½".