The BBC1 balloon is ten!

Can't see this mentioned anywhere else, today marks exactly ten years since one of the biggest days ever for BBC presentation - the BBC1 balloon was launched, as well as a new batch of BBC2 idents, and the introduction of the upright BBC logo.

I was rather concerned at first when I read on Ceefax that the BBC1 globe was being ditched in favour of a hot-air balloon! So I was very relieved when I saw it for the first time (not the first showing unfortunately, but before the weather forecast before Grandstand) that the balloon was the globe! I was also glad to see that most of the existing BBC2 idents had remained, though looked somewhat larger than before - the reason for that wouldn't become clear for some time!

I'm staggered to think that a whole ten years has passed since then, it still only feels like a couple of years ago, yet we are now two BBC1 identities on from the balloon.

Ten years sure do fly by. Here is their first appearances for old times sake:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yOJFEwoLdgs
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EUgjq8b_iKo

I love Chappers' 'brand spanking new look' announcement. I wonder if that got any fellow pres enthusiasts worried?

It is unbelievable that has been 10 years; both BBC1 and 2's idents from that era still look great today!

Ten years old, I feel really old now.

I remember getting up at about 6.30am on that Saturday and finding that when I switched on BBC One and BBC Two they had a new logo on the Testcards, so I didn't dare to switch over. I had the VCR rolling too, but I accidentally dropped the tape and it broke.

It still looks good today...

For some reason, it completely passed me by as a nine year old. The new look didn't register for me until the beginning of '98, when I was watching a tape from a few months earlier, saw the old laserdisc ident and thought "Hey, that's the one they used to have!".

Ten years is absolutely terrifying, when I joined TV Forum it hadn't even done four yet. Still one of the greatest ident packages ever!

It may have been good, but why was the promo graphics so bland and plain? (simple white text overlayed)

Perhaps that was the best they could do?

Why not? If it works, why bother doing anything particularly snazzy?

The 1997 revamp happened just a little before the digital revolution with an explosion of new channels, and the BBC themselves were about to launch several new channels; indeed News 24 was only just over a month away from launch. So what the BBC needed was a consistent, uniform style to use across all their channels in order to clearly identify them as belonging to the same family (even the UKTV network of channels which was also about to launch adopted the same slide and trailer styles) so therefore what you end up with is a fairly basic design. And the new trailer style was no more basic than what it replaced, although the slides were more plain than the old ones.

Of course, what's happened now is they've gone off in completely the opposite direction with pretty much no uniformity left between the channels.

The balloon isn't 10 of course, it didn't even make it to 5!

The current BBC logo, however is 10 today

I woke up on 04/10/97 not knowing what to expect at all. So I had to be prepared for whatever would fill the screen. At 7:03am the first balloon came on and my immediate thoughts were the globe would now be represented in the form of everyday objects - not necessarily a balloon. Then, after the Saturday menu that second balloon appeared and it was clear this was the form the globe would take from now on.

My initial thoughts - some disappointment that the new globe, in most sequences, was not revolving or shot in a way to make it appear as if it was. But quickly I realised BBC1 now had their 2, and it was another Lambie-Nairn masterstroke.


The latter is an indictment of how image seems to have been put above all else. Broadcasters are always bleating on about how in an era of increasing competition they need to "stand out from the crowd". Amazingly, Pam Masters was saying the same thing back in 1991. But look at modern idents - many are copycat ideas ("BBC1 have people idents, so must we!") and none are designed with longevity in mind. By contrast, the 1991 identities were designed originally with a view to lasting at least until the end of the decade.

Which brings me on to...


The digital revolution and the move to 16:9 broadcasting was the major consideration in the BBC's 1997 relaunch. But in the case of BBC1, there was simply no way the existing globe could continue because the amount of 16:9 resizing necessary would have compromised the image (see below):

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/bbc1national/1991/bbc1globe_widecrop.jpg

Whereas with the BBC2 idents, there was enough "nothing" in the background to make resizing possible without compromising the image. And with no (apparent) loss of picture quality too - how did they manage that?

I remember seeing it on 'Noel's House Party' where they said the BBC had a new look... and then they crashed the balloon into some hills