CBBC Birthday thread

I've always wondered whether the the three cubes concept were the idents BBC Three would have launched with before it was delayed. I believe they had a green background at first and then as you say were recoloured blue.


I think the BBC Knowledge ident was introduced around the same time they introduced themed days, with each day corresponding to a 'zone' like arts, history, science etc. Initially they continued to use the original 1999 idents whenever a generic ident was needed (on the weekend?), but introduced the ident you mention around 2000.

There used to be a whole page about this on the great TV & Radio Bits which is where I'm recollecting most of this from, not online anymore sadly.

Yes the Choice three cubes ident was another very noticeable BBC3-style rebrand - even if not intended for BBC3, certainly doesn't take a genius to work out what they were trying to get across...

But then, BBC Choice's first idents had 3 as a theme too.

They did, and appreciate this is all conjecture but: that was to reflect the "family of three" (BBC1/2/Choice). The blocks idents came some time after that strategy had moved on, those idents had been remixed to just have a single heart instead of three, the launch of Knowledge adding a further channel, and in the middle of the campaign to get the channel converted to BBC3, so it seems more than a coincidence.

All of which reminds me of those vile 2000-2001 remixed Choice idents with the bright green/pink backdrop and wooshy noises. Really odd period that.

I think the 'remixed' idents were just a cheap and nasty way for Stuart Murphy to make his mark and signify the channel was changing.

Yep, they were really cheap looking:

Although the CBeebies channel had effectively started a while before that when the daytime hours of Choice were filled with pre-school CBBC programmes under the name 'CBBC on Choice'. Not to be confused with 'CBBC Choice' which was the childrens strand on the original BBC Choice

Yes, and I don't know if you missed it since this is a rather large thread now but there was some discussion about that (and newly uploaded clips of the original CBBC Choice) earlier on.


Incidentally I was looking for anything related to the old 'TV & Radio Bits' site as it had a lot of content on BBC Choice, when I came across this forum post from a few years ago by the former owner of the site, which fills in the gaps of how 'CBBC on Choice' came to be:



This sort of deflates my theory of it starting at the same time Choice went more 'adult' in mid-2000, seems it was a more gradual change instead. It seems like something too modern to get excited about, but I think I'm particularly interested in the early days of multichannel/digital TV because there is so little of it written about or clipped online.

Backstage was a live show that apparently went around Television Centre trying to find the latest 'backstage gossip' from the BBC… although I have a feeling that was probably less exciting than it sounds!

Reading about the original BBC Choice and Knowledge formats, they seemed quite interesting and it almost seems a shame they didn't last very long. I've never been very impressed of what I've seen of BBC Choice (from when we went digital in 2001) and BBC Three.

It was presented by Kaye Adams, and I think also Julia Bradbury ? It was a cheap as chips show, technically very simply done, I seem to remember a half height equipment rack on wheels with a simple mixing desk and a couple of cameras, no gallery. The style was reminiscent of the Saturday morning children's ' TVC etc tours', though they turned up at Millbank one evening, I remember, because I was there that day, they just plugged their rack into the CAA patch bay.

Not far off - to summarise, BBC Knowledge's idents went as follows:

June 1999 - three 'cartoonish' idents

April 2000 - BBC Knowledge completely changed format, with themed idents introduced on Mondays (history), Tuesday (science) and Friday (arts), with one of the original 1999 cartoon idents remaining on other days

Approx July 2000 - themed idents introduced for business (Wednesdays) and languages (Thursdays), with a mixture at the weekend. The remaining 1999 ident was dropped

Just before Christmas 2000 - a new generic ident introduced, which initially preceded the themed idents in each junction

Early 2001 - themed idents dropped and the single generic ident used exclusively until BBC Knowledge gave way to BBC Four in March 2002. So that ident only had just over a year of use, which was a shame as it was rather nice!

And while I'm here, here's a summary for BBC Choice:

September 1998 - original 'choice of three' idents. By May 2000, all had been dropped except for 'Heart'

July 2000 - those awful 'remixed' versions of 'Heart'

July 2001 - big orange boxes with a green background

January 2002 - background changed to blue

By January 2003 BBC Choice had pretty much given up, and they were using idents showing the big 'THREE' under construction which continued until the channel's demise in February. And I actually rather miss it!

That was the continuously looped one, wasn't it? I seem to remember they showed a blurred, slowed down version of it during the channel's downtime too.

The early days of digital TV seemed much more imaginitive than what we have today in my opinion!