Christmas Idents

Before you bite my head off, it's not to early. Only 7 weeks till Christmas Day tomorrow. Usually Christmas ident talk has heated up well before December.

Anyway, this isn't an official thread, I was just wondering what this year's Christmas idents and presentation were going to be like (although if I'm honest, I've been wondering for months).

I'm particularly interested in BBC1's ident. As far as I know there hasn't been another Blue Peter competition to design the ident, and you would assume the BBC would do that again if they were to have a new ident. Also, this is Peter Fincham's first Christmas as controller, and therefore he's not quite settled just yet. So it seems possible that last year's puddings are going to be recycled.

As for BBC2, well there has to be a new ident this year. Roly recycled all 3 from 2003 last year, and the 2001 tree ident should get axed, otherwise this will be the fifth consecutive year it's been shown.

So when is "The Official Christmas Ident Thread 2005" going to open and by whom?

I shouldn't think the 'puddings' will return as many people complained about the 'snowflakes' being shown again. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the same dancing kids idea though....maybe this time dressed as elves or something (heaven forbid!). I feel some mock ideas are in order.

I think ITV will use the same ident package as last year - but they can get away with it seeming as a rebrand is in order anyway.

So are we to presume the BBC One Christmas idents will launch on Saturday 17th December? Looking forward to it.

Well, continuing the pattern from previous years, the launch date probably will be Saturday 17th December - a whole week before Christmas Eve.

I would like ITV to do something different, even if it's just change the characters or something. I've always thought that they should create Christmas Characters like those used on the I'm A Celeb ads (last year's witchedy grub, and this years dancing singing bugs), and last year's X Factor judges, it would make a nice idea that could interact with the current logo, and perhaps even extend it across the network of channels.

As for the BBC, things are quiet, I doubt that they would do another Blue Peter comp, but then I doubt that they will keep the same one again.

I still think that the idea of Skaters in red skating around a tree would look lovely. I still imagine the Ice Rink in New York though as seen on films.

For me, I'm most excited to see what Channel 4 are going to do this year. After all it will be the first Christmas since their rebrand, I just hope that they will do something this year. It will be interesting to see what they do with the current ident idea.

Hopefully they won't just opt for a christmas scene, and then have the white endcap style 4 coming on so that you can see the christmas scene through the 4.

Of course five usually have something new, I don't think that they've ever had the same for two years. Though the early years may have done.

Last years five idents were quite nice, though I'd love to see them try and match the gorgeous idents of 2001, as if it's 4 years ago, and they still look lovely when viewed.

We can safely say that last year's Christmas Puddings are well past their use-by date: never mind the fact that for those that work in the BBC's Pres departments, that symbol is now synonymous with introducing news coverage of the tsunami.

Bearing in mind, since the dance symbols were introduced, that the Christmas symbols have included Children being cute in some form or other; it wouldn't take a huge leap of imagination to assume another variation on that theme will emerge.

There is always the outside chance they may try something different for christmas. Afterall the new boss did say they were considering the dancer's future on the channel. I'm probably just being an optimist though.

My favourite BBC ident of recent times has to be the 1999 one:

http://www.thetvroom.com/images-bbc-one/bbc-one-xmas/ident-1999.jpg - thetvroom.com

I liked the Christmas Eve effect, it really gave me an excited feeling and showed that BBC One was indeed home for Christmas right until January 2nd. Other idents have been ok but not like that one.

Maybe BBC One could do a christmas ident with christmas idents from 1995-2004!

I guess they have a little bit more freedom with the symbol these days in that it only has to last 30 seconds, it doesn't need to run long enough to play the National Anthem. Although they sometimes used the normal globe for the closedown anyway in the past.

Channel 4 will be most interesting.

I can't imagine them doing anythig special, if at all tbh.

Yeah, wasn't it last year when they didn't use their 'snow blinds' for the first time since 1998.

There will probably be a lot of Festive promotion but no idents.